CACAO AND CHOCOLATE PROCESSING, PRODUCTION

AND CONSUMPTION
 CACAO PROCESSING

 Cacao Fermentation

 Chocolate Processing

 Cacao Butter Processing

 Chocolate Products

 High-Quality Chocolates

 Designer Chocolates
 Chocolate Rules, Regulations and Spies

 World Chocolate Consumers

CACAO PROCESSING

cacao beans There is no chocolate flavor until the seeds have been fermented. Ground up raw beans
taste like dirt. When dry cacao beans are ground up they produce a gooey mess with a surprising
amount of liquid. This is mostly fat---unsaturated fat, the kind that's good for you.
 Fresh beans have a mild, bitter, flower-like taste. After they have been harvested they are
fermented to mellow their flavor and get rid of the bitterness. This is when they acquire their
chocolatey taste and become dark brown in color.

 Growers ferment the cacao beans for about five or six days in wooden crates. During fermentation
the sugar in the pulp turns to alcohol (the same way sugar in grapes turn to wine). The alcohol then
ferments into lactic and acetic acids and causes the cell walls of the bean to breakdown and release
the chocolate flavor. Low quality beans are simply left to dry, which causes only partial fermentation
and a slightly bitter aftertaste.. The best beans are allowed to completely ferment. After fermentation
the beans are dried in the sun so fungus won't grown on them when they are stored or transported.

 It takes about two handfuls of dried beans to make one bar of chocolate. How the beans are
handled after they are taken from the pods is often a key to their flavor. Beans that dry too fast or are
dried with fire often have a smoky flavor while those that haven't fermented long enough remain
bitter and don't develop a strong chocolate flavor.

 Books: Chocolate: History. Culture and Heritage edited by Louis Evan Grivetti and Howard-Yana
Shapiro (Wiley, 2009); True History of Chocolate by Sophie and Michael Coe, food historians
(Thames & Hudson); Chocolate: A Bittersweet Saga of Dark and Light by Mort Rosenblum (North
Point Press)

Websites and Resources: All About Chocolate fieldmuseum.org ; Encyclopedia of Life Cacao

Plant eol.org/pages/484592 ; Chocolate and the Maya authenticmaya.com ; Chocolate Food of the
Gods site exhibits.mannlib.cornell.edu/chocolate  ; Cacao
Tree hort.purdue.edu/newcrop/duke_energy/Theobroma_cacao  ; International Cocoa Organization
(ICCO): www.icco.org/ ; Wikipedia article Wikipedia ; Food of the Gods e-
book gutenberg.org/ebooks ; Cadbury Chocolate: cadbury.co.uk ; Hersey making
Chocolate hersheys.com/discover/ ; Production of Chocolate sfu.ca/geog

Cacao Fermentation
Cacao fermentation in colonial Java Describing a shack used for the fermentation of a ton of cacao Bill
Buford wrote in The New Yorker, “Inside, the room was shadowy and hot. The smells multiplied
instantly, a sudden olfactory cargo: a brewery, but also a winery, a vinegar factory, a dairy. ...There
was a gas, mildly disconcerting. It singed the lungs but felt strangely pleasant...One trough was full.
The beans, about chest-high, were covered with banana leaves, a gently heaving green blanket.
Wrapped tight, an oven on high. The yeast plus sugar produced carbon dioxide, plus heat and
alcohol. There was plenty of yeast on the banana leaves, a rich source...Badero pulled back some
leaves. The beans instantly released a more intense hit of everything we'd been smelling. It was
alcoholic and vaporous."
 “They were in the third day of fermentation, and were now purply, the sweet pulp almost entirely
gone, although still gooey. ..the full trough was separated from other empty ones by wooden slats.
Badero removed one so that he could shovel beans into the next space. No matter how tightly
everything was wrapped, the beans on top were cooler than the ones at the bottom. By shoveling
everything next door, Badaro was turning them over...With cacao, an infantry of yeast converge in
the pulp around the seed and convert it into alcohol...the liquids drain away, the alcohol
evaporates...the seed is heated to temperature rarely seen in the natural world. The shell is savaged
and penetrated, until the tissue inside is invaded."

 “At the end, the bean is the equivalent of the grapey mash” in wine production. “It has been reduced
in size. It smells powerfully of vinegar. Its proteins have been disfigured. If you open one up, its
insides look a though they’d been obliterated. In the devastation, the extreme intensities of cacao
are converted to flavors."

Chocolate Processing
 Chocolate is made with beans that have been cleaned, roasted, crushed, shelled and winnowed.
This is often done at foreign plants. In a huge cleaner, the beans are separated from their
accompanying debris by huge blowers. Then they are roasted in another machine. The winnower
separates the beans from the shells, with the beans falling from side and the shells sliding out one
side the other.

 The resulting “nibs” (hulled pieces of dried or roasted beans) or meat of the bean are ground and
heated until a thick paste called chocolate liquor is formed. Cacao nibs have a strong chocolatey
flavor when sucked or chewed. Some people consider them too bitter and too gritty to consume
while other people find their flavor to be “marvelously deep and powerful."

chocolate factory machines in a museum

 The liquor is combined with coca butter, sugar, milk and vanilla and is "conched"---rolled over and
over against itself like pebbles in the sea---in enormous circular machine that resemble a conch
shell. Conching adds smoothness and creaminess and can be done anywhere from a few hours to a
few days. Afterwards it is poured into molds for bars or wafers. Hardened chocolate liquor, which
has no alcohol by the way, become bakers chocolate. Chocolate is difficult to mix with milk because
of the intolerance of the fats to mix with anything with water in it.

 Describing the making of chocolate, Kate Singleton wrote in the New York Times: "The crude
chocolate is heated to around 40 to 50 degrees. When the cocoa butter melts the basic ingredients
can be worked together with vanilla and sugar until it is ready to be placed in rectangular aluminum
forms that give the sturdy little bars of chocolate their shape. Before the chocolate solidifies, these
forms are lined up on a large wooden tray that is beaten relentlessly against the thick pale gray
marble kitchen top." The last steps gets ride of air bubbles, which leaves the bars shiny and smooth.

 Fermentation, roasting and conching all influence the flavor of chocolate. Small variations in the
amount of sugar and cocoa butter, roasting temperature can also make a big difference in the flavor
of the chocolate. Too high of a roasting temperature, for example, can ruin the delicate flavor of the
best beans and make even mild beans have a bitter flavor.

Cacao Butter Processing

Cocoa butter If chocolate liquor is subjected to high pressure, cocoa butter is squeezed out and cacao
powder is left behind. Chocolate powder is essentially hot cocoa mix without sugar. Cocoa butter
makes chocolate rich and creamy and what gives it that melt-in-your-mouth quality.
 Cacao butter is the world's most expensive natural fat. It has a melting point of 90̊F, which is why
chocolate doesn't melt at room temperature but melts in your hand or on hot days when
temperatures rise above 95 F. Chocolate candy is rare in tropical countries with few refrigerators.
Additives that help keep chocolate hard in hot climates compromise its creaminess.

 Cacao butter is what gives fine chocolate its silky texture. The best chocolates often have high
concentrations of it, Bars made by Nestle and Mars have relatively small amounts of cocoa butter
but large amounts of sorbitol, a sweetener that extends their shelf life.

Chocolate Products
 Products made from chocolate include cocoa drink, milk chocolate bars, truffles, bonbons (filled
chocolates, known as "pralines" in Europe).
chocolate research As is the case with coffee, most chocolates are made with blends of cacao beans
with small amounts of premium "flavor" beans providing most of the flavor and cheaper industrial-
grade beans making up most of the bulk. Candy markers often times substitute vegetable oils, which
are much cheaper, for cocoa butter, and the result is not chocolate but "confectionery coating,"
which is found enveloping Baby Ruths and many other candy bars.
 A modern milk chocolate bar is only 40 percent chocolate, White chocolate is produced from a
mixture of cocoa butter, sugar, milk and flavoring, but no chocolate liquor, True chocolate
connoisseurs do not consider white chocolate to be real chocolate because its essentially just cocoa
butter and sugar.

 Cacao and chocolate contain hundreds of substances and about 40 or 50 of them are considered
critical for chocolate's taste, but no one is quite sure which ones they are, let alone manufacture
them. Thus far efforts to produce a synthetic chocolate have largely been unsuccessful.

 Chocolate is sometimes uses as a building material. A Barcelona confectionery built a chocolate

replica of the Statue of Liberty in 1984; and a psychiatrists in Massachusetts lives in chocolate
house imported from Holland in 1894. At the World Columbian Exposition in 1893, the Stollerck
company produced a 38-foot-high Renaissance temple made from chocolate.
Chocolate cubes with coffee beans During a slump in chocolate sales producers are experimenting with
cocoa butter soap, soft drinks, jam, jelly, vinegars, fertilizer and brandy produced by sweating cocoa
beans (the juice that trickles out as the beans lie in heaps on the ground covered by banana leaves).
Chocolate perfume are already on the market. and go on chocolate cruises.

High-Quality Chocolates
 High end chocolates invariably come as bars. Anything less---a truffle or a nougat---is regarded as
frivolous, wrote Buford. Their makers regard themselves with same seriousness as the makers of
fine wines, the wrappers of bars are often like little encyclopedias, carefully explaining the
ingredients and where the beans come from. Some bars have the harvest years like vintage wines.
Sometimes the word “crus” used to name after a specific farm, a term that originated in one of the
best wine-growing areas of Bordeaux.

 There is an increasing demand for fine, dark single-origin (unblended with other varieties)
chocolate. The most important determinate of a fine chocolate here is cacao content with 70 percent
generally regarded as the benchmark for a quality product. The figure is a measure of “cocoa” mass,
the mass after the beans are ground. The first 70-percent bar was released in 1986 by Valrhona
(See Below). Before that most dark chocolate was half sugar, and regarded as a bittersweet
confection.

 Chocolate makers sell their products with the cacao content printed on the wrappers. Chocolates
with a high cacao content rarely spoil and remain fresh years after they have been made.
chocolatier In recent years a number of chocolate producers have introduced expensive “varietal”
products that they hope will sell like fine wines or specialty coffees. Like the designer chocolates
above most are dark and lightly sweetened. Some companies even make chocolates classified by
vintage (with beans picked the same year) and "estates” (with beans from the same place).
 The Wine Spectator has begun running chocolate reviews in which dark chocolates are described
with terms like "powerful body," "a slightly puckish finish," “astringent with some floral notes," and
"oak overtones." One reviewer called a Venezuelan chocolate “silky and smooth with hints of black
and red fruits." A Sumatran-bean chocolate was said to have a “nice balance of cream, earth and
fruit, though finishes a bit short." Varieties from Ghana, Trinidad and Ecuador has been described
respectively as “long-lasting...peppered with spicy peaks and only a hint of vanilla," “redolent of
smoky, dried, herbs and blond tobacco” and with “hints of figs and candied citrus, rich on the
tongue."

 Porcelana from South America is one of the rarest varieties. It is sold by the Italian company
Amedai for $270 a kilogram. Chocolate from the Chuao valley beans of Venezuela, Ocumares and
Madagascars are also highly sought after.

Designer Chocolates
 Expensive designer chocolate makers include Valrhona of France's Rhone Valley, Michel Cluizel of
France and El Rey from Venezuela.. Guittard Chocolate, Tcho, Scharffen Berger and Tcho from the
United States are relative newcomers.

 El Rey was founded in 1929. It offers nine bars. Michel Cluizel is a family-run chocolate company
with each division headed by one Cluizel's offspring.
 Valrhona was founded in 1924 and sells ten basic bars. It is named after the Caribbean island
where chocolate was first seen by Europeans (on Columbus's last voyage). The Valrhona Guanja
was the first 70-percent cacao bar. It was released in 1986 after two years of secret testing by pastry
chefs and repeated testings by a Valrhona jury. The Gran Couva bar is made from beans grown on
one company-owned estate in Trinidad, where the whole chocolate-making process is controlled
from beginning to end.
 Scharffen Berger is based in Berkeley, California. It sells six bars. Tcho, founded by a former NASA
software developer, uses wine descriptions like “fruity," “nutty” and “floral” to describe its products.
Hershey bought organic chocolatier Dagoba and chocolate artisans Scharffen Berger and Joseph
Schmidt.

 Top of the line chocolate bars, which sell for between $5 and $14, include Tcho, Amano and Cladio
Coralla. Among the gourmet bars that sell for $3 to $4 and have things like rose hips and bacon in
them are organic Dagoba bars and Theo bars. Scharffen Berger extra Dark has a cacao content of
82 percent.

Chocolate Rules, Regulations and Spies

Chocolate spread
Chocolate fudge cake Swiss candy makers are required by law to use Swiss raw materials. Foreign
companies have no such restrictions and, as journalist Gordon Young said, this opened the country
up to "an invasion from Mars." In the 1960s the makers of Milky Ways and M&M's landed in
Switzerland with cheaper candy products and before the Swiss realized what was happening the
American company had captured a large portion of the children's candy market. The Swiss
chocolate companies for their part have had great success expanding into new markets in Turkey
and Saudi Arabia.
 In the U.S. and most countries in Europe insists that real chocolate must made entirely with cocoa
butter. Some European countries allow candy manufactures to replace 5 percent of the cocoa butter
with cheaper vegetable oil. A big issue in the European Union is whether of not chocolate-like candy
made with palm oil can be labeled as chocolate or must include the words "vegetable fat" alongside
the product name.

 In the mid 2000s, Hershey replaced cocoa butter with vegetable oil in several products, which is
why the labels of Mr. Goodbar, Milk Duds and Krackle say things like “chocolatey” rather than “milk
chocolate."

 Sometimes there is even espionage in the chocolate industry. In the 1980s an employee of a Swiss
Candy producer photographed some recipes and tried to sell them to the Russians, Chinese and
Saudi Arabians. In the early 2000s, a major figure in the Venezuelan chocolate trade was gunned
down in his own car.

World Chocolate Consumers

 Belgium, Norway, Switzerland and the United Kingdom are the four major chocolate consuming
nations in the world. Each person in these countries on average eats over 16 pounds of chocolate
every year. The Swiss hold the number one position with a per capita consumption rate of 22
pounds.

 Americans buy about $12 billion worth of chocolate a year. Hershey and Mars claim about two
thirds of the U.S. chocolate market. About a quarter of all chocolate sales are in dark chocolate. This
sector is expected to grow to $5½ billion by 2011.

 Per Capita chocolate consumption between 1990 and 1994: Germany (7.1 pounds); Britain (6.83
pounds); France (5.97 pounds); the United States (4.94 pounds); Japan (1.98 pounds). [Source:
New York Times, LMC International, International Cocoa Organization]

 In 2010, students from England's University of Warwick powered a Formula 3 race car with fuel
made from leftover chocolate. The vehicle, which was displayed the Massachusetts Institute of
Technology, was capable of going from zero to 60 kph in 2.5 seconds and reaching speeds of 215
kph. It had a BMW engine converted to run on diesel made from chocolate factory waste.
Chocolate in KaDeWe department store in Germany