CHOCOLATE

the grocery store chains,” he said. “I’m making a quality, handcrafted product.”

Joyce’s wife, Yuri Weydling, who is the director of avor development and community relations for the business, has taste buds attune to the di erent avors of chocolate. “She has gained an appreciation of the subtleties of chocolate,” he explained.

He said while they like dark chocolate, the white caramel chocolate has “a wonderfully unique taste.”

One of the chocolates that Joyce produces is called “Stuart’s Smile,” named after Joyce’s neighbor and friend Stuart Collins. Collins said he’s not a big dark chocolate fan, so when Joyce created a chocolate that mixes dark and light, Collins smiled.

“His chocolates are quite avorful,” Collins said. “It started o as a very fun hobby. He’s the type of person who always needs to be busy, and this ful lls his need to always be challenging himself.”

Both Collins and Joyce envision the shop becoming a place for people to hang out with a cup of co ee or tea and a bit of chocolate. e chocolate shop is near Bear Creek, so Joyce wants to have tables outside for people to stop by in warmer weather and enjoy his creations.

“I look forward to (the shop) being another social center, where we can have a cup of co ee and a bit of chocolate,” Collins said. “It will be a good place to be with people and chit-chat. Post-pandemic, I think we need that.”

High-quality ingredients

“ e rst step is choosing the right beans,” he said. e grinding takes 72 hours and is done in something that looks like a crockpot with granite stones that create smoothness. en the chocolate is tempered and molded.

Joyce’s cacao beans come primarily from Ecuador, with some beans from Nicaragua, Bolivia and Peru mixed in. He especially likes the beans that the indigenous peoples harvest from wild trees because they provide complex avors. e beans arrive fermented and dried.

Once in Kittredge, the beans are sorted and roasted. Joyce uses two roasters that look like toaster ovens. Once roasted, the beans are cracked, winnowed and ground.

“Chocolate is critically temperature dependent,” he noted.

Joyce is proud that his chocolate has only four ingredients – ve if he adds hazelnuts – and he uses the nest ingredients: beet sugar from the Netherlands and Madagascar vanilla. e milk powder is important because it can change the taste and the chocolate’s fat content.

“I spend about half my time looking for sources for ingredients,” he said, adding that he’d like to use a more local beet-sugar company. “It’s all about mixing and matching the ingredients.”

A new profession

He said the community has been generous and supportive as he prepared to open his shop, helping him obtain the shelving and furniture. Joyce also hopes to o er chocolate-making classes, and he’s talking with area businesses about co ee-chocolate and wine-chocolate pairing events.

“I’ve always been a foodie, but I never thought I’d be making chocolate,” Joyce said. “Given this is our rst food business, I’m learning things every day. I just really love it.”