From Bean to Bar
Chocolate Made from Scratch

What Does Bean-to-Bar Actually Mean?

Bean-to-bar chocolate means making chocolate starting from whole cocoa beans, carrying out every stage of production - cleaning, roasting, cracking, winnowing, grinding, refining, tempering and moulding - rather than beginning with couverture chocolate that has already been manufactured elsewhere. It is the difference between making food from its raw ingredient and working with a finished ingredient to create something new. Jamie Wake works in both disciplines, and at Chokoholic those two worlds sit side by side.

A chocolate maker creates chocolate from cocoa beans or other raw cocoa ingredients. A chocolatier uses finished chocolate - such as couverture - to create truffles, bonbons, filled chocolates and decorative products. Chokoholic's bean-to-bar work places Jamie firmly in the chocolate maker's discipline, requiring a different set of tools, techniques and patience. The reward of this approach is a bar that reflects every decision made along the way - from the beans chosen to the roast applied.

The Bean-to-Bar Process

Making chocolate from cocoa beans is a multi-stage process requiring patience at every step. Each stage has a direct effect on the flavour and texture of the finished bar.

Flavour, Origin and the Art of the Roast

The flavour of a bean-to-bar chocolate is shaped long before the bar reaches the mould. The cocoa bean carries its own natural character - fruity, floral, earthy, nutty - and the chocolate maker's task is to understand that character and coax it into the finished product. Origin is one factor; the choices made during production are another.

Roasting level interacts directly with bean character. A shorter, lighter roast may preserve brighter, more acidic notes - the fruit and floral qualities that sit closer to the surface of the raw bean. A longer, darker roast can deepen bitterness and bring out richer, more developed flavour, reducing some of that acidity in the process. There is no single correct answer; the skill lies in finding the balance that suits the particular bean.

Small differences in process - a few degrees of temperature, a few minutes of roasting, the duration of refining - can produce meaningfully different results in the finished bar. This sensitivity to small decisions is what makes small-batch bean-to-bar production genuinely interesting, and it is why each batch from Chokoholic had its own character. The bar was not just the recipe; it was the sum of every choice made along the way.

Small-Batch, Every Batch

Chokoholic's bean-to-bar chocolate is produced in small quantities - deliberately so. Small-batch production means that every stage can be watched, adjusted and refined without the compromises that come with scaling up. The tradeoff is time; the reward is control. There is no automated system to defer to, no large-scale process to trust; each batch is the direct result of the attention paid to it.

Patience is central to how this work is done. Refining chocolate cannot be rushed - the grinding process develops smoothness and flavour over time, and cutting it short shows in the finished bar. Tempering requires careful attention to temperature and timing, not guesswork. The willingness to repeat, adjust and experiment is not incidental to Chokoholic's approach; it is the approach. Not every batch os identical, and that variation is understood as part of the craft rather than a flaw.

Learning through doing, iterating batch by batch, is how the bean-to-bar process has been developed at Chokoholic. Jamie Wake's approach as a self-taught artisan chocolate maker means there is no fixed syllabus to follow - only the feedback of the chocolate itself, and the willingness to keep refining.

Bean-to-Bar Creations

Chokoholic's bean-to-bar bars are the product of a process begun from scratch - from bean to finished wrapper. The images below document finished bars, cocoa ingredients, in-process stages and wrapped products.

Explore More of Chokoholic's Work

Bean-to-bar is one side of Chokoholic's work. The business also creats handmade couverture products - truffles, bonbons, filled chocolates, Easter eggs and bespoke commissions - and the full story of Chokoholic and Jamie Wake is told on the Our Story page.