- Chocolate is unequivocally the most popular sweet treat
in the world, but for some reason
in a time where we really obsess
over where things come from, who makes them,
and the varying quality levels,
we seem to overlook chocolate.
Even though pretty much all chocolate is delicious,
if we appreciate the more artisanal, fair trade varieties,
it can really change the lives
of farmers around the world rather than it being
just another mega corporation commodity product.
So today, I wanna find out what makes
the best chocolate the best.
To do that, I'm heading to Raaka, a chocolate factory
in Brooklyn to see how they're obsessive sourcing,
crazy machinery, and expert craftsmanship create
an award-winning chocolate bar.
It turns out the best chocolate starts with the best fruit,
like these cacao pods being harvested
in the Junin Valley in Peru.
Farmers select only the ripe pods from the trees,
remove the seeds, and then immediately transport them
to a fermentation co-op back at the base.
From there, the fruit is put into wooden boxes
and the seeds are fermented for five to seven days.
What happens here is the natural sugar
on the outside of the bean
ferments the cacao, turning the flavor
from bitter and fruity to rich and chocolaty.
Next, the beans are dumped out in the sun to dry
before being bagged for export.
From here, most large corporations would roast the crap
out of the beans which makes everything
sort of taste the same.
But smaller companies like Raaka prefer
to bring their beans in unroasted,
which preserves the unique flavor profile
that each origin has.
So today, I'm going to the Raaka factory in Brooklyn
to see all the work that goes into making one
of the highest quality chocolate bars on the planet.
These pods, this fruit is not something
you would typically see in your factory here,
in Brooklyn, right?
- No, not in our factory.
We get the dried and fermented seeds of the cacao fruit.
- And why is that?
- This is a lot of weight, the pod itself.
We're shipping like, a material that we're
not gonna use if we ship the pods.
Also it's much easier to ferment the seeds naturally
in a warm, tropical climate.
- Wouldn't it be the most Brooklyn thing ever, though,
if you were the only people to like, import the whole,
- Yeah, or if we had-- - The whole pod?
- Like, a greenhouse (chuckling)
on a roof top and we were growing them
and doin' the whole thing ourselves.
Yeah, that would be even more. (chuckles)
This has been in the US now for, I don't know,
four or five days.
It doesn't look the same way as it would on the tree.
- Let's see what you guys actually get in here
and then we'll...
- Yeah, let's make some chocolate.
- Today, we're gonna turn this shipment of beans
from the Dominican Republic
into Raaka's signature Maple & Nibs Bar.
Welcome to "Dan Does," okay.
(Nate chuckling)
All right, so what room are we in, right now?
- Right now, we're in the bean room.
So we are gonna process that fruit seed
that we're getting dried and fermented here,
in these bags, into nibs and then into a paste
that then will be turned into chocolate.
Yeah, so when you peel away the shell,
- [Dan] There's the bean?
- [Nate] There's the bean, right there.
- All right, that looks--
- That looks pretty full, yeah, yeah.
You think you can lift that?
I mean it, (laughing)
I saw you lift the full bag.
- Yeah, no, well maybe.
- [Nate] So you're gonna toss this up here?
- All right.
Now we start the long process
of separating the bean from the shell.
This first machine cracks the beans
and then uses a gentle vacuum
to pull away some lighter shell pieces.
If the vacuum is too strong, it'll suck away usable cacao.
So this is just like the first sorting.
- The first sorting or the cracking of the beans, yeah.
This is like a combination of large pieces
of shell and cacao nibs.
This is everything that's lighter than nib.
Okay, this is mostly shell or like, fines.
- The next step for the freshly de-shelled beans is
the optical sorter which uses a computer
to rapidly evaluate everything it sees,
and then a series of mini air jets
to push out as much of the shell as it can.
That sound, by the way, is the optical sorter
cleaning its eye?
- Yeah, the optical sorter is cleaning itself.
It's noticing that it's getting dusty
and it's spraying the dust off of the optical eye.
- Why are machine?
Machines are like, sorta silly.
- Machines are so silly.
I mean, this one's gonna eventually like, take over the--
- Stupid comment.
(Nate laughing)
What's the optical sorter gonna do
with a piece like this? - So the optical sorter is
gonna read this as a piece of shell.
And so we're gonna collect this
with the other large pieces of shells
and run it through this machine again, to get more nib.
- [Dan] Gotcha, okay.
- The husk is being shot out into this main,
into this front chute.
- Wow, that's insane!
Because of the unique size of this operation,
there aren't a lot of machines being made for it.
Large scale chocolate factories wouldn't need it
because roasting the beans makes them much easier
to separate from the shell.
You're still seeing like, a little bit of shell.
That's the industry standard?
- No, we'll probably take this and run it back
to the first machine 'cause those little pieces
of shell now come off with the vacuum.
- This is gonna be heavy, right?
- [Nate] No, it's not gonna be that heavy.
It's less material than before.
- All right, well it feels heavy, but.
- [Nate] Have you lifted a bag?
(Dan and Nate laughing)
- Notably heavy.
All right, great, cool.
Thanks for continuing to roll on that.
Now that everything's separated, the vacuum will suck
out all the remaining pieces of shell, leaving us
with 100% pure cacao.
They're making it look easy here, but it actually takes
a lot of fine touch adjustments
to maximize cacao output while minimizing waste.
All right, so we're happy with this?
- [Nate] This looks really good, yeah.
- This can be chocolate.
- [Nate] This can be chocolate, for sure.
- [Dan] The final machine in the bean room takes two
to three passes to crush down the nibs
into a fatty paste or what they call a flake,
getting it ready for the next step which is grinding.
- The first pass is gonna grind the nibs into smaller nibs
and then on the second or sometimes third pass,
we're gonna get the consistency that we want in the paste.
Step here, with the wheels.
So that's what we're looking for.
We're looking it for a flaky consistency.
We're starting to release some of those fats
and so that's--
- [Dan] What makes it mold?
- That's causing the solids to clump together.
And that's when we know that we can refine it
in the other room, like, in a relatively quick manner.
- [Dan] Let's go to the other room.
- Let's do it.
This is just some stones on a stone base.
As it spins, it's going to pull the flake
underneath those stones and start to refine it.
- [Dan] All right, here we go.
From here, they'll add two kilos
of the flake every five or so minutes
until the full batch is in the grinder.
Then once it's all come together, they'll add the sugar
and then let it sit for about 24 hours
before sending it to the roller mill.
I think one of the craziest things for me is just
the amount of back and forth the chocolate does
between these different machines
and you can't go under and you can't go over
or else you're gonna create a gummy final product.
- So this is what it's gonna taste like, you know,
right before we mill it.
- There's still like, a little bit of chalkiness in it,
but the swag of chocolate is the smoothness, right?
- Yeah, is the melt, is the fact that glides
off your palate. - To get rid of that
final sort of granularity,
that's when we're gonna use the roll mill over here?
- That's what we're gonna use the roller mill.
- So what we're gonna do right now, it's stone milling.
We're gonna get
half of this batch and this will be the first half
that we're going to mill or refine.
- Even the way you got your little spatula,
you got some moves here.
- This end, yeah.
Experience, I guess, yeah.
- [Dan] Look at this, look at this.
Woof.
Oh, that's so good.
- Basically, we just carry this over.
- [Dan] The next stage in the long series
of refinement steps is the roller mill.
Originally purposed with giving ink
a smooth glossy finish, the roller mill uses
huge, heavy rollers to squash down the particle size
of both the sugars and the cacao
without overworking the chocolate.
Oh, that's so crazy.
- [Esteban] The first thing that is going to be coming out
of the roll milling process is going to be the fat.
- So it's not necessarily like, doing any refinement yet.
This is just like a filtering, so far.
- [Esteban] Basically, we just started with it, yeah.
- After the fat comes the larger particles
of cacao and sugar which the team will actually send back
through the mill to ensure they are smooth
and melt on the tongue.
This attention to detail and obsession with texture is
not found in larger chocolate operations.
You're really like, sort of a spatula master.
You love getting it right?
- It gives you pleasure to get it to the right texture.
The end product is gonna show,
once they actually put the bar together,
once it sets and once you snap,
and once you have a piece of it,
so then yeah, it pays off.
- [Dan] Can I get a try?
- [Esteban] Go for it.
- Oh, but see that you wanna catch.
Oh, I like this.
I'm just holding the other one to look pro
even though I have no idea what to do with it.
So this is the finished product here,
I mean, you can't see any in the flakes.
- Exactly and I can do this
so you can see how smooth it is.
All right, so now I'm gonna dump this back into the grinder.
- Now that the chocolate has come out
of the roller mill, it's time to add the
additional cocoa butter which is gonna bring the product up
to the fattiness level that Raaka is looking for.
There'd be no point in putting the cocoa butter in
before it goes in the mill because it would just come
out first and it would add time to the whole process.
So once this is in, we just have to wait for it
to combine and then it's ready?
- Yeah, which in this case,
you'll see it right before you eyes.
It's gonna happen in a matter few seconds.
- All right. - [Nate] Are you nervous?
- (chuckling) I'm not nervous, I just feel like,
I mean, you know, to watch everything that goes
into this, it's just like, every step of the,
if I drop this and then, oh yeah, well that's a day of work.
- [Esteban] You're good.
- Well, I'm good, yeah I mean all right.
- [Esteban] A little messy, but...
- Well, I didn't do anything wrong yet.
From here, the chocolate takes a few minutes to incorporate
with the additional cocoa butter before it is dumped out
and then brought over to the tempering station
where we're finally gonna turn it into bars.
You start to realize there's a lot of value in here.
I mean, this is a lotta work to get--
- Yeah, that's worth a lot of money.
- What's this cost, this pup here?
- Bucket?
That bucket for us is gonna represent,
I don't know, like almost a thousand dollars.
- Is it a thousand dollars?
Next, the chocolate brought up to temp
or 88.5 degrees Fahrenheit.
The reason for this is kinda complicated
but essentially, once the chocolate gets hot enough
the cacao's bonds break down and then are able
to form new bonds with the sugar crystals once it's cooled.
If the chocolate isn't tempered well, you'll see that
there'll be different size crystal structures
which makes it brittle and not smooth.
But back to me being bad at things, now it's time
to use this cool device to pour the chocolate
into bar shapes.
- Difficulty in this step is timing, the like,
putting your foot on the pedal and getting the molds
underneath while it's doing the dosing.
- And can I try it?
- Yeah, and you will get chocolate
all over your hands and your arms.
- You're sure I'm gonna botch it?
- [Nate] I'm pretty sure, yeah.
- (chuckling) Okay, save it.
(Nate and Dan chuckling)
- So what you have to do is grab the mold, get it up
to the edge, put your foot down, slide it under
and then pull it out.
Don't let go of the pedal until you've pulled it out.
- All right, you're gettin' crazy on me here, right?
Yep, botched it.
(Nate laughing)
All right, it's it's the depth that makes it difficult.
- There you go, that's closer.
Oh man.
- Look, the real challenge of this is
getting the one end switched.
You kinda gotta be good with both hands.
(whistles) Okay.
All right, all right, all right.
- (beep), bricked it.
Horrible.
(beep), (beep), (beep).
Can't swear either.
Forget that, scratch it.
(Nate laughing)
I don't know why I didn't get close.
Next, the bars hit a vibrating table
to flatten them out and get rid of the air bubbles.
- You don't have to be gentle with it.
You want it to be flat.
So you see here, your bars are not flat on the side
so you really just wanna get it vibrating,
moving it back and forth.
- [Dan] Next, the team will add toppings, if there's any.
In this case, they're doing cacao nibs.
They'll unmold the bars and then send them off
to the fridge for a quick cool down.
And then finally, it's time
to use the insane packaging machine.
- So we have our maple bars that we pour.
So they're ready to wrap
in our 1970s chocolate bar wrapper,
sort of like an envelope-folding style.
So our bars are gonna look like they were folded by hand.
- This is the craziest lookin' thing I've ever seen.
Without this thing, you're screwed, right?
- Without this thing, we'd have to wrap by hand
which we did for a number of years.
And now we're not at scale
where that makes any sense to do.
- [Dan] Geez.
- [Nate] So I'm gonna demonstrate
and we're gonna let you give it a shot.
- [Dan] No way.
- [Nate] The key to this machine is
to make sure that your hands don't stop moving.
If you're really good at it, you're gonna have it going
on that side and then you're gonna have another hand
over here, laying out more bars
while you apply pressure with this hand.
So I can sit here and run at 25 bars a minute,
if I'm really focused.
If you lose concentration or you don't apply
the right amount of pressure, bars are gonna break,
paper's gonna fly everywhere.
- All right, face-down or maple down.
- [Nate] Face down.
- [Dan] Hey, it's working.
- [Nate] You're doing it.
Uh-oh, uh-oh, you're gonna double stack it.
You gotta put pressure in there, there you go.
(Nate laughing)
Oh, oh, oh, stop it!
You ran a bar without paper!
You're not applying enough pressure.
- All right, hit start?
Oh my god, oh Jesus.
Okay. - Now you can see,
now you're going too fast.
You're getting fingerprints on the bars, Dan.
- Okay, I'm set,
I mean, where do you touch them?
- On the side.
But then that one's empty and you just broke one.
- [Dan] There's this one bar with no paper here.
- You had a piece of chocolate stuck in the trigger
so all the paper's just going constantly.
- I thought we were wrapping up.
- Did you notice any difference in sound
when your bars skipped?
'Cause you have to listen--
- That's a trick. - Trick, yeah right?
- That's such a trick question, did I notice.
Obviously not.
(Nate laughing)
You need to be gentle, you need to be doing
this totally separate task with this hand,
and you need to keep your eyes on it.
Like, there's a reason that you never see
a thing like this because it's...
- People that make machines like this are geniuses.
Like, it's so incredibly intricate
to do like, one very specific thing.
All right, so here's a bar that we wrapped.
It's a little off because--
- This is supposed to be our touching final.
- Yeah, so this is our, this is what we did today.
We made these, this Maple & Nibs chocolate bar.
Yeah, that snap.
And that starts from a fruit. (chuckles)
- Yeah.
I dunno, my head always gets so warped
at the end of these things, but I'm just like,
this is a full meal, you feel the experience, the texture,
the war that goes into it.
- Yeah. - It tastes so much more
than the different steps.
- Steps, right, yeah.
- It's just like the whole story comes through.
Like always, you know, I have such a new appreciation
for chocolate, you know, and such the schlep, right?
- Right, all the hands that go in to making something.
Like, this is not just a product, it's a lot of work
from people from all kinds of different parts
of the world that come together to make one chocolate bar
and being able to tell that story, that like,
these are real people that are like,
that have chosen to do this, like, as their life's work.
Like, that's really cool.
All right, thanks a lot, Dan.
- You wanna hear a joke?
- Yeah.
- [Dan] What's the chocolate maker's favorite yoga pose?
- I don't know.
- Cat cow.
- No.
- I told you that earlier.
- That's bad.
(soft music)