the next batch and a next chapter

adios Next Batch Substack, howdy-do to writing about what brings me cacao~joy

Hello Next Batch subscriber folks!

Before I get started, I made 2 attempts to send this out as an email (not a post that would live on my publication), and it seems it was sent to only about 100 of my subscribers. My apologies for imploding your inbox if you already received this.

Dropping in to let you know that after 160+ “how to make bean to bar” and “what I’m thinking about as a bean to bar craft chocolate maker” and “here’s how I did swirls/plant-based white chocolate/inclusions/roasting” etc etc posts, the Next Batch Substack is officially retiring, as I am heading in a new direction with my chocolate writing.

I’m still teaching bean to bar chocolate making at the Next Batch School, because yes, that is my day job, but TBH the reason I do it is that I’m smitten with being around the most creative, kindhearted, intentionally-crafting makers and chocolate educators in the world. Attending the Santa Fe Women’s Cacao Summit last week truly reinforced that for me, and reminded me that I have—we all have—something to offer. To any of you who’ve been/currently are a student, thank you for all the heart and soul you are bringing to craft chocolate.

Here at the Substack publication formerly known as the Next Batch (as of a few minutes ago it’s now the Cacao Barista) there will be chocolate, albeit in the form I crave most, consume gladly and gratefully every day, and find so compelling. Did you know that cacao first came to the United States around 800 AD, traveling 1200 miles north of where it grows? And that this first cacao was consumed, not as solid bars or cakes or even beans, but as drinking chocolate?

As you might guess from my career at a company I named MAP, I have a thing for exploring new directions, and in my chocolate world drinking chocolate is both a noun and a verb; this means it’s both love & lore, plus the daily habit that has helped me forge my chocolate path even when I thought I’d possibly lost my way.

What’s brewing

A whole lot of cacaolove served in liquid form, with ingredients you might have never heard of or considered, plant-based or not, old school & new frontiers, history that I’m learning from my friend and chocolate historian, Sophia Rea of Project Chocolat, research into the culture of drinking chocolate, and maybe what I’m best known for: random inspiration swirled into every cup.

My plan is to keep this publication free, and to do that I’ll be offering a monthly printed newsletter via snail mail

So what does this mean for all those NB how-to/recipe/etc posts?

In February 2025 I stopped accepting paying subscribers, making this rather large lot of info, insights, recipes, and how-to’s available to everyone for a bit then only to my paying subscribers. Paying subscribers will still have access to my original posts for a very short while before they disappear from this location into my archives.

This was never just an email

My posts, just like this one I’m sending you, land in your email inbox. But posts on Substack (unlike those email newsletters you get from Patagonia or Starbucks or the ones we chocolate makers send to our customers) aren’t just emails: they live on a writer’s Substack publication, kinda like a blog/website, available even to people who don’t sign up to have them dropped into their inbox, and can be read through a browser like any website, and not just in your inbox.

If you already subscribe, to receive what’s coming, you don’t need to do a thing.

If you unsubscribe you’ll still be able to come to Substack through a browser on your computer or via the mobile app, and read my publications or anyone else’s. There’s every imaginable subject on Substack, and some wonderful, noteworthy writers. Do you dream of learning to cook in France in a french chateau? Kate Hill’s Camont Journals is for you. Are you a bird lover? (me too), then David Perry and his photos should be in your day. Ever heard of Letters from an American? It’s here.

In the chocolate-sphere: Chocolate & jam maker (and James Beard award-winning pastry chef) Emily Luchetti writes about her life; cacao grower and chocolate maker Ruth Maloney of Floreo is another writer I highly recommend, as well as Lilla Toth-Tatai of Taste Better Chocolate, Raven Hanna of One Cacao Tree, Lyn Bishop of Quetzel Cacao , and Jenn Earle of the Next Delicious Thing.