Every bar we sell comes with a card that lists box size, turn interval, ferment duration, drying method and moisture at packing. Most people put it straight in the recycling, which is fair, but the card is the most honest thing in the box.
Box size and depth
Wet beans generate their own heat. In a shallow box that heat escapes and the ferment stalls; in a box that is too deep the middle cooks while the edges do nothing. Our estates run boxes around eighty centimetres deep, which is a compromise that favours evenness over speed.
Turn interval
Turning moves beans from the cool edge to the hot middle and lets air into a mass that has gone anaerobic. Turn every twenty-four hours and you get an even ferment. Turn every twelve and you get a faster, brighter, more acidic one. Neither is wrong. Alto Mirador is turned twice a day and it is the highest-acid bar we make — that is not a coincidence.
Duration
Five days leaves sugar in the bean and keeps a high-percentage bar round. Seven days pushes the profile floral and tannic. Past eight you are usually making vinegar, and we have the ruined lot in the back to prove it.
Drying
Raised beds under a movable cover, dried slowly. Beans dried fast on concrete case-harden: the outside seals, the inside stays wet, and three months later the sack smells of ham. If a card says twelve days on raised beds, somebody was paying attention.
Moisture at packing
Twelve per cent or below, or it moulds in the container. Above eight per cent or the beans go brittle and shatter into dust in the winnower. It is a narrow window and hitting it is a skill.
Read those five lines and you can predict roughly what a bar will taste like before you open it. That is the whole point of printing them.