Visiting Dandelion Chocolate‘s Palo Alto laboratory–cleverly tucked into a suburban garage, for now anyway–felt like a live immersion into Instructables or of course the Maker Faire. Nary had Todd started giving me a tour that I whipped out the old video recorder to capture the charming and clever mechanisms he had built to make a bean to bar chocolate which is quickly gaining a following in the Bay Area and beyond.
See how a few tools, wood, and hardware store parts can come together to make much of the small scale machinery needed to start tinkering with making chocolate. Disclaimer: The DIY part works mostly for prepping the cacao beans, not so much for making the actual chocolate. Although surely there is someone hacking together their own conches and other refining equipment.
