The Baron’s good friend Gabriel makes our chocolate bars, with specially sourced, single origin cocoa and our very own roasted coffee, in his Yallingup chocolate factory, just down the road from our Margaret River KoffeeWorks.

What many don’t know is that there are only three places in Australia where chocolate is handmade and Gabriel Chocolate is one of them.

These bars are a magical blend of coffee and chocolate you will find nowhere else.

Single Origin Chocolates

Like coffee, cocoa grows in the tropical regions of the world and like coffee where it is grown, how it is harvested and processed, creates distinctly different taste profiles.
The chocolate used in the latte bar comes from Ghana and is sweeter, milkier, nuttier and less dominating allowing the coffee flavours to dance from every mouthful.
Ghana’s Forestero type bean is now the mainstay of the world’s chocolate production due primarily to the soothing nature of the chocolate grown in this region.

On the other hand the cocoa for our espresso bar comes from Peru, a country famous for its liqueur like chocolate. The Criolle bean found predominantly in the Peruvian highlands produces a fruity, wine like and slightly bitter chocolate. Gabriel’s Peruvian dark chocolate is the ideal companion for our bold espresso blend.

How Gabriel makes our Chokolat

Making chocolate is as much an art as it is science.

Cleaning

Gabriel starts by hand checking all of the beans. The cocoa beans are then passed through a machine that removes dried cocoa pulp, pieces of wood, jute fibres, dust and other extraneous material.

Roasting

After carefully weighing the beans they now are roasted at 121°c from between 30 minutes and two hours. As the moisture content in the beans drops, the colour changes to the characteristic rich chocolate brown and the aroma of chocolate rises
from the roaster.

Winnowing

As the beans cool the thin shells become brittle. A winnowing machine cracks and removes the shells leaving the meat or what are called ‘nibs’. Fans blow away the lighter shell and dust from the nibs.

Milling

The nibs are refined in a grinding process that reduces the meat to a paste. The heat produced by the milling causes the cocoa butter to melt and become a liquid called ‘chocolate liquor’.
It is at this point other ingredients such as milk and sugar are added to sweeten and reduce the bitterness. This is also the time for coffee to be added at exactly the right amounts.

Conching

This is the last and most important part of the refining process and this is what separates the ordinary from the premium chocolates. Conches are large paddles that plough through the chocolate paste sometimes for as long as several days. The agitation, the aeration and the temperature are all fastidiously controlled until the flavours and the consistency are exactly where they need to be.

Tempering

The speed at which the chocolate is cooled effects not only the taste, but it also gives chocolate that silky sheen and crisp snap when it is broken. At just the right moment the decision is made to pour the chocolate into the moulds where the final cooling and setting takes place.