Mike Longman, founder of Chocolarder near Penryn, Cornwall, has the palate of a veteran chocolatier, despite being just 30 years old. He also has the untidy workshop of a mad professor: the walls are stained with liquid cocoa and all manner of machines lurk in the shadows. It’s less Willy Wonka, more Mad Max.
“I had to work out all the tech for the machines myself,” Longman says, leaning against his ‘grinder’, an industrial fatbread maker he imported from India. He had to ft a new motor so it could grind for four days straight – the time required to reduce the cocoa nibs (shelled cocoa beans) and raw demerara sugar to 25 microns – about an eighth of a human hair – the optimum particle size for the ultimate bar of chocolate.
Learning the dark arts
Making quality chocolate is part chemistry and part alchemy – and if you’re sourcing raw materials from the farmers themselves, you’ll also need skilful diplomacy. Longman had to learn the hard way about chocolate making by finding out what worked (and what didn’t) every step of the way until he’d perfected his method.