Northwest Chocolate Festival in Seattle Part 2:  The show itself, and chocolate trends

To resume the topic of the Northwest Chocolate Festival in Seattle, WA I felt it was perfectly natural to start with a pic of yours truly standing at the start of it!  :)  The first area of the show consisted of 20 artisan chocolate makers, and then the next level had 70 more.  There were several chocolate talks/demos going on both days.

While the majority of the booths offered samples of their various chocolate bars, there were some truffle offerings as well.

Chocolate making has several steps to get that fresh cacao bean to taste like the chocolatey goodness and texture we are familiar with.  Some of the steps from bean to bar include fermenting, and then roasting the cacao beans to bring out the chocolate taste, refining is all about particle size (so we don't taste things like sugar granules on our tongue when we eat the chocolate), along with conching which may take several hours, and smoothes out the viscosity of the chocolate.  Conching also helps remove various acids in the chocolate that would leave a sour smell and flavor if left in.

One of the trends I noticed going on with several of the chocolate makers at this event was the skipping, or minimizing of the conching step.  Some of them made reference that less conching made the product less processed thus making the product more healthy.   There is processing, and then there is processing.  For example there is the process of running chocolate between rollers to smooth out the consistency, coat the chocolate with particles of the naturally occurring cocoa butter, and improving the taste.  To me, that's not an unhealthy process.  While something with tons of artificial or low quality additives/ingredients might be considered less healthy of a process.  I will leave it to you to decided what you consider to be healthy or not. What I found was that when tasting a non-conched, or a minimally conched chocolate they had  more sour, bitter notes, and often a less pleasing mouth feel.

I think it is very educational for the palate though to take the opportunities of this event to try the fresh cacao bean, a roasted bean (many booths had roasted whole beans.  Remove the shell and then eat the nib), un-conched, light-conched, medium-conched, and then fully conched products to learn about chocolate as well as make the decision of what you as an individual prefer.  Just like with wine, we all have different likes, and pick up different tastes.  The fun comes in that if you dislike it, or like it you are right either way.

Pictured below is the Valrhona booth. A very classically made chocolate.

I also believe that with all food items we can actually train our plates to appreciate and begin to like new styles. This less processed trend will be interesting to watch over the years to come to see if people will eventually find that to be the norm in chocolate taste, and if there will still be room and enjoyment for a classically made product.   I love choices, so I'm all for both styles to continue, as long the classics don't disappear completely. I'd also love to hear your opinions on styles and brands of chocolate that you prefer.  

The next two pictures is part of the larger area of artisan chocolate makers at the show. 

I thought this was a cool way to display chocolate by letting you really know the flavors to look for in the taste.

How could I resist a "V" on a shiny wrapper.  :)

So many products to sample!  Each booth often had around 10 products to try.  No way I could indulge in them all.  I so wish I could have.  Sometimes you could help yourself, and occasionally you needed to ask, and then be given a sample.

These were huge blocks of real chocolate.  Imagine having some of those at home!!!

Besides pictures, I also made a quick video of the event.  Check it out!

While the trend to add salt as a major component to bars and truffles is clearly still in full swing,  I noticed makers are really getting the taste much more correctly balanced.  Herbs and spices are also still major trends with rosemary starting to show up more.  It seems like the chocolate cheese trend has subsided a bit since I didn't really see much of that going on here.  However, I do love milk chocolate with fresh goat cheese and sometimes a little drizzle of honey too.  Yum!

While many places were selling their packed hot chocolate, very few were giving out samples. I'd love to see more samples of that, along with some more savory products as well at next year's event.

Next time I will conclude with part 3 on this festival where I will post pics of my personal favorite chocolates that I tried there along with my tastebuds survival guide to tasting this many chocolates.

Thanks for reading.  Now go eat some chocolate!

Victoria

Northwest Chocolate Festival:

https://www.facebook.com/nwchocolate?fref=ts
http://nwchocolate.com/

Victoria Cooksey:

https://www.facebook.com/victoriacookseysrandomdish
https://instagram.com/victoria.cooksey/
https://www.youtube.com/channel/UCm-lp-lF_wB2oX_592jK9UQ