A summer full of chocolate…. Who would have thunk?
Yes, August 2025, I visited the Industry museum in Chemnitz, where the EuroBean festival took place. I’ve heard about this festival several times, but never managed to make it there. Figured 2025 would be the year to rent a car and make my way. Even though I still had plenty of chocolate stock at home, I went with the familiar curious mindset: always on the lookout for the next interesting chocolate creation, looking for both new makers, and the ones I’ve come to love.

The start of it all was a bit unfortunate, as I was stuck in traffic. Two accidents on the atobahn made I arrived late. Mind you: very, very late. I got tickets for Friday and Saturday, and basically managed to only join for two hours on Friday, missing some of the talks I had looked so forward to joining (still hoping to hear Peter speak at some point). Disappointing, but as a compromise, it made I was an hour early on Saturday: making me the first in line to get through the doors.

This time around, I set myself some ground purchasing rules. I brought a medium-sized cooling bag to walk around with (playing it safe with the summer heat) and decided that whatever would fit in the bag, was all I could take home. If it wouldn’t fit in the bag, it also would not fit in the chocolate fridge at home (set to a chococomfy 18 °C), so it shouldn’t come with me. I further limited myself to a maximum of three bars per maker.

The first rule worked perfectly. The second… let’s say it is still a work in progress. I ‘blame’ (read love) Zotter chocoade for that: a maker smart enough to sell custom cooling bags. Not only convenient, but I’m a real sucker for cacao & chocolate related merchandise. What, you might ask, did I buy? Everything in the picture above this post: 36 bars, truffels, dates, nuts, two t-shirts, two pairs of earring and a necklace. Helped that not every of those items needed to go in the cooling bag.

The EuroBean chocolate festival is exactly the kind of place where restraint of the chocolate consumer is put to the test. It is a full out, long weekend, chocolate focussed festival. The main aim (to me), was to get consumers buying amazing chocolate, but there was a grand support program as well. There were talks by different people, markers organised tastings and I even had the pleasure of my first experience to taste chocolate with colour. I will explain more about Hazel’s flavour map in a seperate post.

Second thing these events are great for, is for the chocolate makers and other professionals: the networking and peeking next door. I imagine the later can be very inspiring and clarifying.

Though I love it when people come together around chocolate, I love it even more when there is a deepend understanding about chocolate. This festival is something I recomend to anyne who is new to the artisan chocolate world or wises to discover more exting bean to bar chocolate makers. Much like the chocolate festival in Amsterdam, it’s a consumer focused event. Don’t get me wrong: it’s amazing. But I’m looking for more…. Though I’m not quite sure what I want more of….

There is something special about how chocolate brings people together. No matter where we’re from, what language we speak, or what kind of week we’ve had, a shared love for cacao has a way of breaking the ice. At EuroBean I ran into old chocolate friends and I also made a lot of new ones. Somehow conversations start easily, often with a bar in hand, followed by laughter, curiosity, and sometimes the beginning of new friendships.