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Glad you enjoyed it! Did anything in particular stand out to you as a usable insight you can incorporate in your exploration of chocolate (and beer)?

Thanks for your support! We are happy you found the episode instructive and interesting. Join us on Tuesdays and Fridays for more!

This is another very important lesson. In the beginning a founder may have to be chief everything officer. To grow it’s usually necessary to let go of things - especially those you are not good at and/or don’t like to do. Founders always need to provide guidance and inspiration no matter which roles they settle into.

Adrienne - Happy you liked it!

Stay tuned for the announcement of availability!

Jessica - I will be using Pinecast for hosting the audio episodes. It generates an RSS feed and so you should be able to use and podcast app to listen to them. I will probably also list them on Spotify and/or Apple as well to reach more people.

I can see where you might come to this conclusion, no disrespect taken. I have done two more episodes that provide more detail and nuance on this topic. The issues involved are complicated and the contribution of each factor depends on the country involved. The market system of the Philippines is very different from the market in Ghana. One difference (just one - but the most important one) is that in Ghana COCOBOD sets the farm gate price for cocoa and revisits that price on a slow schedule. In the Philippines, there is no government price control so farmers can charge what the market is willing to pay. Big Chocolate does everything it can to keep prices low. So it is a combination of market forces and the balance of forces varies in each country. What happened earlier this year is a black swan even that no one thought would happen but everyone should have been able to predict would happen. The questions are - what do we do, and what can we do - to a) prevent this from happening again and b) to ensure that farmers are paid for their labor? Normalizing the status quo ante is something we should not settle for.

Nataly - It was my pleasure! I am looking forward to following your success.

@@podsavechocolate thank you 🤎

Thanks for checking in!

Jessica - There is no winner pack ... yet. Dustin and I will be doing a public tasting of the winners at some point during the Fall (here in the US) and so we might be able to do something about shipping to Oz then. It takes planning to arrange the purchase of the bars, get them here to the US for packing and reshipping. Last year we limited shipping to North America but given more time we can consider expanding shipping destinations.

Jessica - as always, thanks for your encouragement!

Agreed on Mashpi!

Shawn - it is always a pleasure. I am hoping to be able to count on your support for my Specialty Chocolate and Cocoa Association initiative.

How is what you’re doing the same or different from Crio Bru, etc? When you’re ready to share your work - contact me via TheChocolateLife so we can discuss on a future episode.

Thanks for letting me know I’ve got another YT viewer on St Lucia.

It was a fun episode! I really do like to highlight different technology approaches that can reach the farmer level, affordably.

Mark - thanks for the kind words. Answering your second question is going to take more time and space than the RUclips comments section can accommodate. I am planning a future episode of PodSaveChocolate dedicated to this topic. Right now that’s scheduled for Tuesday, Apr 16.

Thanks for sharing. I don’t know a whole lot about the “ancient” history of cacao on St Lucia. The related stories of cacao’s introduction and history around the Caribbean predating the arrival of Europeans is fascinating. I think many people give the Europeans too much credit and the indigenous peoples far too little credit. We know that dry cocoa beans were being traded as far north as what is now Northern New Mexico before the arrival of the Spanish. Cacao seedlings had likely been traded from their origins in the Upper Amazon River Basin from as far back as 2500 BCE all the way up into what is now Mexico, Belize, and Honduras. Columbus is reported to have first encountered cocoa beans being carried on a Mayan trading canoe, so it’s not hard to believe that trade throughout the Caribbean - in beans and seedlings - was happening for hundreds of years before the arrival of any Europeans in the regiion.

Christine - *bucks is a total disappointment when it comes to chocolate - in my opinion. Their retail chocolate selections do nothing to complement the *bucks brand. They attempted many years ago to introduce a hot chocolate powder mix called Chantico that failed out of the gate. It was too adult for kids, the ingredient list was not clean, and they added a lot of cornstarch so the texture was thick ... but wrong. I tasted it at the launch and gave it my second-lowest rating (colloquially translated as “not worth the calories”). When you think about what they did to educate a broad swath of the global public about specialty coffee, they could have done the same, or at least something similar, for chocolate but have never had the desire to make the obvious connection - and have no desire today according to people I have spoken with.

Nate, to clairify: The shipping dates for production units has slipped several times and you are taking $$ for Batch 5 pre-orders before shipping units to Batch 1 backers. Correct? What is the delay between the original shipping estimate for the original crowdfunding round? That’s what I am *most* critical of; some of your backers are expressing frustration about the delays and the paucity of communication about when machines will ship ... and the reasons for the delays. I remain a “trust but verify” skeptic of the performance of the machine until a) production units are in the hands of backers; b) there are independent reviews (not on the CocoTerra website) out there; and c) I get to put a machine through its paces on my own schedule with my own ingredients and recipes. Until then I can’t recommend anyone pre-order a Batch 5 unit before all Batch 1 units have shipped.

Congratulations and good luck to you! Please keep us informed as to the progress you are making.

Glad you liked it! This whole topic of how words are used is near and dear to my heart.

He is. I had a chance to visit the new factory space in the process of its design and helped with some pointers on how to organize production efficiently. Sadly, I was not able to get back to see it before I left NYC for Arizona. I am hoping to get Kobi on as a guest in the not-too-distant future.

Greetings from the US to you in S Africa!

You're welcome!

Glad you enjoyed it! There is so much more to cocoa than just the beans.

Glad you found it so.

Are you interested in being in touch with me or the people at Grainpro?

Jessica - When there is sufficient support to ALSO post on some podcast outlet, I will do the work necessary to strip the audio from the videos and upload them. While I have no plans to monetize the channel with ads, I would like to hit the 1000 subscriber mark before I move forward on this. It’s a lot of extra work.

Of course. This one was fun and I am planning to do a lot more meet the maker episodes with live tastings.

You are right - Greek, not Latin. Not pedantry, accuracy. Despite knowing it when doing unscripted live streams simple misstatements happen. Unfortunately, the way YT works there’s no way to make those kinds of annotations over the video after the fact. I appreciate your comment on this. I don’t disagree with many of your observations about process, but I don’t hear those reasons from the people making and selling “ceremonial cacao.” And I love hearing irreverent hunches like the one you propose. For some participants in cacao ceremonies this sounds like it rings true.

⁠@@podsavechocolate no need to defend greek/latin flub. God knows I misspeak all the time, preferring text where I can edit as brain catches up to fingers! I’m not in the trade even aspirationally, but the business through whom I buy “ceremonial cacao”, and who leads Guatemala tours for transparency, acknowledgment, and gratitude in his sourcing: he makes the point about hand peeling being superior mold screening to mechanical, and also lab tests his curation for mycotoxins among other things, no woo. He also insists on hand/fire roasting on comal in his selections, as better tasting than with ovens, but I speculate above about gradient being the reason. He’s Nick of Soul Lift Cacao in Portland, OR, white like me, but I think exceptionally sensitive to issues of exploitation, appropriation, representation, etc, both around cacao itself and its oversold but nonfictional place in Maya spirituality. My use of cacao in a contemplative practice mandates that the chain of causality bringing it to my lips be as transparent, equitable, and full of gratitude as international commerce allows. Ripping off poor indigenous people or their heritage de-ceremonializes the product regardless of any material or alleged woo qualities.

There is, of course, a continuum here, with many confounding variables. Nick has his opinions, all of which are anecdotal and informed by his understandings. From what you say his approach is more sensitive than many others I have heard, but that does not necessarily make it “authentic” or even “more authentic.” I have participated in two ayahuasca ceremonies. The first was in a suburban enclave in Ecuador, overseen by a white professor who called himself a shaman based on his academic studies. The second was overseen by a Peruvian from an indigenous people group who was represented as a shaman - in a farmhouse in upstate New York. That’s a small universe of personal examples. Both were “mindful” but in very different ways. Both were intentional, in very different ways. Both were respectful of tradition but in very different ways. I agree with you with one change, “Ripping off [any] people or their heritage de-ceremonializes the product regardless of any material or alleged woo qualities.”

Thanks for sharing! I am soooo glad you found the episode entertaining and useful.

You are welcome, as always! (And it’s just Clay.)

Any time! Always a pleasure.

No worries! Thanks for being a regular listener and commentor. I know that the timing is not good for Oz. I have to think about mutually inconvenient times for the Americas and Europe and it’s really hard to fit anything in that’s convenient for Oz, NZ, Japan, etc. I have tried!

Jessica - I know she will be in the Sydney and Melbourne area in early November - not sure if there will be a visit to Adelaide, but I do know the Barossa Valley is also on the itinerary. Where are you located and I can introduce the idea of meeting up into her travel plans.

Maria - thanks for this thoughtful, extended, response. I have always been somewhat of a skeptic, but at the same time don’t want to presume motives. I am not a follower of any “new age” practices like crystals or pyramids, but I do know that many people find benefit from them, so who am I to say they are wrong, except when they endangering the health and safety of others, especially children. But those who are involved in deliberately deceptive practices deserve to be scrutinized so that others have a more complete idea of what’s actually going on. IMO.

I agree with most of what you say here, but I think there are some notable exceptions to the general truths you lay out. I recently returned from 20 days in Guatemala centered on visits to small-parcel family cacao forest/farms, and to highland businesses that process and sell those beans as ceremonial cacao. While some of the farmers do not identify with Maya spirituality, nor present as “full blood” indigenous, some do. The highland bean processor business owners we met: all but one are proudly Maya founded and led, Maya languages spoken and traditional dress worn, etc. Their businesses seem to be expanding as much or more in the propagation of Mayan cosmovision than in cacao per se, the latter a vehicle for the former. I can’t attest to the finances of these operations, whether white or non-indigenous financiers are behind scenes, as not my business, but foundation, and apparent ownership and management is Maya in at least several cases.

It was an interesting topic for me to research so I am glad you found it informative and hopefully useful as well.

I am looking forward to continuing the conversation.

You're so welcome! I personally have a lot more fun with pairing events than I do when tasting only chocolates. Wine, beer, cheese ... and more!

Jessica - thanks for the kind words. I was not home schooled and neither were my kids, but I rarely - much to my kid’s dismay - overlooked an opportunity to seek beyond the specifics of question to generalize how to approach answering the question. I thought I was encouraging their curiosity, they often thought I was doing it just to show off.

Josh - I am glad you found it useful.

Thanks! While there is always a framework for these episodes there is no formal script. I like to improvise around the comments.

Sam - I would reach out to the Institute of Food Technologists at ift.org to see if they can point you to someone who can answer your questions. Even if you were to provide the readers of these comments information about the exact packaging you’re using, my sense is that it will take an expert on a number of topics to get to the answers you’re looking for. Is this a product you want to sell?

Karla - I think that many people are actually afraid to speak out “in opposition” to the FCIA. I am not actually opposed to the FCIA, but I do strongly disagree with many of the ways they go about doing their business. Many others have pointed out that they are both understaffed and chronically underfunded. They are a 99% volunteer organization and yet they engage in hugely consequential projects that they have not through through adequately, IMO. As you might imagine, these positions (and others) have not ingratiated me with the leadership. I agree that the existing entries need hefty edits - but, more importantly, the entire approach needs an overhaul linguistically and technically. Wordpress is a sucky choice as the platform.

You're welcome, as always!

Glad it was helpful! I don’t think it’s a question that gets asked enough, or examined critically enough. There’s just an assumption that “better quality” is *always* better.