How Honest Chocolate is Made | Honest Chocolate

Sourcing our cocoa

All our cacao beans are single origin and ethically sourced through direct trade with Kokoa Kamili in the Kilombero Valley of Tanzania. Here the highest quality certified organic cacao beans are grown by farmers big and small. Find out how cacao is grown and harvested by clicking through the slides:

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Cacao grows 20 degrees on either side of the equator. The Theobroma cacao tree is completely unique in that the fruit, or pod, grows directly off the trunk or older branches. Each pod takes around 5 months to mature and is commonly harvested twice a year.
The pods grow from small flowers. Whilst around 6000 blossoms can be pollinated a year, only one percent of these are likely to produce mature cacao pods.
There can be 20 to 50 cacao beans per pod, which are encased in a sweet white pulp. Once harvested, the pods are cut open to remove the beans and pulp for fermentation.
The beans and pulp are laid down under banana leaves for 2 to 8 days (depending on the varietal) in order to ferment. The heightened temperature of fermentation breaks down the pulp and develops the flavour of the bean.
After fermentation, the beans are laid out under the sun to dry for about 2 weeks. This drives out the moisture in the beans and halts fermentation.

Our Simple Ingredients

Only two simple ingredients go into making Honest Chocolate: Organic Tanzanian Cacao and a Sweetener

*Depending on the slab, this will either be Unrefined Cane Sugar or Coconut Blossom Sugar.

How our chocolate is made

All our chocolate is made by hand using old school methods in a small production kitchen in Woodstock, Cape Town. We roast, winnow, and grind the beans we receive from Tanzania ourselves, and hand temper the chocolate on a granite slab.

Every month we host a chocolate making workshop at our Woodstock Exchange Production Kitchen.

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Sourcing our cocoa

Cacao grows 20 degrees on either side of the equator. The Theobroma cacao tree is completely unique in that the fruit, or pod, grows directly off the trunk or older branches. Each pod takes around 5 months to mature and is commonly harvested twice a year.

The pods grow from small flowers. Whilst around 6000 blossoms can be pollinated a year, only one percent of these are likely to produce mature cacao pods.

There can be 20 to 50 cacao beans per pod, which are encased in a sweet white pulp. Once harvested, the pods are cut open to remove the beans and pulp for fermentation.

The beans and pulp are laid down under banana leaves for 2 to 8 days (depending on the varietal) in order to ferment. The heightened temperature of fermentation breaks down the pulp and develops the flavour of the bean.

After fermentation, the beans are laid out under the sun to dry for about 2 weeks. This drives out the moisture in the beans and halts fermentation.

Our Simple Ingredients

How our chocolate is made