Caldera Cacao Roasters

The peak of the cacao harvest happens each March in Central America, and this March we’re traveling to Guatemala and Belize to connect with the farmers we buy cacao from — and bring back cacao to make some micro-batches we’ll share in our craft chocolate subscription!

In March of 2023, we visited Guatemala for the first time — it was incredible. The million shades of green, the way light filters through the jungle leaves, the sounds of the wildlife, the vibrancy and warmth of the people and communities, the FOOD — we definitely fell in love, and left changed for the better.

Now, two years later and a year and a half into our chocolate making adventures, we’re going back with fresh appreciation and a new intention! Our farms-and-fermenterías route will take us north, near where we got to visit the temples of Tikal back in 2023 — and through the heartland of Mayan communities that have been cultivating cacao for thousands of years. We’ll continue east and north — traveling up a river, out into the Caribbean, and wrapping up in Belize before heading home to Montana.

Over three weeks, we’ll visit five cacao farms and look for fresh beans to bring back to Bozeman in our backpacks. Once we’re home, we’ll roast, winnow, and grind these beans to make dark chocolate, and we’ll share stories about the people that we meet along the way. These special micro-batches are limited to how many beans we can carry in our backpacks — and get through customs🤞 — and they’ll be going out to all the folks in our chocolate subscription. 🍫

If you want in on the adventure, you can sign up now for our monthly craft chocolate subscription here!

https://www.calderacacao.com/products/winter-chocolate-subscription

The peak of the cacao harvest happens each March in Central America, and this March we’re traveling to Guatemala and Belize to connect with the farmers we buy cacao from — and bring back cacao to make some micro-batches we’ll share in our craft chocolate subscription! In March of 2023, we visited Guatemala for the first time — it was incredible. The million shades of green, the way light filters through the jungle leaves, the sounds of the wildlife, the vibrancy and warmth of the people and communities, the FOOD — we definitely fell in love, and left changed for the better. Now, two years later and a year and a half into our chocolate making adventures, we’re going back with fresh appreciation and a new intention! Our farms-and-fermenterías route will take us north, near where we got to visit the temples of Tikal back in 2023 — and through the heartland of Mayan communities that have been cultivating cacao for thousands of years. We’ll continue east and north — traveling up a river, out into the Caribbean, and wrapping up in Belize before heading home to Montana. Over three weeks, we’ll visit five cacao farms and look for fresh beans to bring back to Bozeman in our backpacks. Once we’re home, we’ll roast, winnow, and grind these beans to make dark chocolate, and we’ll share stories about the people that we meet along the way. These special micro-batches are limited to how many beans we can carry in our backpacks — and get through customs🤞 — and they’ll be going out to all the folks in our chocolate subscription. 🍫 If you want in on the adventure, you can sign up now for our monthly craft chocolate subscription at the link in the bio or on website!

Fast-forward two weeks from now: Chocolate arrives in the mail, from past you to future you. You gasp. You’re delighted. You say, “Wow, I am so thoughtful.”

Our Chocolate Subscription is back! And (we think) it’s better than ever – three boxes of handcrafted dark chocolate, made from the bean in Bozeman, every month for $25.

What future you will get to enjoy:

🍫 Three 40g boxes of rough-cut dark chocolate, made extra fresh – two favorites + one exclusive new flavor
📝 A Maker’s Note with stories about the origins and ingredients
🪶 An original poem (because chocolate + poetry just makes sense)

How it works:

🎁 Pick up at our Bozeman factory (free, plus we get to say hi!), have it delivered in Montana via our USPS pals ($5!) or shipped anywhere in the US ($9!)
💝 You can also gift subscriptions! Share the love with a friend, your mom, someone who deserves an unexpected treat in the mail – or that person who always steals a bite of your chocolate anyway (finally, enough for you both!) 🦝

February’s boxes will be shipped (or ready for pickup) on the 14th!

You can find all the deets and sign up at:
https://www.calderacacao.com/products/winter-chocolate-subscription 👈👈

Happy winter from our Bozeman chocolate factory! If you were wondering where we disappeared to in January, the answer is: hibernation! 🐻

Our first holiday season making chocolate was a dream (and maybe a bit of a fever dream 🙃) We poured our hearts (and 100s of lbs of cacao) into October, November, & December—it was AWESOME—and by the end of the year, we were running on E.

So this past month, we slept, decompressed, & stared into the void. We worked our other jobs. We saw friends outside of holiday markets and the chocolate shop. We even talked to each other about something besides chocolate—what a strange and beautiful time. ;)

Logan played in two outdoor hockey tournaments, threw around heavy things 3x weekly at True Spirit CrossFit (our rad Shawnee Way neighbors!), and explored switching from fingerpicking to frailing on the banjo. Lauren stalked NOAA weather forecasts for primo golden-hour sunset M laps, climbed plastic rocks at the gym, and started worldbuilding a fantasy novel.

But between all that, we had a chance to really reflect on the absolutely amazing year that was 2024. (We STARTED A CHOCOLATE COMPANY! We got a commercial kitchen space! We got to work with 12 different cacao origins! Our chocolate traveled from Alaska to Ecuador!) We’ve been able to learn, do, and experience so much & none of it would have been possible without you. The folks we’ve connected with, stoke we’ve shared, and support we’ve felt from day one – it might sound a little corny (Logan said that actually this sounds “hella corny” 😆) but YOU are the best part of this journey.

And now, we’re rested, reset, and re-entering the world!

>>> We kicked off 2025 hosting our friends Commonform for a craft chocolate-making night –thanks Stacy Townsend Collective & crew for the great photos & great time!

>>> We’re starting another chocolate subscription for Feb-May (stay tuned for signups this week)!

>>> We’re restocking the online shelves, one batch at a time. A small but mighty selection is available now with more to come!

>>> And, March = cacao farm visits. LET’S GOOOO! We can’t wait to learn from the producers & connect with the communities at origin.

Thanks for being here. 2025 is gonna be good!

We're doing LOCAL CHOCOLATE DELIVERY on Monday, December 23rd! 🦌🛻🤶

Busy week? We feel you. 😅 That’s why we’re loading up the sleigh for a Santa run with FREE local delivery in Bozeman, Belgrade, Four Corners & Gallatin Gateway on Monday, December 23rd for all orders over $25! If you live within 15 miles of town, you can order your favorite chocolate online and select free drop-off at checkout. We can also do gift drop-offs for friends & fam, including a personalized note from you!

Just be sure to get your order in by noon on Monday :)

And our shop schedule is:
• Closed today (Solstice) 🌲
• Open Sunday (11-3) & Monday (10-6) 🎁
• Closed the 24th-1st ⛄️

Please give us a shout if you have any questions — we appreciate you more than we can say!!! 🙌🏼🎄✨

We love Wickens Ranch for their commitment to raising cattle through regenerative ranching practices and thoughtful land stewardship – they set a new standard for delicious, healthy, top-quality beef. Plus, they’re just great humans! That’s why we’re so excited to team up with them for a special craft chocolate & beef box that’s ready to gift (or enjoy yourself).

https://wickensranch.com/products/carnivores-confection-holiday-gift-box?_pos=1&_sid=4aa0360d0&_ss=r

Our online shop is officially open! 🍫💖 We offer $7 flat-rate shipping, and we mail orders every Monday and Wednesday. You’ll receive a tracking code so you know where your goodies are 📦🚚 Plus, we can add a personalized note for any gift orders!

Check out what we've got on the shelves at calderacacao.com/shop 🙂

🌟 It’s official: our online chocolate shop is OPEN! 🍫💖 All these cute boxes of chocolate are inventoried and ready to go! We offer $7 flat-rate shipping, and we mail orders every Monday and Wednesday. You’ll receive a tracking code so you know where your goodies are 📦🚚 Plus, we can add a personalized note for any gift orders! A huge thank you to everyone who ordered over the weekend – it was so much fun to ship your boxes today. ❤️🍫 And THREE CHEERS to Logan for all his Shopify wizardry getting things set up, and for taking amazing photos of all our chocolate and inclusions! You can find a link to the chocolate shop in our bio or at calderacacao.com/shop 🙂

Craft chocolate deliveries - comin' in HOT this week! Today's the last day to sign up :) at calderacacao.com/shop

It’s Sunday Funday at the chocolate shop, and we’re having fun boxing up the Maple & Sea Salt that’ll go out to our subscribers this week for the October edition of our three-month chocolate subscription. 🍁🍫 Thank you to everyone who’s already signed up this week! We’re so proud to get to share our craft chocolate with people from coast to coast. 🥰 And it’s been fun to see some folks purchase subscriptions as holiday gifts! If you gift a subscription, we can print off & include a personalized note in there for your friends or family. 📬 Today is the last day to sign up — so if you’ve been waiting for last call, this is it 😉🍻 Link in bio or https://calderacacao.myshopify.com/products/holiday-2024-subscription !

Ever wondered how chocolate gets that shiny finish, snap, and "melt in your mouth, not in your hand" quality?

https://www.instagram.com/reel/DBPBamOPg1z/?utm_source=ig_web_copy_link&igsh=MzRlODBiNWFlZA==

Tempering is the final step in our chocolate-making process! You might have heard of tempered steel or glass — honestly I don’t know exactly how it works for those things, but I’m assuming it’s a very similar concept 😅 of creating a grid structure that increases the strength and/or stability of a material. But for chocolate, we’re working with cacao fats and proteins instead of iron or silica! After grinding the nibs for days, and adding sugar, we pour the chocolate into big bricks. Untempered chocolate can be powdery and will “bloom”—that’s the swirls and dots you see as cocoa butter rises to the surface. Once tempered, it has that perfect snap, sheen, and melt-in-your-mouth stability. We break up the bricks and put them into our tempering machine. First, we melt the chocolate completely to reset any existing crystal structure. Then we follow a precise temperature curve to help form something called Type 5 beta crystals, which are key to achieving a tight, stable crystalline structure. Tempering is a science, with a healthy dose of unpredictable mystery – so it doesn’t hurt to add some good vibrations 🎶 as that geometry gets going. Our tempering machine helps a ton, but it’s much more complicated than “set it and forget” – we’re looking for visual cues, too, like the chocolate thickening and turning matte. When it’s go time, we pour and spread it to the perfect thickness, and then the fridge cools it quickly to avoid other crystal types forming. Afterwards, if it “pops” off the pan, that’s a good sign! This particular batch of Cardamom & Apricot will be going out next week in our three-month craft chocolate subscription! We are taking sign ups through this Sunday, October 20th — click the link in our bio to get in on it!

We have some sweet news – our chocolate subscription is back! And, this time, it’s open to dark chocolate enthusiasts across the country!

This October, November, and December, we’ll be delivering fresh craft chocolate to your door every four weeks.

For $42 a month, you’ll get:

🎁 Four boxes of our signature rough-cut dark chocolate (40g each), with unique origins, darkness levels, and inclusions (flavor sneak peek: Cardamom & Apricot and Maple & Sea Salt)
🍫 A chocolatey bonus – think drinking chocolate or chocolate-dipped oranges
📝 A maker’s note with a tasting guide, plus a poem on plantable paper

🏡 For Bozeman area locals: Choose between picking up at our shop just 5 minutes from downtown Main Street to skip the shipping costs, or we’ll mail it to your door!
📪 For chocolate lovers further afield: We offer $7 flat-rate shipping across the U.S., making it easy to gift a subscription to friends or family, and we’ll handle delivery (plus a personalized note from you!).

Sign up by October 20th at: https://calderacacao.myshopify.com/products/holiday-2024-subscription

A HUGE thank you to everyone who’s made this new chapter possible! It’s been a big, busy few months – moving into our own commercial kitchen, investing in serious chocolate-making equipment, dreaming up & refining new recipes, connecting with amazing local food artisans, and most recently, switching to packaging (plastic-free!) that lets us ship nationwide.

On a personal note, we’re still working our regular jobs to make this “chocolate thing” happen, pouring our time, energy, resources, and heart into this – and every bit of support makes a difference in helping us build the Caldera Cacao Roasters dream into something with legs (& income) of its own. :) So thank you for believing in us. It means more than you know!

We’re thrilled to keep growing the Caldera Crew and sharing our love for craft chocolate that supports cacao farmers and their communities, from Guatemala to Peru and beyond. We can’t wait to share this chocolate with you and make your holiday season even sweeter!

We’re so stoked to introduce something we’ve been working on for months – a new little box for our chocolate! And it’s ready for primetime. Well, almost ready... in a few days, we’ll be rolling out some new shipping options on our online shop + a holiday subscription that will use these boxes. That means that whether you live in Barrow or Boca Raton, you'll be able to order chocolate from calderacacao.com/shop, and through the magic that is the postal service, our chocolate will find its way to you.

And the clear bag inside this box is made of compostable cellulose! Specifically, NatureFlex™ cellulose made from wood pulp, which carries a boatload of certifications around sustainability, ecosystem biodiversity, reduced chemical and water usage, and rights of workers and indigenous populations. Love to see it!!! Like our jars and their compostable labels, this is all plastic-free packaging – you can compost the inner bag & its colibri sticker, and recycle the box!

What's the plan for the jars? We have LOVED the chocolate in jars. Alas, the jars have presented some challenges... the biggest challenge being that glass jars of chocolate are cumbersome and expensive to ship. But the jars are not becoming a relic of a bygone era – they're just staying local! You will still be able to pick them up at Grotto Meats, Commonform, our little chocolate factory, and a few other rad places we are excited to announce in the coming weeks.

We want to give a HUGE shout-out to our good friend Townsend Collective for doing all the awesome design work and illustrations, and also helping figure out how to lay out the total Rubik's cube of information for the boxes – all part of the packaging adventure :)