A few or our customers have been asking why the drinking chocolate that we sell is so much more delicious than your average hot chocolate, so permit me to explain...
It’s not just about the quality being higher - it’s a completely different process. Mainstream drinking chocolate is usually made from intensively farmed Forastero cacao, usually coming out of West Africa or Indonesia. Lower quality cacao beans that are not deemed good enough to make chocolate with are separated and sent to a press - a machine that extracts the fat (cocoa butter) from the cacao. The leftover solids are then ground up into pure cocoa powder, which is mixed with lots of sugar (and usually a few other unnecessary ingredients) to make hot chocolate powder.
By comparison, the drinking chocolate that we sell is made from rare and high quality cacao - currently organic Criollo from Peru and organic Trinitario from the Dominican Republic. The finest beans are selected by the chocolate makers and they go through the same process as the chocolate that gets turned into bars - the whole nibs are ground and there is no separation of fats and solids. The finished chocolate then gets ground into a powder that we sell in bags or serve as hot chocolate at the Underground Market.
Currently we sell the Hogarth Craft Chocolate Peru 66% and Dominican Republic 75%. Both of these drinking chocolates are made with exactly the same chocolate that goes into the finished bars, only ground into a powder instead.