What Chocolate Can Learn From Coffee | #PSC 204
OVERVIEW: Episode 204 explores some of the reasons for the gap between making chocolate at home and making coffee at home: Chocolate has a lot to learn from Coffee, but how many of the lessons are implementable?
Links below to watch LIVE and to view the archived episode.
Watch and comment LIVE or view the archived episode!
Subscribe (free!) to the @PodSaveChocolate YouTube channel, like this video, comment, and share this episode to help grow the #PSC community.
Watch and comment LIVE or view the archived episode on LinkedIn.
Join my network on LinkedIn to receive notifications and to refer business to each other.
Watch and comment LIVE or view the archived episode on TheChocolateLife page on Facebook (for 30 days, then watch the archive on YouTube).
Follow TheChocolateLife on Facebook to receive notifications and catch up on other content.
Episode 204 Overview
I have to admit that I spend a lot of time – perhaps more than is healthy for me – watching videos about coffee on YouTube. James Hoffman is my go-to, but I also find myself watching videos from Lance Hedrick, Morgan Eckroth, Emilee Bryant, Seattle Coffee Gear, and others.
Among other things, these channels explore the experience of making coffee using a wide range of gear, geeking out with varying levels of nerdiness about what makes a great-tasting cup of coffee, and how one can make great coffee at home.
While there is a lot of discussion about coffee beans, roast levels, grind sizes, water, WDTs, and much more, one thing all of these channels take for granted, it seems to me, is the vast variety of equipment available to perform these steps.
That is something that the home chocolate maker does not enjoy – a selection of equipment equipment options of different types and prices that fit into a home kitchen.
Coffee channels collectively spend hundreds, if not thousands, of hours dissecting the advantages and foibles of conical versus flat burr sets, and how those relate to motor RPM, static generation, and retention in a grinder, and how do these choices affect workflow. There are face-offs: which grinder in which price range offers the best performance? Do they all arrive at the same conclusions? Of course not.
I have to admit that I’m more than a little jealous of the myriad options and combinations available to coffee lovers, and the endless variety of upgrade paths this variety of options enables.
FFS, there are thousands (millions?) of combinations of kettles, scales, wire distribution tools, filter papers, and tampers to choose from before you start to factor in manual pour-over (V60 anyone?) versus French press versus Moka pot versus Aeropress versus mechanical (e.g., Flair) versus pod machines (Nespresso vs Keurig et al), pour-over robots, siphons, drip machines, and semi-automatic and automatic espresso machines with or without profiling equipment.
I began my career as a professional chocolate critic, journalist, consultant, and educator in mid-May 2001. That means I am celebrating my 25th anniversary as a professional chocolate critic, journalist, consultant, and educator in 2026. To help me celebrate, I hope you will consider becoming a Lifetime Member!
This offer is only available May 25 – June 30, 2026.
For each category of equipment, there are dozens if not hundreds of options in the budget/intro price range, that starting-out hobbyist price range, the “I have a lot of money to spend on my hobby” price, and everything in between
What’s missing from the above list? A similar variety of roasters in a range of prices – under $100, under $500, under $1000, etc.
And that’s before we even begin any discussion of coffee bean origin and roast. There are literally thousands of roasters offering whole bean coffee from farms from all over the world in prices that range from under $10/lb to hundreds, if not thousands, of dollars per pound for rare lots of prized genetics and terroir.
The home chocolate maker has nothing like this, 30 years after John Scharffen Berger and Robert Steinberg kicked off the bean-to-bar chocolate movement.
The lack of equipment options, ingredient suppliers, and video- and education-centric social media channels that focus on making chocolate at home means there are no sponsor revenues to support those creators. These lacks create a vicious circle: Anyone looking to produce comparable content has a lot more trouble trying to monetize their content, which means there is less of it.
The TL;DR Episode Summary Overview
In this episode of #PodSaveChocolate, I am going to take a deep dive into what makes chocolate so different from coffee and why micro (home kitchen)-scale equipment innovation lags decades behind coffee.
Future Episodes
Who the Heck is Layne Kilpatrick? Part 2 of 2
Episode Hashtags
#cocoa #cacao #cacau
#chocolate #chocolat #craftchocolate
#PodSaveChoc #PSC
#LaVidaCocoa #TheChocolateLife
#PodSaveChocolate and #TheChocolateLifeLIVE Archives
To read an archived post and find the links to watch archived episodes, click on one of the bookmark cards below.
Clay Gordon
Clay Gordon