There’s officially a reason to visit Vegas! Hexx, a bean to bar chocolatier, has a chocolate factory in the hotel Paris. Forget the casinos, forget the mediocre celebrity restaurants. Check out this chocolate factory.
Now, “factory” might make you think of a large production space. Hexx is small. They’re a small-batch chocolatier, so expect to see it all within a few hundred square feet. But, as we all know with food, size doesn’t matter. Many tasty things come out of small kitchens.
Bean to bar is rare in the chocolate world. As we learn on our Coffee and Chocolate tours, most people are chocolate melters, not chocolate makers. There’s a huge difference in the two as chocolate makers source the cacao pods, roast the seeds, chonche them, and molde them. Chocolate melters purchase chocolate that has been roasted, etc., and the re-melt it into truffles, bars, and an endless number of sweet treats. So, when we saw there was a bean to bar chocolate shop/factory in Vegas, we paid it a visit.
These cacao pods are carefully sorted.
They’re ground and the nibs are separated. The conching process may last a few days of non-stop mixing. This is one of the best chocolate makers’ secrets- How long to roast and at what temperature, and how long to conche. Practice make perfect, and Hexx has it down!
After resting for a couple months…
they’re remelted, molded, and ready for consumption.
The machine above is used to molde. That’s quite difficult to see from the photo!
The tour (as of this writing) is free and includes a small tasting of all of their varietals. When we were there they had five different countries featured: Peru, Ecuador, Venezuela, Madagascar, and Tanzania. Oh, the terroir. What’s terroir? Let’s talk about that on tour!