September 28th 2013: Touring a Chocolate Factory in Somerville

This morning, my mom and I headed to the Wrentham Village Premium Outlets in the town of Wrentham to do some discount shopping for my baby niece.

After we were done shopping for the day, we decided to grab lunch at the Ruby Tuesday restaurant located within the outlet. My mom decided to get the Lobster Topped Tilapia (Cajun seasoned Tilapia in creamy three cheese sauce with bacon, tomato and succulent lobster),

while I got the Ribs and Bacon Wrapped Shrimp (half rack of baby back ribs, paired with bacon wrapped jumbo shrimp, both brushed with peach bourbon barbecue sauce). 

The dishes weren't too bad, though not amazing either, as can be expected of franchise restaurants.

From here, we headed to Somerville, where we were scheduled to attend a tour of a chocolate factory at Taza Chocolate. We were a little early, so we were able to walk around the small stall front for the manufacturing facility and sample some of the chocolate,

which is all dark chocolate, with interesting flavors like Cacao Puro, Orange and Cinnamon, Chipotle Chilli, Coffee and Salted Almond.

Soon after everyone arrived, the tour started, firstly with a description of the cacao plant, and that the fruit is harvested not based on color, but on size.

It was interesting to see how creamy the fruit itself is, and it is actually eaten as well.

For the chocolate making process, the fruit is fermented together with the beans in wooden boxes, after which the beans are allowed to dry at optimal conditions to prevent fungal growth while not drying out the beans too much. The dried beans are then packed and shipped over to the facility in Somerville, where the chocolate making starts.

The beans are first roasted, causing the shells

to detach from the nibs,

with the heavier nibs being separated from the lighter shells in the winnower by use of powered air.

The nibs themselves are edible, with the chocolate coated ones tasting much better of course.

The nibs are then ground by millstones (which is what makes the chocolate made here unique), to extract the cocoa butter, whereupon sugar is added, and the chocolate is either ground finer or left as it is to be poured into moulds and left under the right conditions to set and solidify.

The solidified chocolate is then sent for packaging in the packaging room,

where some of the chocolate is even hand packaged.

At the end of the tour, we were allowed to sample all the different flavors,

 of which I liked vanilla the best, only because it was the sweetest. We got that for free as part of the groupon for the tour.

Overall, learning how chocolate is made was a pretty enriching experience, and I'm glad I was able to bring my mom to see it as well.