What makes a great Craft Chocolate Festival

Most industries and products have superstars (and lots of fans). Have a coffee with James Hoffmann, share kefir with Tim Spector, or listen to music with Rick Rubin/John Peel.

Craft chocolate has this with the Eurobean Festival organised by Peggy and Patrick of Choco Del Sol plus Nandor, Jens, Nicole and an amazing team of 100+ volunteers. We go to LOTS of festivals and tastings (see below for a list of upcoming ones!). But Eurobean is special; they really know how to throw an amazing festival (and party) in amazing locations with fantastic craft chocolate makers.

We’d love to hear about what you think makes a great chocolate festival while we’re busy organising our own for October. Complete our survey here for a special reward!

For the last ten years Eurobean had been held in a medieval fortress. The castle had an amazing atmosphere and was worth a trip on its own. However it could only hold 15 or so makers and was difficult to get to. So this year, Eurobean moved to the industrial museum in the centre of Chemnitz where they could have over 40 different craft chocolate makers (and a great macaron maker, plus loads of food trucks). Makers were there from all over the world – Hawaii (Manao), US mainland (Parliament and 24 Blackbirds), Canada (Soma), Indonesia (Terve), Thailand (Pridi), France (Hasna), Norway (Fjak and Fjorden Sjokolade), Sweden (Svenska), Hungary (Chocome and Chococard), Lithuania (Naïve and Beaningful), Czechia (Herufek), Italy (Karuna), Belgium (Mike and Becky), Switzerland and Germany (LOTS!!!! – see email to come!) and from the UK: Chocolarder, Cocoa Caravan and Neary Nogs.

It’s worth going just to have the chance to meet up with old friends, and make new ones, from this great list of craft chocolate makers. And to see the fun and joy involved, see James’ highlight video here. Next week, we’ll be releasing some of the special bars we hand-carried back – so keep an eye on your inbox.

But what I think Eurobean really “nails” is more than just a chance to meet up with a group of craft chocolate makers. Below is a list of reflections from Gen, James and I, on what makes Eurobean so amazing.

• A hand-selected list of GREAT makers. Every maker who was there deserved to be there. This was a great curated playlist of craft chocolate makers rather than a disparate group of varying qualities, so attendees know they can trust what they are tasting.
• Not too big, not too small. This is REALLY hard to do. I find trying more than 30 chocolates in one go pretty hard. You need to savour slowly; let it melt, think about the taste, textures and flavour wave, discuss with friends and makers etc. So just savouring 30 takes me at least 2-3 hours. And by then I’m ready for a break. So in one day that’s maybe 70-80 chocolates (interestingly this corresponds to guidelines for wine tasting from IWSC). So in three days I just about made it round!
• A chance to meet the actual makers (and farmers). I love shopping at farmers markets. But most of the time you are just dealing with a sales team, not the farmers themselves. Eurobean only allows the actual craft chocolate makers to have stands, so you can chat directly to all the makers and hear their views. And they provide great volunteers to translate too.
• Great talks with lots of audience participation. Eurobean does this brilliantly thanks to the translators and volunteers .. so a special shout out to them (and see below for a picture of their reaction to our tasting with them). These were super popular at Eurobean, so hopefully there will be even more next time!
• Chemnitz is an interesting location with lots of other stuff to do. The museum is well worth a visit itself, and there is an amazing man-made outdoor swimming lake built out of an industrial coal mine. Plus Chemnitz is a 2-3 hour drive or train ride from Prague or Berlin – a great excuse to spend a day in either place.
• Great music and good food! Peggy and Patrick threw an amazing party on Saturday evening, they organised some fantastic foods and beer and even managed to arrange for a wine festival in town.

The good news is we have a good number of bars for you to try from the festival – see next week’s email. Plus quite a few of these makers are coming to “LondonBean”, our own small Craft Chocolate Festival at Fidelio in Farringdon on Oct 11-12th. So save the date – more info to come soon! And please do take a minute to fill out our quick survey, and let us know what you’d like to see at our event.