• Flavor Wheel
• How to Pair Chocolate
• How Chocolate is Made
• How To Taste Chocolate
• Press and Reviews
• The Story of 1.0
• The Story of 1.0 design
• What happens to Beta?
• A Year in Beta Slideshow
• Glossary

 

Press

2010.02.12

Chefs Collaborative TCHO Member Spotlight

There’s been a renewed interest amongst entrepreneurs in the “bean-to-bar” business model. TCHO is one of three Chefs Collaborative members that is working with raw cacoa beans and producing high-quality chocolate. Tell us about the process and how it makes your product unique. more

Chefs Collaborative, http://chefscollaborative.org/

2010.02.12

Want!: TCHO Valentine’s Chocolates by Max Kisman

Well, if you can over-intellectualize chocolate, I guess you can over-intellectualize anything. San Francisco-based chocolate producer TCHO sometimes seems to be selling ideas over your standard candy (they have a list of their "Operating Heuristics" on their website), but they do have beautiful packaging.

This Valentine's Day they've partnered with Dutch designer Max Kisman to create bold, colorful package designs for TCHO chocolate bars featuring vibrant oranges, purples, and pinks, iconographic imagery, and of course, great typography. And some of them are a bit... saucy.

Now this is my type of Valentine's treat! more

Just My Type, http://just-my-type.typepad.com

2010.02.01

TCHO

Technology meets the sweet stuff at San Francisco’s Tcho, founded by a former NASA technologist and a chocolatier, with a cofounder of Wired magazine as its CEO. The company uses beta testers to perfect four dark blends (Chocolaty, Nutty, Fruity, and Citrus) while temperature probes help monitor climate in South America to ensure their cocoa beans mature properly. more

Travel + Leisure, http://www.travelandleisure.com

2010.01.30

The Chocolate Wars

How does it taste? It is quite good, and it grows on me. There’s a fruity, bitter, dark chocolate bite that gives way to a milky, almost malt-ball aftertaste. The lingering taste in my mouth far surpasses the first bite. After the chocolate breaks down in your mouth, you get this taste vaguely reminiscent of brownies—the chocolate, yes, but that almost fudge or cake-like quality brownies can have.

Where the trend in boutique chocolate seemed to slamming crap into our chocolate a la Vosges (bacon and cheese in your chocolate, anyone?), TCHO is about a fetish for purity; no hiding the chocolate with flavors or nuts. Just really high quality, fair-trade chocolate. more

The Snack Basket, http://www.thesnackbasket.com/

2010.01.18

Chocolate company brings high-tech factory to remote cocoa farms

TCHO, a San Fransisco-based chocolate company, gets its cocoa beans from farmers in Peru, Ghana, and other countries. Although many of the families there have been growing cocoa beans for generations, some have never actually tasted chocolate, much less the products made from their own crops. Aside from not being able to enjoy the fruits of their own labor, they have no way to directly understand the relationship between their growing techniques and the final product.

TCHO has solved the problem by bringing the factory to the farm. Using what co-founder Louis Rossetto calls "appropriate technology," the company sets up "flavor labs" on farms in the developing world using about $8,000 worth of equipment consisting of a Macintosh computer, an off-the-shelf-grinder, a roaster that uses a hair dryer as a heat source, and other equipment that enables farmers and technicians to turn raw beans into chocolate. That way the farmers can get a better sense of what their product will taste like to consumers. That process, according to Rossetto, helps the farmer know which beans to pick and how best to process them. more

CNET, http://news.cnet.com

2010.01.16

The science of chocolate

I’ve been involved with TCHO, choco­late mak­ers in San Fran­cisco, as a designer and an investor, for a few years now. Susanna Dulkinys, my wife and busi­ness part­ner, has won sev­eral prizes for her work on the TCHO brand and pack­ag­ing. We have been inter­viewed about the design aspects, shown the project at con­fer­ences and talked to other clients about it. The story of how this amaz­ing choco­late is actu­ally made and why it’s dif­fer­ent from other choco­lates is told in a fea­ture in WIRED magazine’s UK edi­tion. As it hap­pens, Louis Ros­setto, CEO of TCHO, was co-founder of WIRED way back in the early 90s.
more

SpiekerBlog, http://spiekermann.com

2010.01.15

Hightech chocolate saves the planet

Founded by a a NASA space shuttle technologist and the co-founders of Wired magazine this is chocolate 2.0. Meet TCHO.

Using technology & science TCHO gets to unique flavors locked inside cacao beans from all over the world. They speak of these refined flavors as a sommelier would about the fine points of vintage wines. And the goodness does not stop there.

TCHO’s social mission is the next step beyond Fair Trade – helping farmers by transferring knowledge of how to grow and ferment better beans so they can escape commodity production to become premium producers. NO SLAVERY is part of TCHO's mission to make a better world. How cool is that?

When I find something this amazingly good, I must do a public service and share. Be warned one taste and you may be hooked. But think of it as a small & delicious way to do your part for goodness. more

Ignited, http://www.ignitedusa.com

2010.01.11

Cradle of Chocolate: Back to San Francisco

Tcho: If Brad Kintzer (the botanist-bean sourcer-chocolate maker who joined Tcho when Scharffen Berger decamped for Ohio) is telling you how to make chocolate, your chocolate's going to be good sometime soon. Customers and critics (myself included) have been hard on the four-year-old company for its aggressive techno-marketing before the product is really ready to go public, but Brad introduced me to co-founder Louis Rossetto (who curiously sampled some beans I'd brought back from Guatemala) and a host of other buyers, fondeurs, and rain makers who seem to be doing in earnest exactly what they announce themselves to be doing: taking advantage of technology to communicate with growers and customers as part of a process to reevaluate and improve the whole chocolate-making system. more

Chocolate in Context, http://chocolateincontext.blogspot.com

2010.01.01

Raising the Bar

I’VE MADE SERIOUS SACRIFICES for a free box of chocolate (don’t ask). But in this case, all that’s required is my opinion of the product. The goods—two bars wrapped in silver foil—arrive via FedEx directly from the chocolatier, a tiny San Francisco outfit called TCHO. I break off a piece of Sample A and let it melt on my tongue.

It has a hint of peach and bright currant notes. Then I log onto TCHO’s website and open a confidential survey. Question number one: “Please rate the sweetness.” I enter three out of five, which means just right. After several more questions, I move on to Sample B. Wow—way too sweet. I mark it a five.

It turns out the two chocolates are all but identical. They are made from the same Peruvian beans, with the same amount of sugar. The only diff erence is a touch of vanilla. “A minor tweak can have a huge effect on flavor,” says Timothy Childs, TCHO’s cofounder and chief chocolate officer. “If the majority of the people say they like the one with vanilla, the next iteration will have vanilla. Then we’ll send out more and dial in the exact amount of vanilla until it’s perfect.”

Modern food manufacturers have long used surveys and focus groups— not to mention the blunt edge of industrial science—to figure out what people like. How else would we have ended up with Combos or Lunchables? But it’s rare indeed for a boutique chocolatemaker like TCHO (pronounced cho) to employ the same principles of science and polling. more

United Hemisphere, http://www.hemispheresmagazine.com

2010.01.01

TCHO Chocolate

The last time I was in LA, George Ruiz (my agent) was telling me about a “techie chocolate” company called Tcho (tech chocolate), and he sent me some samples for Christmas. Being a geek, I was of course intrigued at how chocolate creation could be turned into something geeks would care about. Here’s a look:

It’s entirely different than what Americans are used to, so if you’re up for supporting them and giving it a try, you can order some from Tcho.com. Enjoy! more

The blog of Cali Lewis, http://calilewis.me

2010.01.01

Taste: The Final Frontier

TCHO, the company founded by former NASA engineer Timothy Childs, is bringing futuristic technology to an ancient process.

Only a small group of suppliers can provide the components Timothy Childs needs for his work. Weather-monitoring stations transmit data back to him at his headquarters, and a slight increase in temperature will send teams scrambling to compensate for the change. Cameras and infrared sensors monitor crucial chemical changes. His machines break down polyphenol molecules, creating new compounds. Another process creates the final form: a delicate triple-packed polymorphic triglyceride crystalline structure that lets Childs know his mission succeeded. The result of all this work? Chocolate.

People began enjoying cacao as early as 1100 BC, but it wasn’t until the Industrial Revolution that chocolate in its modern form became possible. The way Childs sees it, today’s chocolate is as complicated as rocket science. And he should know. A former software developer for NASA’s space shuttle program, he is the co-founder of TCHO, one of just a dozen US companies that produces chocolate (Hershey and Nestlé are among its fellow manufacturers). Many more companies—like Godiva, for example—are actually chocolatiers and confectioners that sell chocolate products, but don’t make their own. more

go AirTran Magazine, http://www.airtranmagazine.com

2009.12.23

Mmmm, Algorithmic Guilloche Patterns!

From the TCHO Chocolate website, a tasty example of designer bafflegab:

A TCHO Chocolate bar, with its algorithmic guilloche patterns, looks like a modern form of currency. “Modern” was always part of the brand brief — no faux traditionalism, but resolutely forward-looking for a new generation of chocolate enthusiasts.

So the TCHO brand language is deeper. Color, pattern, shape, the TCHO Flavor Wheel, and typography all serve to distinguish the TCHO visual brand. more

Fritinancy, http://nancyfriedman.typepad.com

2009.12.22

WOW: TCHO

There’s chocolate and there’s chocolate. While most of us will buy our chocolate in the supermarket, conaisseurs will get their fix at a local homemade chocolate juweler, or buy from high-end brands like Valrhona. What all of these have in common though, is that they’re sold in bars, and in varieties like, milk, dark, or white.

Enter TCHO.

At first sight, they’ve taken the common concept of chocolate and turned it on its head. TCHO comes in pots of daily doses, like pills, and it’s all black chocolate, but with different tastes according to the beans used. Much like coffee. Seems like a pretty good idea to me.

But there’s more: the company was founded by silicon valley techies and controls everything from sourcing to production to marketing of the product. To quote their website: “TCHO is a new kind of chocolate company for a new generation of chocolate enthusiasts.” more

Klatergoud, http://www.klatergoud.com

2009.12.21

TCHO: The chocolate scientists

It’s 4am, and in a silent warehouse on San Francisco’s dockside a light goes on and a wall-mounted webcam casts its eye around a cluttered room.

To the right there’s a desk with a PC, files And documents. On the far wall, translucent plastic Tupperware boxes are stacked on a shelf, each sporting a short alpha-numeric code. But the camera stops on a row of food mixers, softly whirring away and fed from above by shiny silver ducting.

There's a pause and a minute change in the room’s ambient hum as a motor is slowed. Then the light goes off and the warehouse is bathed again in the soft blue of a pre-dawn Bay Area night.

Across the city, in his bay-view house on the Filbert Steps, Timothy Childs clicks off his iPhone, returns it to the bedside table and goes back to sleep. In the morning he’ll be able to see if his recipe tweak has worked. Welcome to TCHO, the world’s most technology-obsessed chocolate company.

TCHO was set up in 2005 by Childs and Louis Rossetto, founding editor of US Wired and something of a post-digital-revolution guru. The pair never expected to find themselves making chocolate. Childs had been developing virtual-reality systems and Rossetto, since leaving Wired in 1998 on its purchase by Condé Nast, had been investing in high-tech start-ups. But a chance conversation led them to the industry’s as yet unfulfilled quest for the perfect dark chocolate. The challenge, which spanned agriculture, genetics, chemistry, biology and logistics, proved irresistible. Along the way they would reinvent ancient supply chains, use the internet to improve the lives of Peruvian hill farmers and, if Rossetto is to be believed, help usher in a new age of social responsibility. more

Wired.co.uk , http://www.wired.co.uk

2009.12.21

12 Days of Local Christmas: TCHO Chocolate

Ooh, lucky us! We were walking down the waterfront, between Pier 39 and the Ferry Building, and practically stumbled into TCHO Chocolates at Pier 17 in San Francisco. What a lucky find!

I had first seen their chocolates at Calafia in Town & Country, Palo Alto. They have a cute gift box supplying the recipient with a TCHO-a-day for 14, 30, 60, or 90 days. Very cute, I thought.

But, at the Pier 17 location, I was finally able to taste their chocolates, and boy, what a revelation. Instead of obsessing over cacao percentages, TCHO has set out to create flavor-driven chocolates. My family had a great time trying the four different blends – Citrusy, Fruity, Chocolatey, and Nutty. Fortunately, each of us had a favorite, which means we can share a sample box very easily.

For the holidays, TCHO has so many gift options, I don’t really know where to start. My sister and dad are receiving the 8-bar tester, so they can figure out their favorite flavors. My dad is also receiving chocolate drenched macadamia nuts, in honor of our vacation this summer. Personally, I hope Santa will tuck a tin of hot and cold drinking chocolate in my stocking!

In addition to their Pier 17 flagship store, you can also find the chocolates at Calafia Restaurant in Palo Alto, Draeger’s in Menlo Park and Los Altos, Bianchini’s in Portola Valley, and a host of places in San Francisco and cities north. Check here for a complete list. And if you prefer, you can order online, which actually looks better to me, since they offer loads more options! more

Kitchen Gadget Girl Cooks, http://networkedblogs.com

2009.12.18

Calling All TCHOcolate Lovers

Who needs Willy Wonka when you have TCHO? Not sure a company can get more San Francisco than this chocolate maker, which melds organic chocolate of the highest order with technology and seriously do-good business practices and social responsibility. Plus, not only does the company have a cool chocolate factory on the Embarcadero (tours to begin in January), it has an adjacent TCHO Beta Factory Store.

It's the perfect place to nibble on delectable chocolates and try new varietals, sip on a cup o' Blue Bottle and pick up souvenirs/gifts for the chocoholics in your life. TCHO dark chocolate is all about flavor. Hunting the planet for beans that will produce specific flavors (nutty, fruity, citrus, earthy, floral and chocolatey) is the easiest way to explain the brand's MO. But, then again, the best way to figure out TCHO is to TCHEW! more

tripvine, http://www.theinsider.tripvine.com

2009.12.10

in stores: the flavor wheel

A quick update for all you chocolate lovers (and TCHO fans) who are looking for flavor rather than percentage (70% cacao) since we posted this & that...
TCHO Citrus, Nutty, Fruity & Chocolatey packaged chocolates are available at your favorite specialty stores (Murray's Cheese, Uwajimaya, Blue Bottle Coffee & many more) and restaurants (Chez Panisse & more).
We've given the flavor-driven chocolate a spin and not only is their "intelligent experiment" delicious, but our friends who dislike dark chocolate (preferring milk or white chocolate-- the later of which is not really chocolate at all) we're totally into the fruity & citrus bars. The flavor wheel, really makes it easier for anyone to discover chocolate you'll love. more

In Your Head, http://trendscaping.inyourhead.com

2009.12.03

TCHO ‘Fruity’ Dark Chocolate

When I visited the Chocolate Unwrapped show with Dom a while back, I picked up TCHO this bar, as well as the ‘Citrus‘ and ‘Nutty‘ bars. As my previous review states, both myself and my friend who tried the bars with me were not particularly taken by it. The Fruity bar fared somewhat better for several reasons.

But first, some background about this bar. The chocolate beans chosen for this bar apparently come from a remote savannah in Peru. Like the “Citrus” bar, the “Fruity” bar relies solely on the flavourful overtones of the particular type of bean used, rather than the addition of any form of actual fruit. more

Chocablog, http://www.chocablog.com

2009.12.03

One a Day Dark Chocolate

Screw multi-vitamins, how about dark chocolate? Yes, I said dark chocolate. No, I'm not kidding. It seems that medical studies have proven that dark chocolate can energize and help you keep your focus throughout the day. It even gives you a wide range of health benefits relating to a number of things including cognition, immunity, mood elevation – even tooth decay, if you can believe it. TCHO, the obsessive chocolate company out of San Francisco, set out to get educated about the mysteries of dark chocolate and had these perfect TCHO-A-DAY supply packages done up for your daily indulgences. more

The Lime and Coconut, http://thelimethecoconut.blogspot.com

2009.12.03

Spoil ‘em all!

Act like Santa, spend like Scrooge: Spread the cheer with spectacular little presents for $30 or less.
$20 Make a chocoholic's month by giving her a 30-day supply of the healthy dark stuff. www.Tcho.com more

Self Magazine, http://www.self.com

2009.11.30

Deep Chocolate Brownies

Recently I received some samples of TCHO baking chocolate to try. If you're not familiar with TCHO, they're an artisan, bean-to-bar chocolate company based in San Francisco. I'd tried their chocolate bars in the past, and found them very good, but far too pricey to do any baking with...it's the kind of chocolate you savor square by teensy tiny square.
So I was excited to hear that they now have a baking line of 66% and 68% baking "drops," designed with cooking and candy making in mind. I am here to tell you, though, that the chocolate is also pretty amazing eaten straight from the bag. (All in the name of research, you understand.) The 68% conventional blend was my favorite--smooth, rich, with a deep chocolate taste. The 66% organic blend was very fruity and bright, and I can't wait to try it in truffles this Christmas. I think it'll be delicious with citrus flavors, or maybe paired with my new BFF, pistachios. But back to the chocolate!
more

Cake... Or Death, http://cake0rdeath.blogspot.com

2009.11.24

Bailey’s holiday fudge bites recipe

This holiday, I was introduced to baking drops good enough for professionals yet easy enough to use for the occasional home baker; TCHOPro Baking Drops. These organic drops contain 66% cacao.

Not only was I impressed with the San Francisco based company for their smooth and rich flavor in their products, but also the care they put into harvesting the cacao beans from selected growers in a way that keeps the final product from being bitter, a problem I have noticed in the past with chocolatiers that do not control every stage of the harvesting process. more

Examiner.com - Denver, http://www.examiner.com

2009.11.22

TCHO chocolate

The San Francisco chocolate maker TCHO has introduced TCHOPro Baking Drops, quarter-size dark chocolate discs of 66 to 68 percent chocolate. They're perfect for using in any recipe that calls for bittersweet and semisweet.

The flat discs are easy to work with, whether you need to chop or melt the chocolate. It's a professional product that's now available to home bakers.

We found the drops worked well in pastry chef Emily Luchetti's recipe for Deep Chocolate Brownies, available on the back of the package. The brownies came out with a soft, tender crumb, and very chocolate-y.

Read more: http://www.sfgate.com/cgi-bin/article.cgi?f=/c/a/2009/11/20/FDLE1AE3CR.DTL#ixzz0YTXyDBPZ more

SFGate, www.sfgate.com

2009.11.05

Prescription Tastings

Cocoa is grown and harvested to produce a wide-ranging variety of chocolate for our tasting delight. In each region, the earth, temperatures, rain, wind and sun play a critical role in producing a chocolate of a specific flavor and aromatic profile. In wine, this concept is called terroir. In chocolate it is now synonymous with TCHO.

Since all their chocolate is dark, TCHO’s thrown the concept of “percent cocoa” out the window. Instead, they categorize their chocolates according to the flavor profile they are able to draw out of each one. Fruity? Nutty? Chocolatey? Despite the very unique tastes, it’s all just darn good chocolate.

Yet another reason to treat a TCHO chocolate like a glass of wine? TCHO suggests that a TCHO-a-day will keep the doctor away, and do a whole lot more. While they acknowledge the urge to exceed their recommended dosage will be ever-present, we know from experience that the TCHO-a-day pack is a delicious, healthy jar to have around.

Increase your knowledge of terroir, and now terroir-driven chocolate, with a TCHO 30-day pack. It’s the perfect stocking stuffer or the mid-afternoon pick me up.

Buy your TCHO 30-day pack at www.tcho.com more

The Daily Sip, www.bottlenotes.com

2009.09.16

Industry Innovator Award: Timothy Childs of TCHO

For serial innovator Childs, there’s not much of a leap between bytes of information and bites of chocolate. A former machine-vision-system developer for NASA’s space shuttle program, Childs founded several Internet and computer graphics start-ups before launching Cabaret Chocolates—a pioneer of single-origin chocolate distribution in mass markets—in 2004. Two years later, he started TCHO to further his vision of how Americans should buy chocolate. The company recently opened a manufacturing facility near Fisherman’s Wharf in San Francisco, but Childs’ plans extend beyond that. One of his new innovations is TCHOSource, a fair-trade program that builds Flavor Labs where cacao-bean producers around the world can make their own chocolate. more

Natural Foods Merchandiser, http://naturalfoodsmerchandiser.com

2009.08.29

My run in with the mafia

Normally, I would be worried if a mafia member drove me to a pier... I mean, that seems like a good way to end up swimming with the fishes. But luckily, the Sweet Mafia is just that: sweet. It is comprised of women who are confectioners and own small businesses in or around San Francisco, Oakland, and Berkeley. more

Brownies for Dinner, http://browniesfordinner.com

2009.08.25

Wine & Chocolate

We bring together two San Francisco originals – TCHO Chocolate and Foggy Bridge Wine – to explore this legendary pairing on a deeper level and uncover the similarities in the seemingly diverse worlds of grapes and cacao.

The story of TCHO is a story of reimagining what it means to taste chocolate. The wine conventions currently used, like varietal, origin, and percentage, can be misleading, just as they can be in wine — the same varietal, for example, grown on the same farm in the same growing region can taste radically different depending on the season, how the beans were fermented, or how they were dried. TCHO proposes a better way to discover your chocolate — namely the flavors that are inherent in cacao. They have developed a flavor wheel in an attempt to make chocolate that is the purest expression of the flavors inherent in cacao.

Foggy Bridge is working to bring the winery experience back to San Francisco as it existed prior to the 1906 earthquake that chased many vintners from their urban wineries after barrels of wine spilled into the streets. We also seek out the best grapes from the finest growing regions for our wines and hope someday to crush, ferment and age them in San Francisco, just as TCHO is producing their finished chocolate at their location on Pier 17.

For our upcoming seminar we have brought together four Foggy Bridge wines as well as a couple of additional surprise wines, and four TCHO chocolates for you to taste and decide which combinations you think pair best together. This will be an exploration – there are no correct answers – rather an opportunity to learn about two of life’s pleasures. You may be surprised to learn that chocolate can also pair with white wines and that what you expect will go well together may not be a pleasing as the unexpected! more

Foggy Bridge , http://www.foggybridgewinery.com/

2009.08.20

The sweet science of chocolate

Ahhhh, Chocolate. For some connoisseurs it's a delightfully sweet treat. for others, a sinful obsession.

Either way, fanatical devotion is not a recent phenomenon. Chocolate's universal appeal dates back 2000 years to the ancient civilizations of the Maya and Aztec people. Both cultures believed that cacao, the tropical plant that produces chocolate, was imbued with divine powers And used it as a religious offering to the gods. Cacao seeds were also used as currency, as a general health tonic, and even as an aphrodisiac. But that was a long time ago. Nowadays we recognize chocolate only for its guilty pleasure. Or do we?

...And finding and perfecting that taste is Timothy Childs' mission. he's the chief chocolate officer at San Francisco's designer chocolatier TCHO. As a former software developer on the space shuttle orbiter program, Childs is just the guy to meld silicon valley know-how with willy wonka whimsy.

Chocolate's an incredibly complex system. It goes beyond just hard science. You also have to integrate art and a lot of intuition, too, at the same time. So it's a really interesting combo.

Any delicious bar of fine chocolate begins with the cacao tree. A mature tree produces about 20 fruits, or pods, each of which contains about 40 beans. about 500 beans are needed to produce a pound of chocolate so an average tree produces about two pounds a year. After the beans are extracted from the pods, they need to be fermented....Childs correlates this weather with the fermentation data to track how each batch of beans was grown and processes. Then, when he gets a superior batch of beans from his growers, he knows exactly what conditions produced it.

Over 90% of the people that actually grow beans, which are mostly small family farms, they've never tried chocolate or cocoa mass from their beans before. And you kind of go huh? So there's no feedback loop there. We're educating our partners about coming up with common language of sensory analysis. Basically, what does it taste like as well as methodologies on how to measure how well it's fermented.

When they arrive, Childs does a cut test of his beans that helps him grade the cacao by size, shape, color and texture - all indicators of the quality of the fermentation.

...Every step of the way, TCHO works to change the game with their silicon-valley approach to "chocolate science." their first batch of chocolate in 2007 was even dubbed a "beta" release. We do a beta and we get friends and family feedback. We slightly tweak the formulations based upon that feedback. And then once we're done with that, we ship 1.0.

So what will chocolate 2.0 look like? For starters, TCHO is in the process of creating a virtual chocolate tour for curious consumers. also being perfected is ‘satchel,' a database that stores TCHO's research information. more

Media Newswire, http://media-newswire.com/

2009.08.17

Cocoa 2.0: Timothy Childs stops at nothing for better chocolate

Meet Timothy Childs, equal parts candy man and mad scientist.

His four-year-old company, TCHO, was among the pioneers of the quality-seeking "bean-to-bar" movement (a label he shirks for his own, "pod-to-palate").

But what's separated TCHO from the rest of the bunch is the former NASA technologist's penchant for making hi-tech gadgetry out of everyday appliances. In one fit of innovation, he managed to repurpose a Ronco turkey rotisserie oven into a cacao roaster.

But no amount of whiz-bang equipment could make up for mediocre beans. Turning his attention to his farmers, Childs (pictured) realized that most had never tasted chocolate made from their own cacao.

As a result, Childs created TCHOSource, a program that shores the gap between source and product. He outfits cacao farmers with Flavor Labs--democratized, mini chocolate factories full of jerry-rigged machinery (an Indian dal grinder/space heater mashup is used to grind cacao) that allow them to test and grade their cacao's flavor profile at each stage of production.

These elite beans then go into TCHO's four types of dark chocolate bars, each variety identified by its dominant characteristic (citrusy, fruity, nutty or chocolaty) rather than its cacao percentage. "In the end, it comes down to making the best possible tasting experience," Childs says.

And it only takes one bite of a TCHO bar to know that his obsession is worth the effort. more

Tasting Table, http://tastingtable.com/

2009.08.17

Your Daily Chocolate Allowance

TCHO-A-DAY is a cheeky twist on medicine: jars of 30, 60, or 90 potent mini-bars from San Francisco chocolatier TCHO. They're great for handing out to attendees or as a gift to chocolate-lovers who need to limit their intake. Be careful, though: Chances of overdosing are high. The packs start at $20. more

M&C Magazine , http://mcmag.com/

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