Making Chocolate by Dandelion Chocolate

Author:Dandelion Chocolate [Chocolate, Dandelion]
Language: eng
Format: azw3
Publisher: Potter/Ten Speed/Harmony/Rodale
Published: 2017-11-13T16:00:00+00:00

Beans are turned at Öko-Caribe, Dominican Republic.

Fermentation boxes need holes for the pulp to drain while leaves lining the sides help to insulate. Also, they look neat.

FERMENTATION 101

WITH DAN O’DOHERTY

Q: How did you learn about cacao fermentation? Is there even a school for that?

A: Not really, but kind of. When I was a graduate student studying botany at the University of Hawaii, there were cacao fruits growing in the courtyard of the building where I worked. I had no idea how to tell when they were ripe or what to do with them. A friendly professor introduced me to the trees and taught me when to harvest them and how to ferment the insides when they were ready. At that moment, I realized how little anyone, myself included, really knew about how cacao became chocolate.

I finished my degree and took up studying tropical agriculture, and I’ve been obsessed with cacao and fermentation ever since. Lucky for me, Hawaii grows cacao—it’s the only state in the country that does—which makes it a perfect place to teach yourself about fermentation. I found a grove of abandoned cacao trees to rehabilitate and converted my garage into a fermentation and drying lab with a climate-controlled chamber, some wooden boxes, and monitoring equipment. With a whole lab in my backyard, teaching myself the fundamentals came quickly. Each batch taught me to recognize the subtle smells, sights, and other cues that indicate when a fermentation box is ready to turn or when the beans are done fermenting.

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