Progress

First I want to thank all the beta testers that made it out to meet me a couple weeks ago.  It was great to see some new faces and hear people's comments.  I got some really useful feedback from them and will be incorporating it into future batches.  I definitely still have to work on my tempering.

As a result of the tempering, some of the chocolate pieces were tempered better than others.  All those who experienced "grainy" or "powdery" texture, or noticed bloom on their bars know what poorly-tempered chocolate can be like.

On a more positive note, the feedback on the flavor of the chocolate was overwhelmingly great!  This is the most important factor in choosing chocolate, and for good reason.  You can melt poorly-tempered chocolate and incorporate it into something or re-temper it, but you can't make it taste much different than it already does.

I've registered the business with the state (now I can pay sales tax, woohoo!) and am in the process of getting all the logistics of getting the appropriate health licensing in place.  In the mean time, I will be working on some packaging design.  The design I threw together was mostly functional, and not very pretty.  I will write more about packaging design in the future, and I'd love any input you have to offer.

If you haven't seen the first draft label (which you would have seen if you followed @BrechinChoc on Twitter), you can see a photo here.  The photo on the front is intended to feature local art.  You can submit your local artwork for possible inclusion on future labels to the new Brechin Chocolate Label Submissions Flickr pool.