Aggie Chocolate Factory at USU

An ice cream stop at the Utah State University Creamery is a tradition for many folks visiting Logan. Now, people can add a stop at the Aggie Chocolate Factory while they’re on campus.

A few weeks ago, I visited the Aggie Chocolate Factory with staffers from the USU Botanical Center’s Farmers Market. The Kaysville-based market will be selling Aggie chocolate this summer, and the staff was invited to tour the factory and get an idea of what it’s all about. Lucky me, I was able to tag along!

Opened in 2018, USU’s chocolate factory is the only bean-to-bar chocolate-making facility operated by an academic institution in the western United States, according to Silvana Martini, the food sciences professor who directs the program. “Bean-to-bar” refers to processing cacao beans through all the steps of roasting, winnowing, grinding, mixing, tempering and molding into a finished chocolate bar. Most of the factory’s small-batch artisan chocolate is made with only two ingredients, cocoa and sugar, to showcase the flavor of the beans. (The milk chocolate products also contain milk powder and sunflower lecithin.)

The public can see the factory goings-on behind a glass wall in the Aggie Blue Square complex at 1111 N. 800 E., Logan. They can also buy chocolate bars, cookies, candies, roasted cocoa beans and other chocolate products. At the factory’s café, they can enjoy treats like hot chocolate, frozen hot chocolate and pastries.

Tours take place during café hours (2-8 p.m. Monday to Friday, including Memorial Day, and 11 a.m. to 8 p.m. Saturday).

“People can just drop by and we will give them a tour, or if it is a larger group they can arrange for a tour by sending an e-mail to aggiechocolate@usu.edu,” Martini said.

Or they can pick up a “self-guided tour” brochure that explains the chocolate-making process they are seeing.

The ACF is operated by student employees, interns, volunteers and full-time factory manager Anabella Giacomozzi.

You can watch, but don’t expect to do any hands-on bean-smashing or playing in the chocolate. Due to food safety regulations, viewers are separated by a glass wall from students and staff doing the actual processing. There’s a legend on the wall that discusses the processing steps.

There’s also a separate glassed-in room that shows bags of cacao beans, which is where chocolate-making starts. The beans come from trees that grow in tropical zones around the equator.

USU currently sources certified organic, fair trade beans from Ecuador, Belize and Ghana for its single-origin chocolate, according to Martini. The term “fair trade” means that the workers who grew the cocoa beans had safe and fair labor conditions, were paid a fair wage and followed environmental guidelines.

Here are some of the processes:

Sorting: The almond-shaped cacao beans are hand-sorted to separate out inedible items like sticks, insects, pebbles, and bad beans. Good beans go in the roasting machine.

Roasting: The beans are roasted to develop flavor.

Winnowing: A machine cracks open the roasted beans and separates the shell. What’s left inside the shell are cocoa nibs, which are finely ground.

Conching: the finely ground cocoa nibs are placed into a melanger machine, where they are ground even more finely. Due to the heat from the melanger’s friction, the cocoa butter melts, turning it into a liquid. Sugar is added at this point.

Aging: The chocolate is then set in blocks to age, to improve the flavor.

Tempering: The blocks are melted and stirred to make the chocolate smooth, silky and glossy. Tempered chocolate has a clean snap when it’s broken or you take a bite of it.

Molding: The chocolate is then poured into molds to set. Every chocolate bar is inspected. If there are imperfections, it goes back into the tempering machine and is re-molded.

The idea for a chocolate factory was sparked in 2015 when Martini began teaching a chocolate class to attract more students into the food sciences program. It became so popular that it increased to 150 students the following year.

“Most people don’t realize all the complexity of finding the right cocoa bean, roasting the bean with the right process to get the flavor profile that you want, processing it, aging, tempering and molding it,” Martini said.The class was so popular that the next year it was increased to 150 students.

“On the student evaluations, many said they wanted a hands-on experience in actually making chocolate,” Martini said. “I approached the dean and asked if we could have a place where students could participate in a bean-to-bar experience, similar to the way the cheese and ice cream programs are done.”

Besides being a hands-on lab for students, the factory also offers one-day “short courses” to professionals in the confectionary industry. The cost varies from $150 to $300 depending on the number of attendees.

Artisan chocolate-making is similar to the artisan cheese or craft brewing industries. Products are made in small batches, with creative control of flavor profiles.

The USU factory specializes in “single-origin” chocolate, with each batch made only from beans from a distinct region of the world. Chocolate connoisseurs know that flavor can vary with the soil, climate conditions and fermenting process of a particular region. Discriminating palates can pick up subtle flavor notes, such as wood smoke, leather, coffee or fruit.

It’s a much different process from large manufacturers such as Hershey or Nestle, who blend together a variety of beans from different areas of the world, then roast the beans at a high temperature to create a uniform, somewhat generic flavor.

But many chocolate lovers prefer to savor the subtle differences in single-origin chocolate. For instance, the Aggie factory’s premium Thistle & Rose brand’s Maya Mountain Belize bar is 70% cacao, giving it a dark, bittersweet flavor with a hint of berry. The beans come from small farming families in the Toledo District of Belize.

The brand name, Thistle & Rose, comes from the lyrics of the USU fight song, “The Scotsman.” (Yes, it’s that arm-hammering, “Show me the Scotsman who doesn’t love the thistle / Show me the Englishman who doesn’t love the rose …”)

Its products are being used outside of the university setting. For instance, Talisman Brewing Company in Ogden has been using USU’s roasted cocoa nibs (the crushed cocoa beans) in its Udder Chaos Chocolate Milk Stout since January.

“We’ve always wanted to source the nibs locally,” said Talisman owner Joann Williams. She had been using nibs from a Park City company, but then read about USU’s factory. “We went up and took a tour and tested the nibs from the different origins. We chose one that turned out really amazing, that complemented the creaminess of the beer.”

The finished bars are packaged with a batch number, the beans’ harvest year and enjoy-by date.

Fine chocolate will cost you — a 1.5-ounce single-origin bar is $5.95; a 1.5-ounce Go Aggie Bar of Swiss-style milk chocolate is $3.45. These are definitely more upscale than a Mars or Hershey bar.

You can also buy chocolate-dipped truffles made by Logan’s Bluebird Candy Company, with centers based on USU ice cream flavors such as Aggie Blue Mint and Aggie Bull Tracks. They are $7.50 for a package of six candies.

In the 1920s, when Utah’s ice cream pioneers founded companies like Farr’s, Casper’s and Snelgrove’s, they came to USU for technical training. More recently, USU’s cheese-making courses have attracted small, award-winning companies such as Beehive Cheese in Uintah, as well as large companies such as Gossners. With several artisan chocolate-makers already in Utah, such as Amano in Orem and Millcreek Cacao Roasters in Salt Lake City.

Now the Aggie Chocolate Factory can be a resource for those wanting to get into the chocolate business or refine their skills. And — a fun place for chocolate-lovers to sample.