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From Bean to Bar at the Mast Brothers Chocolate Factory

By Camille Bromley and Elsa Säätelä

After thinking, breathing, and eating chocolate in preparation for chocolate week on Saveur.com, we found ourselves wondering what happens before chocolate is delivered to the office. We decided to drop by the Mast Brothers—a small, artisanal chocolate factory—in Williamsburg, Brooklyn to get a firsthand look at the journey from cocoa bean to chocolate bar. Out of an appreciation for quality ingredients, hand processes, and a finished product that is surprising rather than mechanically consistent, the Mast Brothers have developed a craft bean-to-bar operation, which makes them vastly different in spirit and in kind from industrial chocolate manufacturers like Nestle and Hershey—the amount of cocoa that the Mast Brothers might process in a year, Hershey goes through in a day.

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