Cocoa Family expands fermentation capabilities

Cocoa bean grower, Cocoa Family, is expanding its capacity to produce the famous fermented Dominican Hispaniola beans. This gives the grower a chance to serve high end chocolatiers and companies with products that call for great flavour and aroma. Cocoa beans, also pronounced cacao beans, come from cocoa trees, are processed to produce raw cocoa ingredients such as butter, powder, liquor/paste or nibs. These ingredients play a major role in creating cocoa based products such as beverages, chocolate, medicine, cosmetics and food.

There are fermented and non-fermented cocoa beans and they can come from the same tree or from the same cocoa pod. The fermentation process happens right after the beans are taken out of the pod and before they are sundried. The process of fermentation usually takes six days. During this process, cocoa beans develop their flavour and aroma. The fermented beans, or ingredients processed from fermented beans, are used for high end chocolates or products that call for flavour.

There is more than one method for cocoa fermentation. The most common methods are field fermentation, box fermentation and basket fermentation. Cocoa Family uses box fermentation. Each box normally carries one tonne of cocoa beans. The set-up is composed of three-layered boxes wherein the cocoa beans are placed on the top most part. During the turning stage, the first box is toppled so that the content will be transferred to the box beneath it. This continues until the end day of fermentation. After the cocoa beans are fermented, they are dried out and processed to produce cocoa butter, cocoa powder, cocoa nibs and cocoa liquor. Hispaniola cocoa beans are the fermented types from the Dominican Republic.

Box fermentation is the most efficient way to ferment cocoa beans when it comes to quality and consistency.