Six days of fermentation: a visit to our Idukki farm
Banana leaves, wooden boxes and a farmer who turns the beans by hand. The step that decides flavour.
How to choose a dark chocolate percentage
What 55%, 72% and 85% really tell you, and why two bars with the same number can taste very different.
The percentage on a bar of dark chocolate is the share of its weight that comes from the cacao bean: the solid cocoa and the cocoa butter together. The rest, in our dark bars, is cane sugar. So a 72% bar is 72 parts cacao and 28 parts sugar.
As a rough guide, 55 to 65% is mellow and sweet, a good bar for someone moving from milk chocolate. Around 70 to 75% is where most single-origin makers sit, because there is enough sugar to open up the flavour of the bean without hiding it. Our Idukki 72% is made here for that reason. At 80 to 85%, the bar is intense, drier and more bitter, and best eaten in small squares with coffee. Above 90%, it is closer to an ingredient than a treat.
But the number tells you only how much cacao there is, not what it tastes like. Two 72% bars can be completely different. Beans from Idukki, grown under coconut and arecanut shade, often taste of raisins and gentle spice. Beans from West Godavari tend to be brighter and fruitier. Fermentation and roast change the flavour as much as origin does.
If you are unsure, buy two bars of different percentages from the same farm and taste them side by side. Then try two bars of the same percentage from different farms. In twenty minutes you will know more about your own taste than any label can tell you.
