The newest way to curb your chocolate craving is with tea. Sort of. These dunk-able bags contain the husk of award-winning cacao beans from the Solomon Islands rather than tea leaves. 

Jessica Pedemont of Chocolate Artisan in Sydney’s Inner West has teamed up with Stitch Coffee to use the husks, which are a by-product of chocolate making, to create a unique, flavoursome drink that she is calling ‘tea’ because the chocolate tisane is in a dunk-able sachet on a string, which mimics a teabag.

The sachet contains cacao husk and some cacao nib, she suggests pouring boiling water over it and leaving it to infuse for three to five minutes. “It’s very aromatic in the sense it’s a light, chocolatey aroma which fills the whole nasal passage so you can taste it before the first sip. Unlike hot chocolate, it’s light and refreshing. It can have a little bit of a fruity tang in the back note and it’s lightly toasted,” she says.

“You could add milk or sweetener. Just like normal tea you can personalise it to your taste. Unlike black tea it doesn’t have tannins so you can’t over-extract it and feel like your mouth’s been punched in the face.” 

Pedemont also runs social enterprise South Pacific Cacao, which is how she has access to such high-quality beans. “We don’t know of anyone else in the country doing this because it’s rare to have cacao husks,” she says.

“A lot of people who make chocolate buy the cacao powder and mix it with butter and chocolate but we get in the beans in to make artisan chocolate,” she says.

“The husk is a by-product and what other people see as rubbish. Commercial chocolate usually roasts the beans at a high temperature to produce a strong, monotone chocolate note which kills off other aromas along the way. 

“Because we have the best quality beans, we lightly roast them to protect the nuances and character of it. We then cool it, crack it, winnow it (remove the outer shell) to separate the nib from the husk. There’s a little nib dust in the shell, it has so much natural oil and fat in it that when you make this hot beverage you can see the oil come to the top. It’s all part of the flavour and aroma.” 

While the husk tends to be seen as rubbish, in the US it’s used in everything from barbecue rubs to beer-making. Australia is slowly catching on. “It’s a very desirable ingredient, we’re lucky if we get 15-25 per cent of the husk,” Pedemont says.

“Before lockdown, Josh Niland was serving our tea on the degustation menu at Saint Peter as a palate cleanser and Cornersmith was serving it as a brewed tea. Shady Wasef from Pioik Bakery is experimenting with it and breweries such as Flat Rock and One Drop are using it in beer.”

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