The Chocolate Factory

Since discovering the Theo Chocolates sampling room a couple of years ago I've been longing to go on the factory tour. The thing is, the tour is really popular, and I can never get my ducks in a row well enough to make reservations or plan ahead. Over spring break my wish finally came true and we got to go on the tour.

(Actually, we almost didn't, because I didn't realize that you had to make reservations THREE WEEKS in advance, so I signed on this morning and made reservations for what I thought was noon today. Not so much. Lucky for us they had a cancellation.)

The tour itself was cool and we learned a LOT about chocolate--everything from the history to fair trade labor practices today (did you know that the fruit of the chocolate is actually fermented to develop the flavor of the bean?) Not much of the equipment in the factory was running, but it was really neat to look at, smelled like chocolate, and most importantly--involved a lot of samples!

All of the equipment in the factory is salvaged from factories across Europe. This is the oldest, a 1930s cocoa bean roaster:

The winnower that separates the shells from the bean:

I was really intrigued by the diagonal line of handles going up the side.

Red & yellow color-coded bins used for transporting beans (yellow = unroasted, red = roasted... I think)

A cool control panel. Most of it's in German (I think).

These are some of my favorite pics because they look like something out of Charlie & the Chocolate Factory:

Those big silver tubes are actually how the chocolate is transported from place to place, once it's liquified.

And there you have it! The internet edition of the Theo Chocolate tour!