Addison Stoddard: "Welcome back to another USU Extension Education highlight. My name is Addison Stoddard, and joining me today is Andrea LeDuc, production manager for Aggie Chocolate Factory. Thanks so much for joining me, Andrea."
Andrea LeDuc: "Yes, of course."
Addison: "Today we want to talk a little bit about the different kinds of chocolate, so could you tell me about some of them and what the key differences are?"
Andrea: "Okay, there's a couple of directions we can go when you talk about different kinds of chocolate. We all know dark chocolate, milk chocolate, white chocolate, and the new ruby chocolate, which has been on the market since 2017. Those all have different standards of identity that they need to fit in. And actually, let me tell you, dark chocolate doesn't actually have standards of identity.
Dark chocolate can be used in anything, usually referring to chocolate that doesn't have milk, but if you have an allergy, you need to make sure you check because it can still be labeled dark chocolate and contain milk. Our standards are milk chocolate, bittersweet, semisweet, and white chocolate, and those all have certain standards, but there is a whole other direction we can go with varieties of chocolate.
We at Aggie Chocolate Factory, make single origin bean to bar chocolate, and we get chocolate from different farms—I'm sorry, we get cocoa beans from different farms—and make those into chocolate bars. There are three main varieties in a horticultural stance, where we have trinitario, which is a cross of two other heritage varieties, which are criollo and forastero. Criollo is considered the holy variety, and forastero is usually regarded as a wild variety. Then they crossbred those to make trinitario, and that's where we get most of our cocoa beans is a trinitario variety."
Addison: "So, when you're talking about all these different kinds of chocolate, how do different regions play into different chocolates? I assume that there are different, you know, types of chocolates and different things that come from different parts of the world. So how does that affect chocolate here in the United States or Aggie Chocolate Factory?"
Andrea: "Yeah, if you're a gigantic company, you want your chocolate to taste the same every time you make it. So you'll gather cocoa beans from different places at different levels to make your chocolate taste the same over and over and over again. That's a great thing. We love being able to bite into a Hershey bar and it tastes exactly like it did when we were a child. But you can also get beans from different places that will have completely different flavor profiles.
So for example, we have a bar from Guatemala that's super duper tangy, and then we have a bar from Ghana that's more mellow and more familiar. We'll have a bar from Ecuador, now, Ecuador is pretty awesome; it wins the most awards. So, Ecuador is one of my favorite bars, and that's got those great cocoa notes and a very traditional, familiar chocolate flavor, but it can even play into making cocoa powder. If you need a cocoa powder that has more red color in it, you get your beans from Cameroon because those beans for some reason have more red coloring when they're fermented.
So, it's something we're just beginning to scratch the surface of as an industry because the fine chocolate industry has only been around since the 70s. And so I think there's just great ways to expand and grow and learn all kinds of fun new things."
Addison: "Very cool. Do you guys have at the Aggie Chocolate Factory have specific connections with people in Ecuador or Guatemala that you always get cocoa beans from, Or does is it just kind of depend on the time of year, day, that kind of thing."
Andrea: "It really depends on when we need our beans, and I've been establishing different connections than the manager did before. So we have some connections with Belize; we have connections with purveyors who already have connections with their farmers; we even with this world wide web we have now, I've been able to talk to people in Africa who have small amounts of beans that are ecstatic to be able to share them with us here in the United States."
Addison: "That's great. That's cool that we have such a small place, but big in culture when it comes to the Aggie Chocolate Factory. Thank you so much for joining me today."
