In June 2024, I attended the five day Penn State Chocolate Short Course and want to share some thoughts on the course for those who are considering attending their future chocolate short courses. Prior to attending the course myself, I researched the course online seeking validation that I would see a return on the time and financial investment to attend the course. I found very little information about the course online and found very few prior attendees among the Facebook chocolate groups I am affiliated with. That being said, the feedback from prior attendees that I did receive was positive.
In case you are unfamiliar with the course, I will begin by providing two links. The first link is to the course on the Penn State website: https://foodscience.psu.edu/workshops/penn-state-chocolate-short-course. The second link is to an event page for the course, which may not be valid at some point in the future: https://web.cvent.com/event/22788343-4b77-40ad-ba1c-ad149828afd5/summary. The Penn State webpage for the course offers the following description: “A Bean-to-Bar course for both craft and industrial chocolate manufacturers. During this 5-day course, successful craft chocolate entrepreneurs, equipment manufacturers, and Penn State faculty will instruct you in the theory and practice of chocolate production from the selection of raw materials through the marketing of finished product.” Below, I will just copy and paste the agenda for each day, but before I do let me take a moment to address the costs associated with attending this course.
The cost of the course was $2100. The cost for a parking pass was $50. The cost for a recommended reference book on chocolate, Industrial Chocolate Manufacture and Use, was $165. For non-locals such as myself there was the additional cost of airfare, food and lodging, and a rental car and gas. The one thing often overlooked is the time commitment to attend the course. The course is five days and for most non-locals there is a travel day built in on either side making the time commitment seven days. In my case, I used vacation time from my day job to attend the course. If you are an owner-operator small business, attending this course may mean one week of lost revenue.
Day 1 – Sourcing
7:30 a.m. Registration, Keeney Commons, second floor Erickson FSB
8:30 Welcome, Introduction, and Logistics – Greg Ziegler
9:00 Sourcing cacao – Greg d’Alesandre
10:00 Break
10:30 Sourcing cacao – Greg d’Alesandre
11:30 Cacao processing at origin – Sarah Bharath
12:30 p.m. Lunch
1:00 Cacao processing at origin – Sarah Bharath
2:00 Food Safety – Josephine Wee
3:00 Introduction to sensory science – Helene Hopfer
4:30 Debrief session
5:00 Adjourn
6:00 Dinner
“Gendered Livelihoods in Cacao Smallholders”
Lina M. Tami, Ph.D. Candidate Rural Sociology
Day 2 – Bean Processing
8:30 a.m. Sweeteners, Dairy Ingredients, Lecithin – Greg Ziegler
9:30 Overview of chocolate manufacture – Greg Ziegler
10:15 Break
10:30 Winnowing, Liquor grinding, butter pressing – Greg Ziegler
11:00 Roasting – Alan McClure
12:00 p.m. Lunch
1:00 Formulation – Alan McClure
2:00 Practical session – Lorenzo Datei et al.
All – Safety & Good Manufacturing Practices (252) – Greg Ziegler
Station 1 – Sensory (252)
Station 2 – Winnowing, Prerefining & Liquor Milling (134)
Station 3 – Roasting (135)
4:30 Debrief session
5:00 Penn State Cacao Greenhouse Tour
5:30 Adjourn – find someone to dine with
Day 3 – Chocolate Processing
8:30 a.m. Milling – Greg Ziegler
9:30 Conching – Greg Ziegler
10:30 Break
11:00 Viscosity determination, particle size analysis – Greg Ziegler
12:00 p.m. Lunch
1:00 The Maillard Reaction – Alan McClure
1:30 Using experimental designs – Alan McClure/Greg Ziegler
2:00 Practical session – Lorenzo Datei et al.
Station 1 – Sensory (252)
Station 2 – Refining & particle size determination (134)
Station 3 – Conching & viscosity determination (135)
4:30 Debrief session
5:00 Adjourn – find someone to dine with
Day 4 – Chocolate Processing
9:00 a.m. Tempering, molding, cooling – Greg Ziegler
10:00 Chocolate storage and shelf life – Greg Ziegler
10:30 Break
10:45 Chocolate & Health – Josh Lambert
12:00 Lunch
1:00 PSU-MCL
2:00 Practical session – Lorenzo Datei et al.
Station 1 – Sensory (252)
Station 2 – Molding & cooling (135)
Station 3 – Tempering & temper measurement (134)
4:30 Debrief
5:00 Adjourn – find someone to dine with
Day 5 – The business of chocolate
9:00 a.m. Taking care of business – Greg d’Alesandre leading panel discussion
10:30 Break
11:00 Sanitation without water – Abby Snyder
12:00 p.m. Lunch
1:00 Packaging & Labeling – Greg d’Alesandre/Helene Hopfer
2:00 Final debrief – everyone
3:00 Adjourn – travel home safely
The course was largely lecture-based and students were provided with copies of the Power Point presentations. As you can tell from the course agenda, the course was designed to be more of an overview of bean-to-bar chocolate. What you cannot tell from the course agenda is just how much each lecture went into the science behind the topic being discussed. Each day of the course thematically and logically built on the next as they moved from cacao at origin to the final stage of the finished chocolate product. Each day included sensory training. Days 2-5 included time in their chocolate production plants where students got to see various pieces of equipment briefly being operated as the cacao moved from one production phase to the next. On day 4 students were able to mold chocolate. On day 5 students were able to remove the chocolate from the mold they filled, package it, and take it home. Various meals were provided throughout the course and the food provided was very well done. The instructors for the course varied from full-time Penn State faculty to guest speakers. Each were experts in their respected fields.
The course was attended by twenty-four students and a number of teaching assistants from Penn State. The majority of the students were from major industrial chocolate makers such as Blommer Chocolate, The Hershey Company, Haskell, and Godiva Chocolate and they held a wide variety of roles within these companies. A few of the students were owner-operators of small craft chocolate businesses such as myself. One of the students was from Australia and one from Puerto Rico.
I want to first provide some positive feedback regarding the course. 1) The course exposed me to vantage points in bean-to-bar chocolate that I just did not know existed. For example, I mentioned the number of students that were in attendance from the various industrial chocolate makers. I simply had no idea how many disciplines and types of jobs there were in the chocolate industry. It makes sense when you stop and think about it, but until this course my primary experience with chocolate was as a consumer and now as a small craft maker. Prior to this course, I just had no exposure to the world of industrial scale bean-to-bar chocolate manufacturing where metric tons of cacao is being processed on a scale and at a frequency that is mind boggling. 2) The course exposed me to the science that undergirds bean-to-bar chocolate. While I think most of us understand that there is a level of science that undergirds bean-to-bar chocolate, most of us approach it primarily from the artistic or craft side. I was surprised to learn just how much scientific research has been and is being conducted on cacao and chocolate making. I was surprised to learn that Penn State was one of the world’s leaders in this field and has so many resources and departments and professors working on cacao and chocolate from so many different perspectives: https://agsci.psu.edu/research/snip/cacao-and-chocolate-research-network/people. 3) The course exposed me to equipment that I knew about but had never used and I had never seen in operation in person. I was able to see first hand how equipment such as roller mills, ball mills, and conches work. I was able to gain some more insights into the world of nib roasting. It is one thing to know about this equipment, but it is very different to get some spacial awareness of just how much room this lab equipment takes up and how loud some of the equipment is even at the smaller lab scale. 4) The course reinforced and provided more insights into how important sourcing well grown, well fermented, and well dried cacao is. I was surprised to learn that it has more impact than just flavor. 5) The course provided a very good introduction to the world of bean-to-bar chocolate. 6) The course provided a great opportunity for networking and learning about chocolate making from so many different perspectives.
I want to also provide some constructive negative feedback regarding the course. 1) While the course was a great overview and introduction to bean-to-bar chocolate, many with some level of experience in bean-to-bar chocolate making will likely find themselves wishing for a lot more depth and wishing they had left with a lot more technical skill. I know this was the case for me. I know other craft makers who were present shared similar thoughts. One suggestion would be to make the course description even more explicit that the course is really more of an introduction and overview to bean-to-bar chocolate. 2) As a craft chocolate maker, I would have preferred a less theoretical course that was more practical and more hands-on. In other words, I would have preferred to learn more “how to” manufacture bean-to-bar chocolate and less “about” it. While it was valuable and interesting to learn about the theory and the science behind various aspects of bean-to-bar chocolate, the life of a small business owner is often about making calculated trade offs and maximizing return on investment. Given the limited amount of time (five days) and the large financial investment, I would have preferred to have distilled the academic side to only what is essential to making informed practical decisions in bean-to-bar chocolate making. I would have preferred a much heavier focus on praxis. For example, in the course students learned about table tempering chocolate by watching it done rather than learning how to table temper chocolate by repeated practice and supervision. There was very little learned in the course that could not have been learned through an e-learning platform. I have even taken e-learning sensory courses where sensory samples are mailed to the participants. The overall point I am trying to make is that as a craft chocolate maker I wish the course consisted of more intensive hands on chocolate making and sensory analysis.
So, if I knew then what I know now, would I have attended the course? Was attending the course a wise investment of the my time and money? I am extremely conflicted on these questions as on the one hand there is no doubt that attending the course was valuable and helpful in so many ways. The primary issue for me is that as a small business owner with limited cash flow there are many other things the money could have been spent on such as equipment, cacao, packaging, marketing, etc. For me, I attended the course in hopes that it would provide an efficient solution to a problem I encountered in my first year of bean-to-bar craft chocolate, which was that I quickly realized getting sensory feedback and learning through trial and error was not time or financially efficient. Let me set the stage for the problem. I come from the world of speciality coffee where I can roast multiple roast profiles of the same coffee and can grind and cup (or brew) those roasted samples within days of roasting to get sensory feedback. This allows a coffee roaster the ability to quickly learn by trial and error. Most commercial coffee roasters either have smaller volume sample roasters or small production roasters to reduce waste and cost. Cacao is very different at least for small scale craft makers. The process of roasting, cracking, winnowing, refining, tempering, molding, and moving finished chocolate products into storage devices usually involves many hours of labor over three days. Most craft chocolate makers do not have multiple melangers (i.e., refiners), which would increase the time efficiency at producing product at an increased financial cost. While many of us push the limits, most of the table top melangers are not designed to refine less than a kilo (2.2 pounds) of chocolate. [I get some would say they are not designed for chocolate anyway but if you are reading this review you understand where I am coming from.] Most bean-to-bar craft chocolate makers pay a lot more for all involved ingredients than larger scale makers. Imagine producing five batches for sensory evaluation and profile development. The end result would be the production of a lot of chocolate, most of which a small business owner would not easily be able to sell to recover costs. My hope in attending the course was that I could attend a course where this time consuming work was already done prior to me showing up. I was willing to pay the money to attend the course in hopes that I could make the learning process much more consolidated and efficient and in the end less wasteful. Unfortunately, while I did learn lots of valuable information and met lots of great and knowledgeable people, I did not gain from the course what I hoped I would though I did gain some insights and resources to explore how to maybe accomplish my goals a bit more efficiently. This is not to say you should or should not attend the course. Only you can say if this course is right for you. If you are new to bean-to-bar chocolate, wanting an introduction to the science that undergirds bean-to-bar chocolate, or are simply wanting a more wholistic understanding of both the craft and industrial side, this course is a great introduction to almost all facets of bean-to-bar chocolate.
