The journey
from cocoa tree to chocolate bar is not complex, but it requires several steps,
each of which requires careful treatment to get the best from the finished
product.
Artisan chocolate
makers often deal directly with cocoa farmer cooperatives, giving them a say in
how the beans are treated from the moment they’re harvested and ensuring the
best possible price for cocoa farmers in some of the world’s poorest regions.
Harvesting
The process
begins with harvesting. Ripe cocoa pods are harvested twice a year. The harvest
times vary from region to region, but the process of turning it into chocolate
begins immediately.
The pods are
cut open with machetes and the white pulp containing the cocoa beans is scooped
out.
Fermenting
The pods and
pulp are placed into large wooden containers, where the pulp is allowed to
ferment for five to seven days. During the process, the beans are turned to
help them ferment more evenly. This is the first stage in developing the
flavour of the chocolate, and part of the reason why a farmer can have a direct
impact on the quality of the finished chocolate.
Drying
After
fermentation, the next step in the process is to dry the beans. This is usually
done by spreading them out into a single layer in the sun. Most beans are
transferred into sacks and transported around the world after drying, so in
order to prevent mold, it’s important that they’re completely dry at this
point.
Roasting
The next step
in the process is roasting. This is done by the chocolate maker rather than the
farmer. A few chocolate companies make their chocolate at source where it
grows, but the hot climate required to grow cocoa makes the chocolate making
process more challenging. Most chocolate is made in cooler climates, like
Europe or North America.
The process and
equipment used to roast the beans vary considerably from chocolate maker to
chocolate maker. Some use standard ovens, others have specially made systems
designed to rotate the beans and roast as evenly and accurately as possible.
The exact
temperature and roast time are part of the chocolate maker’s (often secret)
recipe, and will have been worked out with careful experimentation and lots of
tasting!
Cracking & Winnowing
The roasted
cocoa beans have a thin, papery shell around them which needs to be removed, so
at this point in the process, the beans are cracked open and the shell is
removed in a process called winnowing. The lighter shells are blown away with
fans, leaving behind pieces of pure cocoa bean, known as “nibs”.
Grinding & Conching
The cocoa nibs
are ground with stone rollers until they become a paste known as cocoa mass or
cocoa liquor. This pure, unrefined form of chocolate contains both cocoa solids
(the chocolatey part!) and cocoa butter (the natural fat present in the bean).
Cocoa butter
can be extracted from the cocoa mass with a hydraulic press. This is useful
because most chocolate makers often use extra cocoa butter to give their
chocolate a smoother, glossier texture. Some confectionery manufacturers
replace this extra cocoa butter with cheaper vegetable fats, and this is
something you should look out for on the ingredients and try to avoid. The only
fat in real chocolate is cocoa butter.
Traditionally,
the cocoa mass is be transferred to a separate machine called a conch, where it
is further refined. Many modern artisans combine the grinding and conching into
a single process using a machine called a melanger. This is simply a large
metal cylinder with two rotating granite wheels that grind and refine the
chocolate into very small particles.
It’s during
this process that sugar, milk powder (for milk chocolate) and other flavourings
are added to the chocolate.
The conching
process can take anything from a few hours to a few days and affects the
chemical structure of the chocolate, as well as the particle size. This part of
the process has a very big impact on the flavour notes in the finished
chocolate, and deciding exactly how long to conch for is part of the chocolate
maker’s skill.
Tempering
Great chocolate
should have a shiny finish and a good “snap” – that clean clicking sound when
you break a piece off. These are created by tempering, the controlled process
of raising, lowering and raising the temperature of the chocolate to form
exactly the right kind of crystals.
If you were to
let the untemper chocolate cool naturally, the chocolate would be soft and
crumbly and would not melt evenly on the tongue.
Tempering can
be done by hand, but the process would be enormously time consuming for the
large amounts of chocolate that bar manufacturers have to work with, so most
use tempering machines that can heat large quantities of chocolate very
accurately.
The tempering
machine will keep the melted chocolate circulating at exactly the right
temperature, making the final step easier.
Moulding
The final step
in making a finished chocolate bar is pouring it into a mould. The melted
chocolate is simply poured into plastic bar-shaped moulds and agitated to
remove any air bubbles. Larger chocolate makers will have machines and
conveyors that deposit exactly the right amount of chocolate into each mould,
but many smaller manufacturers still do this part by hand.
Once cooled,
the chocolate is wrapped and ready to go!
