IS SUGAR VEGAN?

Q: What is your shipping policy?

Warm weather policy starts April 19, 2021: We want you to receive your chocolate in perfect condition and as quickly as possible. In warm weather, we ship on Mondays and Tuesdays (and Wednesday if the destination is close enough to guarantee arrival before the weekend). We add insulation and an ice pack at no charge, and we strongly encourage you to choose an expedited shipping method if your order is traveling outside of New England. We cannot be responsible for chocolate that is heat-damaged when you open it, so please have someone be home when your package is expected to arrive or provide a safe, cool delivery spot. We may need to delay shipment altogether if the weather is too hot here or there, and will notify you if this happens. You will receive an email when your package ships. We do not ship internationally at this time.

Q: What is your return policy?

Your chocolate is shipped in perfect condition and, as described above, we take every precaution to make sure it arrives in perfect condition as well. If it is damaged in transit, we will gladly replace it but cannot refund shipping costs. We cannot accept the return or exchange of chocolate that was received intact. Having said that, if you are unhappy with your order, we hope you will reach out to us. Our products are created for you, and we want to hear if we need to make changes to our product, our shipping methods, or anything else in order to keep you as a happy customer.

Q: How should I store my chocolate?

Best is to keep it between 65 and 70 degrees and in low humidity (less than 55%) and darkness, like a pantry or cupboard. Refrigeration is a good choice as long as you first put it in something else with as little air as possible such as a baggie with the air forced out. Please let it come to room temperature before enjoying it. Hot temperatures as well as big swings in temperature make chocolate “bloom” or go out of temper, meaning the cocoa butter separates from the cocoa solids. When this happens, although there is nothing wrong with the chocolate, it will have chalky whitish/greyish patterns (that’s the cocoa butter) and a different mouthfeel. When stored in ideal conditions, your chocolate can be enjoyed long after you got it, but we like it the most when it’s as fresh as possible.

Q: What does 70% mean?

It refers to the percentage of cacao by weight in the finished chocolate. Because Tangle Chocolate has only two ingredients, you know that our chocolate consists of 70% cacao and 30% sugar.

Q: Do you make other kinds of chocolate besides 70% dark?

Not right now...but what do you think we should make next? Please let us know!

Q: What's the big deal about Tangle Chocolate being freshly made?

Some foods improve with age, such as wine and many cheeses. Others lose some of their taste over time. We find that the flavors in chocolate mellow. Now, this may not concern you, and you may have been perfectly content your whole life with chocolate that arrived in a shop perhaps many months before you purchased it. But we invite you to try our chocolate and see if you notice a difference in the number and quality of distinct flavors straight from the cacao bean that you can taste.

Q: Is Tangle Chocolate single-origin? And what does that mean?

Yes, Tangle Chocolate is single origin. That means that all of the cacao beans used in our chocolate are from the same region. Those cacao trees experience the same soil, weather, altitude and so on that contribute to the distinct flavor of the chocolate. Tangle Chocolate uses cacao beans from a single region of Guatemala, the Cahabón region.

Q: What's the difference between bean-to-bar and craft or artisan chocolate?

These words, along with other ones like "small batch" and "handcrafted," are used in an attempt to differentiate specialty chocolate from large-maker industrial chocolate. However, none of them has a legal definition in the U.S., so their presence on a label doesn't necessarily guarantee anything, which can be confusing and even misleading. Bean-to-bar chocolate means that the maker started with cacao beans, did all of the roasting and refining in house, and ended up with the finished chocolate. That describes Tangle Chocolate. Very large companies technically can be bean-to-bar chocolate makers too, but the term is generally used to describe small chocolate makers like us. The terms “craft” and “artisan” imply that the chocolate was made by a small company with lots of human involvement in the process, whether or not the chocolate is bean to bar...but again, without a legal definition, it's hard for us as consumers to know what "small" is. Industrial chocolate makers have noticed consumer interest in craft products, and some now use words like "craft" and "artisan" on their labels. In addition, while some “craft” or “artisan” chocolate companies are also bean to bar, others buy ready-made chocolate, melt it and perhaps add special touches, and then remold and package it with their label. If you're unsure about a chocolate company's label language, call them and ask any questions you have.

Q: Is your chocolate certified organic?

Not at this time. Although the cacao beans and sugar that we currently use are certified organic, we have chosen not to go through the process to be certified organic as a company. This enables us to keep the door open in the future to using non-certified organic beans that we love. We understand that sometimes a farmer can't meet the costs and administrative duties associated with getting and maintaining organic certification even though their products are up to organic standards.

Q: Is Tangle Chocolate Fair Trade?

No. We are committed to paying more than the Fair Trade price standards and to meeting or surpassing any ethical standards you can think of. We buy our cacao beans from good people who know their many small farmers (average farm size: 2.5 acres) and are super transparent about their practices and finances.

April 8, 2021

This is the first installment of Tangle Chocolate’s look at the sugar industry, an effort to educate ourselves and our customers about this ingredient that is critical to chocolate production and so much more.

Tangle Chocolate is made with just two ingredients, cacao and sugar. We’ve written a lot about the cacao that we use, so we thought we’d explore the other ingredient, sugar.

Sugar comes from either sugar cane or beets. Vegan foods are those that are made with no animal products. Sugar cane and beets are plants. So why isn’t sugar always vegan?

The secret culprit is a product called bone char. Bone char is made from cattle bones and is a de-coloring filter in sugar production. It's used because cane sugar in its natural state is actually light brown (like the so-called raw sugar available in supermarkets). So bone char is what makes white sugar white. Interestingly, bone char is also often used in the process of making brown sugar, because brown sugar is simply white sugar plus molasses.

However, bone char is not needed to process beet sugar. Why? Because beet sugar doesn’t have the same slight brown color that natural cane sugar has; it's naturally white. Therefore, beet sugar is always vegan.

Are there any downsides to using beet sugar? Beet sugar and cane sugar are, chemically speaking, identical––they are both pure, crystallized sucrose. However, a small number of people notice differences in aromas, caramelization, and baking performance. For those highly-sensitive people, beet sugar has a very slight earthy or barnyard odor compared to cane sugar, burns more quickly when caramelized, and is a teeny bit worse for baking.

If you don’t want to use beet sugar for those reasons, know that bone char is not technically needed to process cane sugar. If it’s not used, the sugar isn’t the pure white that many of us are used to. And some people detect a difference in the taste between natural cane sugar and that that has been processed with bone char, and prefer one to the other.

But if you don’t mind the slight color and taste of unprocessed cane sugar, you’ll be able to keep using cane sugar and maintain a vegan diet by doing careful shopping. Look for brands that brand themselves as vegan, or brands that use words like “unrefined,” “natural,” or “raw.” All of these words indicate that no bone char was used in the production process.

If you’re vegan, you might be relieved to know that Tangle chocolate is completely vegan. We do not use sugar that was processed using bone char. However, if this was your first time hearing about bone char and you’re worried that you’ve been consuming an animal product while you’ve been using sugar, it might make you feel better to know that the bone char is essentially a tool used in the production of some white sugars, and isn’t actually in the final product that you consume. Still, for a product to be truly vegan, it needs to use sugar that doesn’t include bone char in the production process.

Many chocolate makers as well as consumers do not know about bone char and may erroneously label their chocolate as vegan when it’s not. As always, if you have any questions about the chocolate you’re eating, call the maker. They should be happy to answer your questions.

https://www.goldenbarrel.com/about-us/

https://www.mydarlingvegan.com/is-sugar-vegan/

https://www.peta.org/about-peta/faq/are-animal-ingredients-included-in-white-sugar/

https://www.britannica.com/story/whats-the-difference-between-cane-sugar-and-beet-sugar

https://www.whatsugar.com/post/difference-between-cane-and-beet-sugar