Conche

[ Bean to bar · two ingredients · lot 31 ]

Three days in the conche. One clean snap.

Conche is a two-person chocolate workshop. We roast single-origin cacao light, grind it under granite for as long as it asks — up to eighty-four hours — and temper to half a degree, so the bar breaks like slate and melts like it was waiting for you. Nothing in the tank but cacao and sugar.

See the bars Taste by origin →
Conche
72 h
Grind
19 µm
Ingredients
2
LOT 31 — SAMBIRANO 70% roast 118 °C · temper 31.5 °C · snap, 9 s

[ Origins ]

The bean decides. We just listen.

Cacao carries its valley the way wine carries its slope. Same roast, same stone, same sugar — and Madagascar still shouts raspberry while Vietnam mutters leather and spice. Eighteen notes, six families, five origins: this wheel is our whole argument.

Fruit Fruit Floral Floral Nutty Nutty Spice Spice Earthy Earthy Sweet Sweet red berry — in 2 of our origins red berry dried fig — in 1 of our origins dried fig citrus peel — in 2 of our origins citrus peel jasmine — in 2 of our origins jasmine orange blossom — in 1 of our origins orange blossom honeysuckle — in 1 of our origins honeysuckle almond — in 1 of our origins almond hazelnut — in 1 of our origins hazelnut walnut — in 1 of our origins walnut cinnamon — in 1 of our origins cinnamon black tea — in 1 of our origins black tea licorice — in 1 of our origins licorice forest floor — in 1 of our origins forest floor leather — in 1 of our origins leather tobacco — in 1 of our origins tobacco caramel — in 1 of our origins caramel honey — in 1 of our origins honey molasses — not in this year’s origins molasses Five origins 68–76 % cacao

Every origin lands differently. Trace one from the list — the wheel lights the notes that bar actually hits, and nothing it doesn’t.

Hover, tap or tab — press again to clear

[ The temper ]

Half a degree is the whole job.

Cocoa butter can set into six different crystals. Five of them are wrong — dull, crumbly, grey. Only Form Ⅴ snaps, shines and melts at exactly body heat. Tempering is how you talk the chocolate into choosing it. Here is one batch, drawn from the log.

LOT 31 · SAMBIRANO 70% · TARGET CRYSTAL: FORM Ⅴ DRAWN FROM THE BATCH LOG

Melt

45.0 °C — 8 min

Everything up to forty-five and held there until every crystal the chocolate ever knew is gone. You cannot temper over a memory.

Cool & seed

26.8 °C — 14 min

Down to twenty-seven on the stone slab, working constantly. This is where Form Ⅴ — the only crystal that snaps, shines and melts at body heat — is born.

Rework & hold

31.5 °C — to the mold

Back up to thirty-one and a half, killing the weaker forms and keeping the fifth. Half a degree high and the bar blooms grey. We hold half a degree.

[ The bars ]

Six bars. Five valleys. Two ingredients.

Every bar is stamped with its lot number and wrapped by whichever of us has the steadier hands that day. Percentages are decisions, not marketing — each origin gets the sugar it needs to say what it means, and not a gram more.

70

Sambirano 70

£9

70% · 72 h conche · 19 µm

red berry · citrus peel · honey

Sambirano Valley · Madagascar

in stock
72

Los Ríos 72

£10

72% · 60 h conche · 20 µm

orange blossom · jasmine · almond

Los Ríos · Ecuador · Nacional

small batch ×220
68

Marañón 68

£11

68% · 60 h conche · 21 µm

dried fig · hazelnut · caramel

Marañón Canyon · Peru

last of the harvest
74

Kilombero 74

£9

74% · 72 h conche · 19 µm

citrus peel · black tea · walnut

Kilombero Valley · Tanzania

in stock
76

Tiền Giang 76

£10

76% · 84 h conche · 18 µm

cinnamon · licorice · leather

Tiền Giang · Mekong Delta · Vietnam

in stock
55

Dark Milk 55

£9.50

55% · 48 h conche · 20 µm

toffee · malt · red berry — the exception

Sambirano cacao · malted milk

restocks september

[ The story ]

We bought the melangeur before the bed.

Conche started in 2019 in a flat above a laundrette, with a secondhand granite melangeur running in the bathroom because it was the only room the neighbours couldn't hear. The first sacks of Sambirano beans came up the stairs one at a time. The bed came later that month. We stand by the order of operations.

Everything still happens in one room, just a bigger one: we sort by hand, roast light in a modified coffee drum, crack, winnow, and grind under granite until the particles fall below twenty microns — past the point your tongue can find an edge. Then the conche runs. Sixty hours, seventy-two, eighty-four; the bean decides, we just keep the log.

Every batch page in that log records the roast curve, the grind reading and the temper to the tenth of a degree. Not because anyone asked — because when a bar is two ingredients, the process is the recipe, and the recipe should be able to stand trial.

— Lena & Noor, Conche

[ Stockists ]

Where the bars end up.

We make about four hundred bars a week, which is as many as one conche and two people can stand behind. These six counters get them first. If the shelf is empty, we're tempering more.

  • The Winnow Roomour own counter — open Saturdays, 9–4 Peckham · London
  • Motes & Graincoffee — ask for the 74% with the Kenyan pour-over Shoreditch · London
  • Pale Foxnatural wine — they file our bars under “tannin” Copenhagen
  • Fermentcheese & larder — the fig 68% lives by the till Edinburgh
  • Crumbbakery — first stockist, still our toughest critic Amsterdam
  • Kissaten Nagarecoffee — takes half of every Vietnam lot Osaka

wholesale? write to the winnow room — bring coffee

First taste of every lot

One email when a new batch leaves the temper — what it is, what it tastes like, and which counters got it. No recipes, no discounts, no noise.

Demo form — no email is sent or stored. See the README.