Midwest Craft Chocolate Festival: Cacao, Farming, & Flavor in the Heartland

The inaugural Midwest Craft Chocolate Festival will take place Friday-Saturday, November 22-23 in the small town of Rushville, Indiana. This is a really unique event in the world of craft chocolate. Most of our festivals are in big cities on the coasts—New York, Seattle, San Francisco—but craft chocolate is all about cacao, the farms where it’s grown, and the farmers and farm workers who grow it, so where better to hold a celebration of chocolate than a farming community in America’s heartland? 

Rushville is a small town about an hour southeast of Indianapolis, and the town leaders are eager to introduce their downtown to the world and vice versa. During their annual Christmas on Main event on the weekend before Thanksgiving, the town will welcome a craft chocolate festival that will bring bean to bar makers, chocolatiers, cacao farmers, and educators together to celebrate all things craft chocolate.

This festival is the brainchild of Dustin Cornett, the chocolate maker who owns Chocolat Cafe. He’s also the creator of the Craft Chocolat Challenge, an internationally-recognized competition for bean to bar chocolate makers. The event is being hosted and supported by the great folks at Heart of Rushville.

In today's episode we talk with Barb Genuario, whom many of us know on Instagram as @chocochaser. Barb is an educator and writer and the co-founder of the D.C. Chocolate Society. For many years, she was an assistant chocolate maker at Harper McCaw before they closed, and she is one of the most enthusiastic cheerleaders for craft chocolate. Barb is one of the organizers of the Midwest Craft Chocolate Festival, and I talked with her recently to get the details for the event and learn the unique vision behind this festival.

We also hear from Leila Carvajal Erker, CEO of Cocoa Supply. Cocoa Supply is the title sponsor of the Midwest Craft Chocolate Festival, and I reached out to Leila to ask what has her excited about the festival. Leila has been on the Bean to Barstool podcast several times in the past, once to talk about the background of her company and their focus on providing excellent cacao nibs for craft breweries, and once to talk specifically about the cacao fruit pulp products they’ve developed for brewers and other beverage makers.

More details can be found on the festival website. Tickets can be purchased here.

Check out David's new book Pairing Beer & Chocolate: A Guide to Bringing the Flavors of Craft Beer and Craft Chocolate Together.

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