How Chocolate Is Made By Chris Alleny At Isnare.com Ezine Articles

Making chocolate is a long process, beginning with the growing and cultivating of the cacao trees and to molding the liquefied cacao in the chocolate factories, and finally designed and added with different types of flavors and confections. From the plantation of cacao trees in South and Central Americas as well as from other cacao growing countries like Brazil, Nigeria, Indonesia, Ecuador, Ghana, Ivory Coast, Papua New Guinea, Cameroon, and Dominican Republic, to the wonderfully lined chocolates in chocolate shops, chocolate is a world-wide production that goes through a lot of hands.

Three main cacao varieties

There are three main varieties of cacao trees that are cultivated for making chocolate and distributed all over the world: the Criollo, the Forastero and the Trinitario. The Criollo cacao tree comes from Central America and makes up about ten to fifteen percent of total cacao trees in the world. They are small trees that are hard to grow but develop beans that are rich in aroma and flavor. The Forastero cacao is a lot easier to grow and this make up almost 70 percent of cacao world production. Its beans have a bitterer flavor than the Criollo cacao beans. The Trinitario is a cross-breed of the Forastero and the Criollo cacao. It takes the aroma of Criollo and the resilience of Forastero against diseases and pests.

Growing under shade

In general, cacao trees shoot up as high as sixty feet when grown in the wild. Farmers who cultivate cacao trim them to about 20 feet so that their pods can be easily reached come harvest time, which usually happens twice a year. Cacao trees prefer to grow in shaded areas, particularly under the shade of taller trees and thus, in the orchard, cacao trees are planted beside banana trees, coconut trees, or rubber trees.

Harvesting cacao beans

The cacao pods take about five to six months to develop before they can be harvested. When the pod turns orange or red from a green or yellow color, then this means that it is ripe and ready for harvesting. Once the farmers harvest the pods using a machete, they place the pods in large wooden boxes covered with banana leaves. The pods are then left to ferment for days, depending on the type of cacao plant. Criollo beans ferment in around two to three days while trinitario and forastero need three to seven days to ferment. In the process of fermentation, the beans become wrinkled and darker in color, and its extremely bitter taste diminishes.

Distributing in chocolate factories

After fermentation, the beans are then dried under the sun for another several days. After drying, they are packed in sacks and shipped to factories all over the world for making all kinds of chocolate, from dark chocolate to white chocolate. The chocolate factory then sorts and cleans the beans then roasts them at 250 to 350 degrees for as long as two hours or as little as thirty minutes. The beans are then removed from their outer shell, crushed, melted, and ground to a thick paste until it becomes what is called, chocolate liquor, the main ingredient of chocolate. Depending on whether the production is for dark or milk chocolate, sugar, vanilla, and lecithin are then added.

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