There’s nothing like the feeling of chocolate melting in your mouth and today is International Chocolate Day, and the perfect excuse to eat your favorite treat.
Thor’s Chocolate is a local artisan chocolate company that makes its chocolate from bean to bar in-house. The company is based in Idaho Falls and strives to make smooth and delicious chocolate that is beyond anything anyone has ever tasted before.
Because today is the perfect day to celebrate chocolate, here are seven fun facts about local chocolate from Thor’s Chocolate founder Christian Becker.
- Chocolate beans affect the final product's taste depending on where the beans are grown.
“It's super fun, really interesting to taste test with the beans from Ghana versus Peru versus Guatemala and it's an eye opener. People have no idea that they're so different. They're almost like a different chocolate, if you will, even though they're obviously all the same type of chocolate,” Becker said.
- Chocolate percentages distinguish how much chocolate is in the bar versus how much sugar.
“A dark chocolate, you really just take a cocoa bean, you grind it up, you call that a nib, and you grind it up some more, and then you add sugar to it,” Becker said. “Let's say 70% dark, for example. You take 70%, if you will, the ground cocoa bean that's been roasted and all, and then you add 30% sugar to it, in essence, you're 70% dark.”
- Real fruit can be a chocolate ingredient.
“We have a raspberry cream, so we take real raspberries that have been freeze-dried and some raspberry extract and we add it to the white chocolate. And it makes this incredible, authentic, real raspberry cream chocolate,” Becker said.
- Idaho doesn’t have many chocolate manufacturers in the area, but the Idahoans are loving the ones it does.
“The opportunity is there's no one else. This is sort of a love of mine and we're turning it into a business and people here have just been real supportive and just loving it. And so, it's been super fun to see that,” Becker said.
- Idaho locals love the fruit flavors.
“Obviously the favorite around here really is the huckleberry for various reasons and it's the thing here, but the raspberry has been a huge surprise as well as the pineapple,” Becker said.
- Buying local artisan chocolate as opposed to traditional chocolate brands is a completely different experience.
“I think it's a real eye-opening experience,” Becker said. “You've really never had chocolate, truly, until you've eaten a small batch, bean-to-bar, artisan premium type chocolate.”
- Thor’s Chocolate has a membership program where customers can receive discounts, exclusive taste tests and try new chocolate before it’s released.
“On our website, you can find the Klan or Thor's friends. So, our brand is Thor's Chocolate and we're kind of leaning into that in a fun, playful way,” Becker said. “We're having a lot of fun with that itself and so we've set up this Klan think of it as a fan club or first access.”
To celebrate International Chocolate Day with Thor’s Chocolate, check out thorschocolate.com