CACAO TALK - PART III

Cacao seeds or cacao beans is the raw material for many food products.
Each seed contains a significant amount of fat (40–50%) as cocoa butter.
Their most noted active constituent is theobromine, a compound similar to caffeine.
There are so many home industry that process the beans into intermediate products, such as cacao pasta, cacao powder or cacao butter.
Really long process to be a prepared food.

Dry cacao beans

First process is sorting...
Only the best beans from the mature fruits will process to the advance product.
On big plantations or big traders, they use grading and sorting machine.
But traditional farmer use round bamboo tray.

traditional sorting

Second process is drying.
This process intend to reduce water content into 4-5 percents grade.
Third process is winnowing.
This process intend to discard the nibs (content of the seeds) from it's shell.
We use winnowing machine in this process, look like huller machine.

Cacao shells

Farmers usually process cacao shells into cacao shell powder.

The powder is used as poultry food.

Cacao nibs

Fourth process is roasting.
This process reduce water content of the nibs into 1.5 percent grade.

Roasting machine

Roasted cacao nibs

The last process is grinding.
The yield of this process is cocoa mass or cocoa liquor.
Cacao mass is well known as cocoa pasta.

Grinding machine

Cocoa pasta or cocoa mass

Cocoa pasta is used to make many food products.
Next... we will make cocoa powder from this pasta.
Please... enjoy this cacao talk.