Step #1: Plucking and opening the Pods
Cocoa beans grow in pods that sprout off of the trunk and branches of cocoa trees. The pods are about the size of a football. The pods start out green and turn orange when they're ripe. When the pods are ripe, harvesters travel through the cocoa orchards with machetes and hack the pods gently off of the trees.
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Step #2: Fermenting the cocoa seeds
Now the beans undergo the fermentation processing. They are either placed in large, shallow, heated trays or covered with large banana leaves. If the climate is right, they may be simply heated by the sun. Workers come along periodically and stir them up so that all of the beans come out equally fermented. During fermentation is when the beans turn brown. This process may take five or eight days.
Step #3: Drying the cocoa seeds
After fermentation, the cocoa seeds must be dried before they can be scooped into sacks and shipped to chocolate manufacturers. Farmers simply spread the fermented seeds on trays and leave them in the sun to dry. The drying process usually takes about a week and results in seeds that are about half of their original weight.
Step #1: Roasting and Winnowing the Cocoa
The first thing that chocolate manufacturers do with cocoa beans is roast them. This develops the colour and flavour of the beans into what our modern palates expect from fine chocolate. The outer shell of the beans is removed, and the inner cocoa bean meat is broken into small pieces called "cocoa nibs."
The roasting process makes the shells of the cocoa brittle, and cocoa nibs pass through a series of sieves, which strain and sort the nibs according to size in a process called "winnowing".
Step #2: Grinding the Cocoa Nibs
Grinding is the process by which cocoa nibs are ground into " cocoa liquor", which is also known as unsweetened chocolate or cocoa mass. The grinding process generates heat and the dry granular consistency of the cocoa nib is then turned into a liquid as the high amount of fat contained in the nib melts. The cocoa liquor is mixed with cocoa butter and sugar. In the case of milk chocolate, fresh, sweetened condensed or roller-dry low-heat powdered whole milk is added, depending on the individual manufacturer's formula and manufacturing methods.
Step #3: Blending Cocoa liquor and molding Chocolate
After the mixing process, the blend is further refined to bring the particle size of the added milk and sugar down to the desired fineness. The Cocoa powder or 'mass' is blended back with the butter and liquor in varying quantities to make different types of chocolate or couverture. The basic blends with ingredients roughly in order of highest quantity first are as follows:
Milk Chocolate - sugar, milk or milk powder, cocoa powder, cocoa liquor, cocoa butter, Lethicin and Vanilla.
White Chocolate- sugar, milk or milk powder, cocoa liquor, cocoa butter, Lethicin and Vanilla.
Plain Dark Chocolate - cocoa powder, cocoa liquor, cocoa butter, sugar, Lethicin and Vanilla.
After blending is complete, molding is the final procedure for chocolate processing. This step allows cocoa liquor to cool and harden into different shapes depending on the mold. Finally the chocolate is packaged and distributed around the world.