First roast in the oven.

Not much control. A lot of guesswork.

The setup felt crude from the start. Heat coming in waves, not evenly. No clear way to track what was happening inside the beans, only what the oven decided to show from the outside. You make adjustments, but they arrive late. Or all at once.

We went through it anyway.

Cracked, winnowed, ground.

We got lucky.

The chocolate came out full. Rounded. Balanced in a way we didn’t expect this early. Nothing sticking out too sharply. It held together.

Felt like a small win.

For a moment, it seemed like we had a starting point.

Tried to repeat it.

Same beans. Same steps, at least as far as we could tell. Same oven.

Couldn’t.

The next batch shifted. Then the one after that again. Each one close in parts, but never quite the same whole.

Started paying more attention. Writing things down. Timing everything more carefully. Watching colour, listening for cracks, trying to build something resembling a pattern.

Still not sure what exactly worked that day.

That’s the problem.