Food Tours · Tour

Bean to Bar in Miraflores: 130 Grams You Take Home

Two hours, and the whole chain: the cocoa tree at one end, a bar of chocolate you made at the other, with every step in between done rather than described. That is more interesting than it sounds, because most people have no idea what happens between the pod and the bar. Fermenting, drying, roasting, cracking, winnowing, grinding, conching, tempering. Each one changes the flavour, and several of them are why bad chocolate is bad. There is also the history, and Peru's place in it. Cacao is native to this part of the world, and Peruvian beans are prized for the range of flavour they carry rather than for volume: fruit, nuts, flowers. The tasting is of chocolate drinks, and you leave with 130 grams of your own work. One practical point: your chocolates need about forty-five minutes to set after the workshop finishes, so you collect them then rather than walking straight out with them. Ten people at most, in English or Spanish, with all the materials. Wheelchair accessible throughout, service animals allowed, prams fine. Transport is not included.