From Cocoa Bean to Chocolate ingredients
Instructions
Harvesting Cocoa Beans:
- Checking Ripeness – Before harvest begins, the cacao pods should be carefully inspected to ensure that they are fully ripe. Ripe fruits have a deeper color and are softer.
- Manual Picking – Usually, the cacao pods are picked by hand to avoid damaging the beans. This is a labor-intensive process.
- Opening the Fruits – The cocoa pods are opened, usually with the help of a machete, to extract the cocoa beans and pulp.
Fermentation
- Merge Pulp and Beans – The cocoa beans are placed in containers or baskets along with the pulp. The pulp helps with fermentation.
- Cover and Stack – The trays or baskets of cocoa beans and pulp are covered with banana leaves or other material to seal them off from the air.
- Fermentation Time – Fermentation time varies, but it can take anywhere from a few days to a week. During this period, complex flavors and aromas develop.
- Temperature and Aeration Checking – During fermentation, the temperature and aeration must be monitored to ensure the quality of the beans.
- Daily Checks – Throughout the fermentation process, the beans are inspected regularly to determine when they are sufficiently fermented.
Dry
- Drying – After fermentation, the beans are dried in the sun to reduce moisture and improve shelf life before further processing.
From cocoa bean to cocoa mass
- The dried beans are cleaned – pre-roasted – broken and unshelled. What remains is called nibs.
- The nips are roasted again and this process determines the final taste. Here, a manufacturer can add extra colourings and flavourings to optimise the taste of the cocoa nibs.
- The nibs are ground into cocoa mass.
Pressing cocoa mass
- The cocoa mass is pressed to remove the fat (cocoa butter) from it. What remains is a cocoa cake that is ground into cocoa powder.
Basic ingredients chocolate
- And so we get two basic ingredients for chocolate: cacapo powder and cocoa butter. Together with sugar and milk powder , we have listed the 4 ingredients of chocolate.
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