Chocolate
LYRA
CHOCOLATE MAKING
Making chocolate is similar to building a house. Instructions are clear, it's your personal attitude that matters. We have decided to give chocolate enough time and make it with ease. The fewer ingredients, the more personal work we add, therefore we may name each step in chocolate making after one of us. That's what it's all about. To have real people behind chocolate. Our chocolate is handmade with Fino de Aroma cacao that has our careful treatment at each step of its processing, from harvesting to roasting and making cocoa mass. If we wish to change the taste, we can. Just right there, in the tree.
CHOCOLATE PROCESSING
At the very beginning, there are cocoa trees that require really careful treatment. Then, there are the local farmers in South America who we cooperate with. We talk with them, support them and provide them with special training. The farmers not only plant the cocoa beans they also process them, therefore our chocolate ingredients come from the same region as our chocolate. The ripe cocoa pods are cut open and the cocoa beans are scooped out. Here comes a 3-day fermentation, which is the most important stage in developing the right flavor of the chocolate. In any case, our close cooperation with the farmers has a direct impact on the quality of our chocolate, and we are able to tune it as we please. After fermentation, the next step is to dry the beans in the sun. Then they are either processed into the final cocoa mass or carefully packed into sacks and transported to us, to Ivanka pri Nitre.Now we are excited to unload the beans from a truck, a half - day work. Then the beans are roasted. We roast only as many beans as we necessary need to process. Next, the beans follow the step of winnowing, the shell is removed, leaving behind pure cocoa beans. They are ground with rollers, spreading irresistible smell all over the place, until they become a paste and goes into a hydraulic press. After this, cocoa butter is mixed with cocoa powder and some other ingredients in a special mixer. However, it is not enough for the chocolate to be specially smooth. It needs conching, which is grinding and refining chocolate in a large cylinder. It has a great impact on the final flavor of the chocolate.Next, the chocolate is tempered. First, chocolate melts at 50°C, then the temperature is lowered to 30°C and eventually raised again to form exactly the right kind of crystals. The final step is pouring melted chocolate into molds. It is agitated to remove any air bubbles and slowly cooled in a cooling tunnel, checked and removed from the molds. Now, the chocolate is ready to be wrapped and send to you. Take your time, and have a time of your life with our chocolate.
