Pralines, 85% cacao
Fourteen fillings from mango and fig to hazelnut krokant and cherries in cherry liqueur, all in the same 85% shell.
300 THBSee all flavours
Chiang Mai, Thailand. Bean to bar.
Thai cacao, kept in Thai hands.
Grown by around 50 partner farms, roasted, ground and tempered at our own facility in San Kamphaeng, and finished as 85% dark chocolate that lets the bean do the talking.
100%Thai-grown cacao
85%Dark, by design
A different question
Not how much cacao sells for. Who gets to keep growing it.
A family export business noticed that one dried cacao pod fetched more overseas than a farmer earned for several kilograms of beans. Dragon King Chocolate is what happened next.
Our story
From dried pods to a farmer network
Twenty years of cacao, told without the marketing.
Products
85% pralines, nibs and cocoa mass
Fourteen filled pralines, plus the raw materials we make them from.
Grow your own
Trinitario saplings and the farm co-op
Four trees for a balcony, or a thousand for a rai.
The gap we saw, twenty years ago
800baht for one dried pod, sold overseas as decor
50to 120 baht per kilogram, paid to the Thai farmer for raw beans
Our family exported dried flowers and decorative plants. One line was dried cacao pods, which sold abroad for around 800 baht each. At the same time the farmers who grew that cacao were getting 50 to 120 baht for a whole kilogram of beans.
So we stopped asking what cacao could sell for and started asking how the people at the beginning of the chain could keep making a living from it. That question is the company.
The chocolate
All products
85% dark, then fruit so intensity never becomes monotony.
San KamphaengEvery step, one roof
The process
Dried beans arrive. Nothing leaves until it is chocolate.
Partner farms ferment and dry the beans. After that, everything happens at our facility in Chiang Mai. No outsourced couverture, no imported cocoa mass, no white-label steps.
We chose 85% for the whole praline line so the character of the Thai bean stays at the centre. The fruit fillings are there to keep that intensity interesting, not to hide it.
- 1
Roasting
Dried beans from partner farms, roasted in small batches.
- 2
Shell removal
Winnowed to nibs. The husk goes to the farms as mulch.
- 3
Grinding
Nibs ground to cocoa mass. Sold as is, or carried on.
- 4
Chocolate-making
Sugar added to reach 85%. Nothing else in the base.
- 5
Tempering
Cooled and worked for snap and shine.
- 6
Molding
Fluted shells cast one tray at a time.
- 7
Filling
Mango, fig, apricot, hazelnut and the rest.
In the founder's words
"Not enough people know Dragon King Chocolate yet." The founding family, Chiang Mai
That is the honest state of things. The farms are real, the process is real, the chocolate is in jars. What the company has never had is a way of telling people. This site is the start of fixing that.
Trinitario hybrid490 THB a tree, from four
Grow your own
Twelve trees is a family's chocolate for the year.
We sell 1.5-year-old Trinitario saplings, the natural Criollo and Forastero cross that gives aroma with hardiness. They flower at about 15 months. Home chocolate-making is realistic within two to three years, with ordinary kitchen equipment.
If you have a rai or more, the farm co-op is a different conversation: setup help, replacement trees in the first three months, and a guaranteed buyer for the harvest.
Trees and the co-op
Where to buy today