What is Bean-to-Bar?
Chocolate can be so much more than a sweet treat. Like craft coffee or wine, great chocolate begins with its raw ingredients - and with the people who grow them.
We work with carefully selected cacao from producers around the world, many of them small-scale farmers whose knowledge and techniques have been passed down through generations. Where the cacao is grown, the soil, the climate, the harvest and the way the beans are fermented and dried all shape the flavour of the finished chocolate.
That means every origin has its own character. Some are fruity and bright, others rich and nutty, with layers of flavour that develop as you taste them. No two harvests are exactly the same, and we believe that’s something to celebrate.
At Bullion, we make our chocolate from the cacao bean ourselves. We roast, crack, winnow, grind, refine and temper each batch, carefully developing the natural flavours of the cacao rather than trying to make every bar taste the same.
It’s a slower, more involved way of making chocolate. But for us, that’s the point. We want you to be able to taste where the cacao came from, appreciate the work that went into growing it, and experience the difference that careful craft can make.
This is our bean-to-bar process.
Sorting & Roasting
When sacks of beans arrive at our factory in Sheffield, the first step is to sort through them by hand. We’re looking for anything that doesn’t belong in a chocolate bar- string, stones, and broken beans to name a few. This is a painstaking process, but it guarantees that the beans going into our bars are top quality. Once we’ve sorted our beans, we’re ready to roast. Our roast times and temperatures are tailored to each individual origin, allowing us to bring the best possible flavour notes out of the beans, which are showcased in the bars that we produce.
Breaking and Winnowing
When our beans come out of the oven, we cool them down before we break them. This step cracks the beans open so we can get to the part we really want – the nibs. After this, the winnowing process uses a vacuum to remove the husk. This part of the bean wouldn’t taste so good in our bars, but it doesn’t go to waste – it is a key ingredient in our candles, helping to produce their delicious chocolatey smell.
Grinding and Conching
The cacao is now ready to be transformed into chocolate. We load small batches of nibs into our stone melangeur, ready for grinding. First, the nibs are ground down until they have a silky-smooth consistency, called the cocoa liquor. At this stage we can start adding the cocoa butter and cane sugar, before leaving them to grind together for up to 72 hours.
Tempering and Moulding
The grinding process produces blocks of chocolate ready for tempering. At this stage, the chocolate has a crumbly consistency and can be whitish in colour. The tempering process involves heating and cooling the chocolate to change its structure, before it is poured into our iconic bullion bar moulds. This results in smooth, shiny chocolate bars with a good snap.
Wrapping and Delivery
We carefully foil and wrap all of our bars by hand, ready to stacked in your local supplier or delivered to straight to your door when ordering online.
We believe that meticulous attention to detail and a true craft approach make a difference - and we hope you can taste it in the finished chocolate.