A raw and organic chocolate factory in the hipster kingdom
From the outside, it looks like an abandoned artist’s studio. Rusty window frames and opaque panes surrounded by graffiti make it impossible to see what is happening inside. Yet, we are at the doorway to the paradise of raw chocolate made in Brooklyn!
A delicious smell of chocolate hits us as soon as we enter, and we don’t know where to look as the place initially resembles nothing like a chocolate shop/factory: industrial decor, worn-out walls, and raw concrete floors, bikes, large speakers, street art paintings, and employees wearing their finest beanies and tattoos.
The story is as cool as the neighborhood where it unfolds. In 2007, a passionate financier decided to make his own chocolate in his loft kitchen. After winning over his friends and family, he began supplying local merchants and delivering his homemade chocolates by bike. In 2012, he opened his “factory” right in the heart of Bushwick.
From these artisanal and experimental beginnings, Fine & Raw has retained some basics: working only with organic products (beans, coconut sugar, fruits…) and from sustainable and fair trade farms. Above all, doing bean to bar, meaning the team transforms the cocoa beans into chocolate themselves on site – usually, chocolatiers work with ready-made chocolate pastes.
The other special feature of the factory, and not the least, is that it produces mainly raw cocoa chocolate. Hurry up to read our article on the subject, if you haven’t yet understood Darwin’s love for raw cocoa.
Raw chocolate, “raw” in English, is made from fermented and dried beans, but not roasted. As a result, the properties and nutrients of the cocoa – antioxidants, magnesium, potassium, zinc… are fully preserved.
Raw chocolate also means more tryptophan and serotonin, so more good mood! Brittany, the young woman from Fine & Raw who greets us with a big smile, is proof of it. Since we don’t have our regulation hipster beanies, we put on hairnets and step through the looking glass.
From cocoa bean to chocolate
For more information on cocoa cultivation, read our exploration in the Peruvian Amazon of a Criollo cocoa plantation, here.
The cocoa beans are delivered directly to the Fine & Raw Chocolate Factory. Coming from Ghana and Ecuador, they are rigorously selected from organic and fair trade certified producers. Ideally, we would like to source Criollo cocoa, the finest and most aromatic variety, but the final cost of the tablets would likely be higher.
A team of about fifteen people works in the factory. Whether they are working with the beans or in administration, everyone knows all the manufacturing processes. Brittany, the sales and marketing manager who is hosting us today, previously worked manually in making chocolates and at the hot chocolate bar!
The beans are first spread out on trays and hand-sorted. Although they come from quality plantations, transport can damage them. Some clump together. We only keep the best ones! Then they are shelled.
They are then ground by millstones in the machine you see above. And mixed with cocoa butter! The latter is not (yet) made by Fine & Raw, which does not have the machines or the space to do so. They source it from a manufacturer who also works with organic and fair-trade cocoa. This results in a thick liquid, which we already feel like drinking straight from the machine?
This particularly fascinating movement is achieved in the Selmi, the chocolate kneading machine at constant temperature. The desired amount of coconut sugar is added (this will vary the percentage of dark chocolate) and the other chosen fruits or flavors (vanilla, lucuma, coffee, cashews, salt…). It is then placed in the refrigerator, in large molds.
The chocolate is ready to be molded into bars or made into truffles! At this point, we really stop listening to anything and can hardly resist the urge to taste straight from the mold…
Part of the team takes charge of wrapping it in beautiful gold papers and other boxes illustrated by local artists. Stylized plants, Brooklyn pin-ups, we are highly convinced by the different packages, whose aesthetic refers to the “raw” and rough universe of the factory.
Chocolate isn’t the product that travels best, so we choose the bars to take with care: a raw dark at 83% and a Vanilla & Lucuma – a super Peruvian fruit that we will have the chance to talk to you about soon! And if we had a house, we would probably also take an eggplant emoji painting 🙂
Our visit ends here. We leave with ideas bustling in our heads, not without grabbing a delicious hot chocolate to go from the hot chocolate bar, to keep the pleasure lasting through the sunny streets of Bushwick😉
Charlotte & Quentin
