Post Harvest Cacao Procedures

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Growth and Production of Chocolate

Cultivation area/stats: Cacao grows about 20 Degrees north or south of the equator in more tropical rainforest settings. The cacao tree needs high year around temperatures with high rainfall. It needs a rainforest climate of about 70-90 degrees Fahrenheit year around to grow. The Cacao tree naturally lives under, "mother tree's", such as banana trees and other types of tall rainforest trees. This sheilds the tree from strong light. Cacao tree's basically like the shade but like to keep warm. The cacao tree can live up to around 90 years but only yeilds good amounts of cacao pods till about 60 years old, give or take. The tree will grow to about 30 feet on average when in the wild but will be trimmed shorter for harvesting reasons when in a plantation. Cacao Pods(fruit) blossom from a flower. It takes from 5 to 8 months for a bud to a ripen to a mature cacao pod. The flowers are pollinated by "midges" which are like gnats. Flowers will die very quickly if not pollinated. When the Cacao Pod is ripe it will have colors of yellow, orange, red and even purple. Once ripe it is time to start harvesting.

Types of cacao beans:
Forastero
Trinitario
Criollo

Fermentation

Fermentaion is a hugely important process in chocolate making. All the flavor of chocolate is started right here during this process. If a bean has been fermented badly then it is a bad bean. If it has been fermented properly then it is a good bean. It's as simple as that. Without good fermentation you can't make good chocolate.

The Process:

First the ripe Cacao Pods are cut off the tree's. The colors of ripe cacao pods can range from yellow to orange to purple to even red. The fruit(Pods) are then cut and broken open. On the inside of the pod you will find a white pulp covering all of the beans. The pulp and beans are taken out of the pods and left out to "Ferment". The most important Process of chocolate making!!!

There are two ways of fermenting:

1) The first method is the Boxed Method. This is where the beans and pulp are put into a large box that has wholes cut out of the sides and bottom of the box. The beans and pulp inside the box are then usually covered by banana leaves.

2) The next method is the Heap Method. This is where the beans and pulp are heaped into piles on the ground and left to ferment. These are also usually covered by banana leaves.

-Both methods have goods and bads to them depending on what type of flavor you are trying to get.

During the time of fermentation natural yeasts in the air start to break down the sugar rich pulp. This process changes the heat and ph level of the box of beans or the heap of beans. The beans and pulp are left out from 48 hours to as many as 7 days until a certain ph level is achieved and the Cotyledon(nib) of the bean is shrivled to a certain extent(usually Criollo and Trinitario beans, take a shorter amount of time). During that time span the beans can be turned a number of times to create a uniform fermentation or to allow air to get to the pulp for certain yeasts to work better. During the fermenation process the germ in the bean is killed. This process is a very scientific process and many chemical reaction take place. Those chemical reactions are what release and form the precursers of the chocolate flavor. Once the cacao is "Roasted" those flavor precursors will turn into the full chocolate flavor.

Sun Drying Cacao

Manufacturing of Chocolate:

Cleaning:
The beans are delivered as fermented and dried to manufacturers all of the world. The beans are then sorted by origin and they are cleaned.

Roasting:
Second most important part in chocolate making(1st Fermentation).
Roasting is a very important process where the flavor precursors that were developed during Fermentation are fully developed into the chocolate flavor we all know. It takes a very knowledgeable roaster to make good chocolate. This is a position in any factory that takes great skill and attention to detail. At one moment the beans might be under roasted and 1 minute later be over roasted. You have to trust your nose, your eyes, and your taste buds to see when the beans are done with their roast. All different beans require different roast times to bring out their individual and unique flavors. (many times coffee roasting machines are used to complete this job)

Winnowing:
This process breaks off the shell of the bean and then seperates the shell from the "cocoa nibs"(the nibs are just the broken pieces of the cocoa bean).

Milling:
The milling process crushes the nibs and releases the cocoa butter with the produced heat and friction. The machine that is mainly used to do this is the "Melangeur". It is a large round granite slab that has two huge rolling granite wheels that roll around the circle and crush the cocoa nibs. This creates heat and friction and starts to break down the particals and release the cocoa butter within the cocoa nib. This process will leave you will unrefined "chocolate liquor" or "unsweetened chocolate".

Cocoa Pressing:
Now is when you are going to seperate the cocoa butter and cocoa solids by using chocolate liquor in a cocoa press. You have to press with extreme pressure to seperate the two and you will end up with cocoa butter and "cakes" of cocoa powder. The cocoa powder is then pulverized into dust and cooled. The cocoa butter is stored and used for all different products but is also used to put back into chocolate to raise the cocoa butter percentage in a chocolate bar. You can take out different percentages of cocoa butter from the chocolate liquor to create different cocoa powders. This makes it so you can have a few different cocoa powders with varying percents of cocoa butter within. Popular percentages of cocoa butter within cocoa power are 10-12% and 22-24% but there are also others.

Addtional Ingredients:
This is where you mix the percents of any other ingredients in with the chocolate liquor(milk, sugar, lecithin(emulsifier), and Vanilla). You mix these ingredients together and then send it off to be refined.

Refining:
This is where you reduce the partical size in the chocolate to a smaller degree so there is not a grainy feeling to it when eaten. Partical size, once refined, needs to be below about 30 microns. Most manufacturers get it between 10-30 microns depending on what they are trying to acheive. At that point the human tongue can not discern grain anymore. This makes it so that the chocolate will be smooth on the tongue when melting. If you over refine you can end up with too small of a partical size and the chocolate will have a slimy and gummy feeling when eatin.

Conching:
Friction between the sugar and cacao particals occur and refine the mouthfeel of the chocolate and blends all the ingredients into a uniform mass. This can take from a few hours to 5 days. This procses is done to develop the flavors of the chocolate being made and to expel acids in the chocolate that contribute to acidic flavors. Conching will also coat every partical with cocoa butter so that it has a good clean melting property on your tongue. This is a very important step and if not done you will not get the texture and melting abilities that you want in fine chocolate.

Tempering:
The chocolate is "tempered". This is where all the crystals in chocolate are set so that the bar created has a good clean snap, a good shine, and a good melting point. The procedure for this and more explanation is is on the "Tempering" page of this site.

Cooling:
The chocolate is molded, cooled through a cooling tunnel, wrapped, and is then shipped around the world for us to enjoy.

Cocoa Pod

Cocoa Pod

Fermentation

Box Fermenation Method - Provided by http://www.sustainableharvest.org/

Colors of Raw, Fermented, and Dried Beans:

Bean type	Raw Bean	After Fermenting	Dried Bean
Criollo	White-Light Purple	Light Brown	Medium brown
Trinitario	White-Light Purple	Light Brown	Medium brown
Forastero	Purple	Brown	Dark Brown

Fermenation Box - Provided by www.cottontreelodge.com

Drying the Fermented Cacao

Sun Drying Cacao:

This is the true way to dry cacao beans. This process is done on the cacao farms and is done by putting the fermented beans onto large decks or wooden moving platforms(that can go under coverings during rain) and spread out so that they are not in a pile and all of the beans are close to flat on the deck or platform(Many farmers dry there beans right on patios like the one to the left). The beans are left out there during the day to dry under the sun and spread and mixed from time to time depending on the farmers technique. This is done with a rake looking device that moves the beans and seperates them. During the night time they are covered for protection. The beans are dried to the moisture content of 7-8% approximately and then baged in berlap sacs and sent off to chocolate manufacturers world wide. The whole drying process takes rougly a week give or take a few days. (If it is raining they cover the beans till the rain stops or if there is too much rain they go to alternative methods which are discussed below.)

Fire Drying:
If there is too much rain or the farmers need to get the beans out to buyers more quickly then some resort to fire drying. This process is pretty much self explanitory. They use fires to increase the heat around the beans and dry them quicker. The disadvantage is that the smoke from the fire gets into the beans and changes the flavor of the beans. Or at least covers up the flavor with a smoky type flavor in the finished product. This process is looked down upon when attempting to make premium beans.

Forced-Air Drying:
This process is somewhat like your drier at home for laundry. It artificialy dries the beans and does it rather quickly. This does get the cacao beans off to be sold quicker but it can have bad side effects. If the beans are dried to fast the beans can have an over acidic taste to them.

Roaster

Winnower

Melangeur