The first step is cracking the cacao pods open without cutting into the beans.
This is 32 cacao pods which is enough to fill up a 1 gallon container with cacao beans. With this amount you could use an artificial heat source to try to ferment the beans. The fermentation process in Hawaii takes 7 days.
To properly ferment cacao a lot of beans and a large container is required. We use an igloo ice chest because the walls are insulated and can retain a lot of heat.
We line the box with rinsed banana leaves. The box gets a rinse down too but not scrubbed because we want all of the sleeping microbes from the previous ferment to wake up and inoculate the next batch. If the walls of the box is moldy we clean it to start over again.
The cacao beans are juicy. This liquid should be drained out in the first day or two. You can save this and drink the sweet cacao pulp juice. (at your own risk of course!)
Naturally occurring yeasts start turning the sugars into alcohol. There will be a sweet and sour alcohol smell. For the first two days the lid is closed completely because oxygen is not needed at this stage and we want to keep the inside as warm as possible.
By day three there is less pulp around the beans.
After day 3 the beans should start to get warm and hot in the center. We cover the beans with banana leaves and a big towel to keep the heat in and keep the lid slightly open to still allow air to go in and out. make sure you cover the cacao beans with some banana leaves at the edges where the heat may escape but not make it air tight.
Most of the liquid should have drained out by this time. The fermenting juice is fizzy and bubbling and has a lot of alcohol in it. We don’t recommend drinking this at this stage but some people do. (*at their own risk!)
On day 3, 5, and 7 the beans are ‘turned’ so that they are aerated to give the surface of each bean a nice whiff of oxygen to encourage the aerobic microorganisms to proliferate. This work is done quickly so that the generated heat is not lost. A few insects that are attracted by the smell might find their way in the box. This is okay because they are carrying local yeasts on them and bringing them to the party.
Once activated the cacao beans should start getting hot on their own similar to a compost pile. Billions of microorganisms are living, eating, playing and loving together generating energy. The temperature will start to climb to about 110 °F and 115 °F and sometimes over 120 °F degrees. The longer it stays over 110 °F the better your ferment will be.
Transferring the cacao beans into containers makes it easier to rotate the beans from the bottom to top, and from the corners into the center. At this stage the temperature of the beans can really react to the amount of oxygen it is exposed to.
After around seven days the temperature will start to crash down and the ferment is now complete. Sometimes it might require an extra day.
The fissures in the cacao bean should open when fermented properly. Cut test are done periodically to check on the progress
.
The beans on the top row have open fissures and are nicely fermented especially the top center one because it is slightly brown and very juicy inside. The beans on the bottom row have closed fissures so they could have used another day for better fermentation.
In the final stages the beans will have an overwhelming vinegary smell to them with hints of chocolatey aromas. Our cacao ferments usually smell like berries and raisins.
When attempting small batches a towel can be a good blanket to keep the heat inside the box. A closed jar of hot water can be placed in the box as well to keep the microbes warm and active.
A sunny dry area is required to dry the beans. We built a small drying house and built racks with wire mesh.
Freshly fermented cacao beans have a 60% moisture content. We spread them out in a single layer and sun dry the beans down to about 7% to 8% moisture content. The drying may take anywhere between 2 weeks up to a month depending on the weather outside.
After 7 days the cacao pulp juice kept in the fridge is slightly bubbly and alcoholic. It tastes like a chardonnay.
Chemical reactions are still occurring inside the bean during the drying phase. The cacao beans are acidic so there shouldn’t be any mold growing on the beans.
Once dried, the beans are stored in grain storage bags which keeps dust and critters out but allows air exchange. Dried cacao beans can be stored in a cool and dry area for many years. This is what gets sold and traded as a commodity on the world market.
Dried cacao beans are roasted at around 400 °F for about 20 minutes depending on the chocolate maker’s preference. We use a Behmor coffee roaster. This roaster can roast only 2 pounds of cacao beans at a time. The drum roasting prevents the beans from burning. Once the beans reach an internal temperature of 230 °F it will make popping noises and it will start to smell like you are baking brownies.
After roasting the beans, the thin outer shells are easier to easier to remove. The shells are not used for chocolate making and peeling them by hand can take forever. The bean fragments are called cacao nibs which is usually sold at many health food stores. Cacao nibs may be the healthiest and most natural form of cacao you can enjoy to supplement your diet.
Roasted cacao beans are passed through a winnowing device. This home made contraption involves a champion juicer to crack the beans. The nibs will fall straight down into the first bucket while the lighter weight shells will end up in the 2nd bucket using a cyclonic separator. No debris will go into the vacuum to clog the filter. If the flow is too strong or weak the ball valve can be tightened or loosened to adjust the flow.
Mahalo! Andrew Frongello for sharing this design on his YouTube Channel.
This is a pound of Hawaii grown cacao nibs. It took about 12 to 16 cacao pods to achieve this amount.
Cacao nibs, sugar and melted cocoa butter are slowly added into the wet grinder (also called a melanger). The stone wheels will grind down the cacao solids and everything else in it. The friction from the stones will heat the chocolate mass to about 130 °F. Since roughly half of the nib is cocoa butter the chocolate will liquify quickly. The refining process may take anywhere between 24 to 36 hours. The chocolate is ready when the particle size reaches under 30 microns.
Once the chocolate is refined it is time to temper the chocolate. Traditionally tempering is done by hand on a cold marble slab to cool down the entire mass of chocolate evenly. This is impossible to do in tropics without air conditioning because it is always hot and humid. The chocolate is cooled down close to 80 °F and then reheated to 89.6 °F by adding it back to the wet grinder and running it for a few minutes. You can also mix it in a double boiler to reheat the mass.
After learning how to temper chocolate by hand we now use a tempering machine and this makes life much easier.
Once the chocolate is in temper it is poured into chocolate moulds. The chocolate will need an hour or so to properly set.
The result is a nice a shiny well tempered chocolate bar and it will have a nice snap to it when broken into pieces.