Fossa

Singapore's Fossa is a bean-to-bar chocolate maker that roasts, cracks and winnows its own cacao and makes its chocolate by hand in small batches, with no additives.

About Fossa

Based in
Singapore
Known for
small-batch bean-to-bar chocolate from Singapore

Jay, Fossa's founder and chocolate maker, dreams up its flavors. The chocolate is made by hand in small batches in Singapore, with no additives: the team roasts, cracks and winnows the cacao, refines it into chocolate and wraps the bars by hand. Fossa buys only high quality cacao from farmers skilled at growing and fermenting it.

Sourcing is specific. Fossa works with the Ucayali River Cacao Company, about 400 smallholders near Pucallpa, Peru; Kokoa Kamili in Tanzania's Kilombero Valley; the family-run Costa Esmeraldas farm in Ecuador; the Rehoboth estate in Davao, the Philippines; and a farmer in Indonesia. It pays above commodity prices and favors cacao grown alongside native trees and food crops.

Fossa questions

What does bean-to-bar mean?

A bean-to-bar maker starts with dried cacao beans and makes the chocolate itself: roasting the beans, cracking and winnowing off the shells, grinding the inner pieces, called nibs, into a paste and refining it, usually with sugar, into smooth chocolate. The chocolate is then tempered, heated and cooled in stages so the cocoa butter sets into uniform crystals. Making it from the bean lets Fossa choose its farms and control how each batch is roasted and ground.

Why does Fossa favor cacao grown alongside other trees?

Agroforestry means farming trees together with crops on the same land, instead of planting one crop in long uniform rows, which is called monoculture. Fossa buys from growers who raise cacao alongside native trees and food crops. Fossa says this gives wildlife a habitat and keeps the farms productive over the long term, while monoculture chases short term profit at the expense of the land around it.

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