What is Chocolate?

From the tree to you

Tree

Aver­age Height: 20ft
Opti­mum Longevity: 30–40 years
Aver­age Annual Yield: 20–30 fruits
Leaf: all year round, blos­som, unripe fruit and mature fruit can be seen on the tree simul­ta­ne­ously.
Major Har­vests: May, Octo­ber, November

Fruit

Heavy, grow on trunk
Shape: length 6–10 inches
Colour: Changes from green to yel­low to red­dish brown
Shell: Hard and course
Flesh: Sweet white fruit pulp
Seeds: (This is the impor­tant bit!) 20 and 40 pre­cious, almond-shaped cocoa beans.

Cocoa Beans/Seed Ker­nals: (Mak­ing the flavours)

Fer­ment­ing
The seeds and white fruit pulp are removed from the shell and placed under banana leaves where the sug­ars in the pulp cause a fer­men­ta­tion to take place. Tem­per­a­tures reach up to 50 ° C and it is left for 2–6 days of until the white pulp has all but dis­ap­peared. At the end of this, the astrin­gent bit­ter taste has gone and new sub­stances have formed that lead to the flavour that we love!

Dry­ing
The seeds are still full of mois­ture (about 60%) at this stage so are laid out in the sun to dry.

Roast
The beans are now thor­oughly cleaned and roasted for 15–20 mins at 130 ° C. This devel­ops the flavour and makes the husk crack and flake mak­ing it easy to remove.

Crack and crush

Crack­ing and crush­ing is done whilst under a suc­tion that quickly removes the flaky husk, leav­ing what is known as the cocoa nibs

Cocoa nib
Cocoa nibs from dif­fer­ent regions and vari­eties are blended accord­ing to Cocolo’s recipe to give the finest Swiss choco­late to be found.

Grind/roll
Now we are really mak­ing choco­late!
The crushed beans are now ground using fric­tion from rollers. The heat cre­ated by the fric­tion causes the cocoa but­ter in the beans to melt and instead of the pow­der that you would expect a paste is cre­ated. This paste is known as Cocoa liquor, choco­late liquor or cocoa paste. The real base of choco­late.
Separation

The cocoa liquor can now be sub­jected to intense pres­sure. This causes the cocoa but­ter to sep­a­rate and be col­lected leav­ing behind cocoa cakes that still con­tain 10–20% cocoa but­ter. These cakes are crushed and finely ground giv­ing us cocoa powder.

Mak­ing the choco­late
We now com­bine, only the finest organic ingre­di­ents, which are placed into a conch to churn and churn to make the vel­vety smooth­ness of Cocolo chocolate!