But this is a product of the cocoa tree. Cocoa tree is a tropical plant, which only grows in hot climate. In this way, its cultivation is limited to the land between 20 latitudes north and south of the equator Assuming fertile soil conditions and careful cultivation, once it survives, cocoa trees can grow in sufficient sunshine. Cocoa plantations (artificially planted cocoa trees) are usually located in valleys or coastal plains, and must have evenly distributed rainfall and fertile and well-drained land.

The first fruit

After pruning and careful cultivation, most kinds of cocoa trees will begin to bear fruit in the fifth year. With the best care, some tree species will have a good harvest even in the third and fourth years.

Cocoa tree is an evergreen tree. Its huge and smooth leaves are red when they are young and turn green when they are mature. When mature, the height of artificially planted cocoa trees is 15 to 25 feet, but the height of wild cocoa trees can reach more than 60 feet. The life expectancy of cocoa trees is still under speculation. It is generally believed that after 25 years, the economic function of a cocoa tree may be considered as the end, and it is suitable to replant young cocoa trees to replace it. Cocoa trees bear fruit (or pods) all year round, but the harvest is usually seasonal. Because cocoa trees are freely cross-pollinated, pods form various species, including Latin American species, exotic species and Trinidad species.

Harvest cocoa beans

Picking ripe cocoa beans is not an easy task. Cocoa trees are fragile and shallow, so workers can't risk climbing up to pick pods from tall branches.

The growers equipped the pickers who went to work in the fields with long-handled hand-shaped steel knives. Steel knives are used to touch and cut off the tallest pods without hurting the soft bark of cocoa trees. The machete you carry with you is used to pick pods that grow on low branches and are within reach.

What should I do after picking it?

Collectors and pickers together collect pods into baskets and transport them to the edge of the field. Where the pods are broken. If the method is correct, the wooden shell of the pod can be split by waving a machete once or twice. A well-trained crusher can crush 500 pods per hour.

It takes patience to finish the harvest. Usually, 20 to 50 milky cocoa beans are dug from a standard pod, and then the shell and inner membrane of the pod are discarded. Dry cocoa beans in ordinary pods weigh less than 58 grams. To be exact, it takes 400 cocoa beans to make 1 pound chocolate.

Cocoa beans are still very different from the end products we are familiar with. Milky cocoa beans will soon turn lavender or purple when exposed to the air. At this time, they don't look like chocolate, nor do they smell as familiar as chocolate.

Shipped crops

Cocoa beans or seeds taken from pods are packed in boxes or piled up for packaging. Wrapped around cocoa beans is a layer of pulp, which begins to heat up and ferment. Fermentation lasts for three to nine days, which removes the bitter taste of cocoa and produces raw materials with chocolate characteristics. Fermentation is a simple process. Sugar in cocoa beans is converted into acids, mainly lactic acid and acetic acid.

The fermentation process raised the temperature of cocoa beans to 125 degrees Fahrenheit, killing bacteria and activating existing enzymes, forming a mixture, which produced chocolate flavor when baking cocoa beans. The final result is dark brown completely fermented cocoa beans, which indicates that cocoa beans are now ready to enter the drying process.

Like all fruits rich in water, cocoa beans must be dried to be preserved. In some countries, the drying process is very simple: just spread cocoa beans on a plate or bamboo mat and bake them in the sun. When wet weather interferes with this drying method, manual methods can be used. For example, cocoa beans may be taken indoors and dried under a hot air duct.

If the weather is fine, the drying process usually takes several days. In this gap, farmers often turn over cocoa beans. They used this opportunity to select cocoa beans for export and to select flat, broken or germinated cocoa beans. During the drying process, cocoa beans will lose almost all the water and more than half the weight.

After the cocoa beans are dried, they are ready to be shipped at the price of 130 to 200 pounds per bag. They are rarely stored in warehouses unless they have to wait for the shipping center inspected by the buyer.

Cocoa trees grow in a narrow strip of latitude 20 north and south, and the types, origins and characteristics of cocoa beans.

(1) criollo, the best in cocoa, has a unique flavor, but its output is scarce, which is equivalent to Arabica coffee beans in coffee beans, accounting for only 5% of the global output; Mainly grown in Venezuela, Caribbean, Madagascar, Java and other places.

(2) Rastero, which has the highest yield, accounts for about 80% of the global output, and has a pungent and bitter smell, which is equivalent to Robusta in coffee beans, and is mainly used to make ordinary chocolate; Cocoa beans from West Africa belong to this category and are also widely cultivated in Malaysia, Indonesia and Brazil. This kind of beans need intense baking to make up for the lack of taste, which is why most dark chocolates have a burnt taste.

(3) Trinidad, a hybrid of the above two species, was named after its development in Trinidad. It combines the advantages of the first two kinds of cocoa beans, and its output accounts for about 65,438+05%. Like Creole, it is regarded as a treasure in cocoa and used to make high-quality chocolate, because only these two kinds of beans can provide the acidity, balance and complexity of high-quality chocolate.

African cocoa beans account for about 65% of the world's total cocoa beans, and most of them are bought out by the United States in the form of futures, but most African cocoa beans are Buddha Rastero, which can only be used to produce ordinary and popular chocolate; European high-quality chocolate producers will choose the best cocoa beans from high-quality cocoa plantations, and some even have their own farms, such as VALRHONA, a famous French chocolate producer.

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