Last post, I recounted a story of a chain that switched from making its own chocolate syrups to Mont Blanc products.

Let me say now that I would never discourage someone from trying to create their own products to use in their stores. A unique mocha is a wonderful drink and, as the most popular flavored beverage served in a café, becomes something of a signature beverage.

For those do-it-yourself mocha makers, I would say that it’s good to consider the following:
1. Consistency is the hallmark of any successful café, so having a consistent chocolate drink is important. Understand going into it that this is very hard to do when mixing different ingredients every day. And consistency becomes exponentially more difficult when different employees are making the chocolate syrup. Trying to get every employee to measure different ingredients accurately and make sure that they blend properly is challenging at best.

2. You will need to make the syrup fresh every day. The mixture of cocoa powder, sugar, and water doesn’t contain any preservatives and has a high water activity. Therefore, it is very susceptible to mold growth. Refrigeration can help slightly, but it isn’t feasible to keep the chocolate syrup container refrigerated and bring it out for every chocolate drink you make.

3. Portion control can be a challenge. This gets back to a consistent drink and one that isn’t left to the odd measurement by employees. One of the things Mont Blanc does is pack a ½ oz. dispenser pump in every case of product that we sell. That way, operators have consistent measures and recipes for every drink they serve. One forum participant said his recipe used equal parts cocoa and sugar and water, mixed until it seemed like the right consistency. Not exactly precise measurements! For sanitation and consistency, the best method is a stainless steel bowl and pump. Expensive, but precise. If you go this route the bowl and pump will need to be thoroughly cleaned every day or two. Don’t forget to completely dry every component of a stainless steel pump or the trapped water will create microbial growth in the fresh product you add. By packing a disposable pump in every case Mont Blanc sells, we actually encourage our customers to use the pumps in all four bottles and then throw away the pumps without worrying about cleaning them.

4. A successful mocha is a unique mocha. All of our customers are known for their unique mochas. For that reason, we currently produce three different chocolate syrups with unique taste profiles. Sweet Dark Chocolate is for people who prefer a sweeter drink, Semi Sweet is for customers who want a more European taste, and our newest syrup using chocolate from Ghana is made using Omanhene cocoa powder. Combining any of those tastes with unique espresso blends is sure to create a signature drink.

5. Take a careful look at cost. The issue of cost came in the discussion forum and several people commented that it is cheaper to buy the ingredients and mix them in the store daily instead of purchasing a ready-made chocolate syrup. Appearances can be deceiving. The costs of all of the raw materials need to be considered. The most important is cocoa powder. Different cocoa powders will yield different tasting syrups, so in creating your recipes it is important to realize that there are many kinds of cocoa powders and each one will give you a very different taste profile.

There are innumerable questions that can be raised in regards to which raw materials to use – and the costs associated with those materials.

For cocoa, will you use a low-fat or high-fat powder? Alkalized or natural? Domestic or imported? Single origin or blend? Once you have sampled enough different cocoa powders (in syrups, of course) to make a decision, keep in mind that you need to purchase a sufficient quantity from your supplier to enable you to make enough syrup every day. Buying in small quantities will increase the cost. Next, there is sugar. And this, too, will influence the taste and final cost of your syrup. Regular granulated or baker’s sugar? Brown sugar? Organic or Fair Trade? Finally, are you adding any additional ingredients, such as vanilla? Pure vanilla, of course, is expensive (I found several suppliers online selling it at about $60/gallon). If you do use vanilla, I recommend buying an eye dropper to help measure the number of drops per batch.

Trial and error will help determine how much to add to your recipe. But that will bring you back to the over-arching questions related to the cost and value of creating your own syrup.

• Is there any waste or mess when mixing the product?

• Can your employees measure a precise amount every time? Spilled drops of vanilla and an ounce or two of sugar and cocoa powder left on the counter adds up when you are throwing that much money away every day.

• How long does the mixture keep before a fresh batch needs to be made? If any gets thrown away, that is another cost. And do you have a backup container ready to go? Running out of syrup always seems to happen just before the big rush of mochas are ordered, and it is a time consuming process to make a fresh batch while customers are waiting.

• How consistent is the product, and is it made the same way each time by every employee? Remember that your customers will need to know what to expect each time they order their mochas.

After you consider all of these points, you might consider the blind taste test I wrote about in my Aug. 9 post. I’m more than happy to send samples for comparison.

I was reading an online coffee forum where there was an active discussion about the advantages of making ones’ own chocolate syrup from scratch in a store daily, as opposed to buying one that is ready-made. A lot of the comments were accurate, such as the ability to customize a particular taste profile by working with different cocoa powders, sugar ratios, and unique formulas.

The forum discussion reminded me of an event involving a highly successful chain of coffee shops that used to make its own chocolate syrup from scratch in their stores - daily. When we first approached this company, it took great pride in their unique chocolate syrup that incorporated cocoa powder, sugar, and water. They already had a number of stores and each of these stores created their syrups every day.

Mont Blanc presented the executive team - all of whom are well-respected for their coffee expertise - with several of our syrups and we invited them to do a blind tasting. In the blind tasting, all five of the tasters - including their coffee roaster and CEO (who at the time had been in the business for over 20 years) - all ranked the drinks made from their homemade syrup last.

The result was they switched to one of our syrups. But there was high-level concern that store managers would be upset they were “selling out” by purchasing a ready-made product. To the contrary, all of their store managers and many of their baristas were thrilled they no longer had to make a mess in their stores every day by mixing cocoa powder on the counter in full view of customers.

Their employees understood the tradeoffs and decided that although the idea of a store-made syrup was appealing, the reality was that a ready-made syrup gave them consistency, portion control, increased food safety and ease of use.

That blind tasting was nearly 10 years ago and we continue to supply their chocolate syrup. And every year they sell more mochas than the last.

Now I would never discourage shop owners from trying to create their own products to use in their stores. But before embarking upon the path of creating a unique syrup from scratch, it’s useful to keep five points in mind. I’ll talk about those in my next post.

I’m curious. Do any readers of this blog currently make their own chocolate syrup from scratch?

Chocolate and coffee are inextricably linked in today’s coffee culture, as epitomized by one of the most popular drinks sold in cafés, the Café Mocha. The mocha is a combination of espresso, steamed and foamed milk, and chocolate.

Most café owners don’t pay much attention to their mochas, and many of them add a cheap, grocery store chocolate syrup to the beverages they serve. The irony is that café owners spend an inordinate amount of time and money tasting, testing and monitoring their coffee. Why not do the same with their flavored drinks? Like coffee, chocolate has many different flavors and aromas, as well as varying degrees of sweetness and mouthfeel. (Mouthfeel refers to how something feels when you taste it. Is it heavy, like cream, or light, like gelatin? Thick like a hollandaise sauce or thin like water?)

Offering a distinctive and rewarding mocha requires pairing the type of espresso used in the drink with a chocolate that will complement, and not overwhelm, the flavor of the coffee.

Some key questions that can be asked about the espresso are whether it is a dark roast or light roast. If it is a darker roast, then a less sweet chocolate offers a more intense flavor throughout the drink. A sweeter chocolate lightens the overall tone of a beverage.

Try this as an experiment:
Make two identical mochas, but in one add an inexpensive chocolate syrup from the grocery store. In the second, add a premium chocolate that contains more chocolate and cocoa flavor. Taste and compare the results for yourself. Let me know how your tastings go; I think you will be pleasantly surprised by the difference a quality chocolate can make.

One of my favorite products Mont Blanc has ever created is a blender drink we formulated for one of our clients. A well-known coffee company had created this drink but was looking for a way to offer it to their customers so that it was easy to make and serve. This unique frozen coffee beverage is mixed in a blender and combines fresh espresso with milk and ice. It has the smooth and creamy taste of a coffee milkshake, and is one of the most popular menu offerings in their stores. Because it was so popular, however, there were operational problems with being able to make and serve a high volume of drinks while customers waited.

We proposed to create a liquid base for our client, using their coffee, that didn’t require the mixing of powders and fresh espresso in each store. What made this project so interesting was that it took two manufacturers to create the finished product. One of our suppliers used our client’s coffee beans to make an espresso extract. The extract then was shipped to a second manufacturer who combined it as an ingredient into the final blender drink base.

The product is still available and is packed in a 46 oz. container. When stores receive the mix, the entire contents are combined with a half gallon of milk into a one gallon pitcher. When the drinks are ordered, baristas simply pour the mixture into a cup filled with ice, blend, and serve.

Since we created this product, the drink’s sales have consistently increased and baristas are happier because making and serving frozen drinks is so much easier. One of the most gratifying aspects of my job can be the result of working with a customer that allows Mont Blanc to innovate - and then share in our client’s success.

It is the most expensive coffee in the world. But it isn’t from Kona, or even from Jamaica’s fabled Blue Mountains. It is from Indonesia and is called Kopi Luwak. The drink is made from coffee beans eaten by wild civets in the Sumatran jungle.

These jungle cats roam the forests and eat the coffee cherries off of the trees. The beans then pass whole through their digestive tracts and are excreted on the jungle floor. Villagers track the civets and scoop up the dried droppings and remove the undigested, whole coffee beans. The beans are then collected, cleaned, roasted, and ground and used to brew a cup of coffee. Supposedly, the digestive juices from the cat’s body give the coffee an unusual flavor.

I was determined to try this drink on a recent family trip to Indonesia. And as luck would have it, an Indonesian importer found a café that offered the delicate brew. We sampled it in two strengths. The first was 10 percent Kopi Luwak, with the remainder being a blend of other Indonesian beans. The second was 100 percent Kopi Luwak. The 10 percent drink tasted like any other cup of Indonesian coffee. But the 100 percent drink was truly distinctive. It exhibited the usual flavors of a classic Indonesian Sumatran coffee — earthy, smoky, musty, all of which make it my favorite origin. But the drink had a richer, more complex flavor, with more pronounced chocolate and caramel notes. The cost of each cup was about $10. I’m glad I tried it once, but for the price I prefer to drink a classic Sumatran for my daily cup.

Interestingly enough, Kopi Luwak last week made its American debut in Orlando.

I received a box of chocolate truffles as a gift. My friend gave them to me so that we could do a tasting and comparison. The box was a standard gold box with a transparent window to better see the chocolates nestled inside. I opened the box and looked at the dozen small, molded egg shaped truffles resting in the plastic tray. They were quite pretty, although the blue color on one of the white shells was a bit jarring. Still, I thought that the taste would be great since these chocolates had just been named best in town.

Taking my trusty kitchen knife, I cut the first one open. The center was a cross between a buttercream and a ganache; I popped it into my mouth. The center was soft, so it melted easily. The chocolate flavor, however, was overpoweringly sweet. It was a classic case of using an average chocolate for making fine chocolates. I swallowed, and instructed my friend to do the same. She said that it was very sweet. I nodded. The problem is that the chocolate wasn’t in balance. The center was flavored, but the outer shell was so sweet that it overpowered the filling.

Balance is a common problem in cooking and formulating. It is a constant challenge to make sure that the ingredients when mixed together make a harmonious whole. We deal with that situation daily at Mont Blanc.

We are constantly formulating chocolate syrups for our specialty café customers. In order to be successful, however, we must have their coffee beans to work with. Each of our café customers offers a different blend of espresso, using different beans and roasted to different sweetness levels. For us to create the perfect match, we have to pair the chocolate — is it too sweet, not sweet enough, will it overpower the coffee – with the coffee in their finished drink. Balance is key. Unfortunately, this chocolate maker hadn’t yet learned that lesson.

High fructose corn syrup has gotten a lot of bad press this year. There are two major types of corn syrup, regular corn syrup (glucose) and high fructose corn syrup (HFCS). Both are sweeteners derived from corn. The difference is that HFCS has undergone a special process that converts the glucose in corn syrup to fructose.

To sweeten a liquid product using only sugar can be a challenge. Remember that school science project where you added sugar to water? For a while after the sugar is mixed into the water it stays suspended in solution. However, adding too much sugar can cause crystals to form.

You can only make a product so sweet using sugar. If all of the available liquid is saturated with a number of the different sugars used in syrup, chances are that one of them is going to crystallize. So liquid sugar in the form of corn syrup and high fructose corn syrup helps solve that problem.

HFCS, commonly found in soft drinks and a large number of food products, has recently been blamed for contributing to the obesity epidemic in this country. The science is still being debated, however.

So even though the science is unclear, high fructose corn syrup is used in many products because of its unique properties. At Mont Blanc, we are always looking for the best tasting and most effective products. We have already tested cane sugar, beet sugar, regular corn syrup, and even agave nectar. So my search continues.

I empathize with Susan Lucci. My version of her Emmys are the Fancy Food Show awards for best new products. I have been entering almost every year for the past fifteen years and have never won. And over the years I thought that I had created some really neat, innovative products.

The Kahlua Chocolate syrup was the first cobranded product with such a well-known company for the specialty coffee industry. The bag in box packaging that we used for a while was the most unusual ever used for chocolate syrups. And our line of hot cocoa mixes was the first all-natural, instant drinks on the market. Never even made finalist.

The awards honor innovative, unique products within the specialty food trade and are given out during the Fancy Food shows.

This year, I thought I had a sure-fire winner. Or at least a silver statue for being a category finalist. I entered Mont Blanc’s new single-origin chocolate syrup made using cocoa powder from Ghana. (See July 3 post.) Surely, I thought, a slam dunk, for the academy, who would recognize how innovative an idea this really is.

The notice from the awards committee included comments about why my product was not selected as a finalist. One of the comments was that the product contained high fructose corn syrup and that the judges did not feel that this constituted a “gourmet” product.

High fructose corn syrup in our chocolate syrups is a common ingredient and one that is hard to do without in the world of syrup.

So even though Mont Blanc will have the first single-origin chocolate syrup on the market, I will not be traveling to New York to pick up a gold or silver statue.

Through our partnership with Omanhene, Mont Blanc will continue to support the system that benefits the people of Ghana while offering coffee drinkers a truly unique experience.

As for the Fancy Food Show, I’ll have to try again next year.

Mont Blanc will soon have a market first in the form of its single-origin syrup, which goes into production next week. I am excited about this new product, since it is the first time that any company has made a chocolate syrup using single origin cocoa, and the idea of single origin and sustainable production fits nicely with single-origin coffees that so many of our café customers serve in their drinks.

I purchase the cocoa from Omanhene, the company that introduced the concept of single-origin chocolates to the United States 15 years ago.  Omanhene founder Steven Wallace has done something unique in the world of chocolate manufacturing. Chocolate manufacturing is dominated by a handful of multinational companies mostly unknown by those outside the industry. Even the largest chocolate brands such as Hershey’s rely on these companies to process bulk chocolate from cocoa beans.

Chocolate production follows a typical commodity supply chain paradigm. That is, the commodity, cacao beans, are grown in a third world country, extracted and sold for a small sum. The beans are then transferred to an industrialized country where they are processed. The finished product is then sold for significantly more than the cost of the commodity itself. I know of one artisanal chocolate maker who pays higher than market rates for cacao beans (currently about $1.00 a pound). He sells his finished chocolate bars for almost $50 a pound.

What makes Omanhene unique is that it has set up a factory in Ghana so beans are processed in the country where they are produced. The end result is that significantly more money from each sale stays in Ghana rather than going to an industrialized nation elsewhere.

This guarantees higher pay for farmers, creating a sustainable cycle for the farmers, growers and processors.

Everyday we hear about organic foods, fair trade coffee, and single-origin chocolates.  Although all can be terrific products, unfortunately the descriptors of organic, fair trade, and single origin have nothing whatsoever to do with quality.

As we tested cocoa powders for our new Single Origin chocolate syrup line, we tasted a half dozen single-origin cocoa powders that we mixed into our chocolate syrup formula. For consistency we used the same recipe with the same amount of cocoa powder in each one. The tastes ranged from the extraordinary—notes of deep chocolate, to the ones we rejected.

Those not making the cut tasted dirty, musty, bitter, and rancid. It is important to remember that just because it says single origin, it doesn’t mean that it is necessarily made using either the highest quality beans from that origin or that the cocoa has been processed in the best way.  The most disappointing thing in the world is to taste something for which you have great expectations because of the packaging or hype and not enjoy what you are eating.