BEAN GUILLOTINE & OUR TRIP TO SEE MAROU IN VIETNAM

20 juil.

From a calm, soothing Sarawakian atmosphere to one of the busiest places WE'VE been to: HO CHI MINH CITY, VIETNAM.

We had a few days of traversing through thick herds of scooters, haggling at the famous Ben Thanh Market and eating patisserie.

However! Our main objective coming here was to visit one of our favourite chocolate makers, Marou - Faiseurs de Chocolat. And we couldn't wait, we had no chocolate for over 2 months in Malaysia - just nibs!

If you haven't tried their chocolate, it’s a definite must! They're two great people and founders of delicious bean-to-bar chocolate.

On the left: Klervi Mandon from Delikats. To the right: Sam and Vincent of Marou chocolate.

And they made a wonderful bean guillotine in Vietnam, that we happily purchased and picked up. I guess that’s the whole reason why we had a quick detour before coming back to the UK.

WHY A GUILLOTINE?

This helps us consistently, and efficiently, grade our cacao beans. When we grade our cacao beans, we take 100 random beans from a bag of 62.5kg (standard weight in a jute bag), and check…

Step 1
BEAN COUNT

When we count the beans, each bean should equal 1g. This means it’s a good shape and size, which tells us it came from a healthy tree!

Step 2
CUT TEST

This is where the guillotine is helpful as it can slice the beans efficiently and display them effectively. We check if they’ve been fermented and dried properly. And if there are any faulty beans.