Making chocolate from tree to bar

The chocolate making process in photo from start to finish

Step 1 Harvest ripe and ready pods

Step 1
Harvest ripe and ready pods

Step 2 Open pods to extract the fruit (beans)

An open pod revealing the beans surrounded by a sweet white mucilage.

The cacao pulp, also called “baba” or “mucilage”, is a white, sticky and fleshy substance that surrounds the cacao beans inside the pod. Not only it is totally edible for both animals and humans, but it is also gifted with a unique and enchanting taste.

Fruity, sweet, tangy and slightly acidic, the cacao pulp offers the perfect mix of tropical fruits like mango, pineapple, passion fruit, and lychee. Exactly like it happens with the cacao beans, also the pulp has different tasting profiles depending on the cacao variety.

For example, some pulps taste a lot like sweet mangoes, while others are more pungent like a pineapple, or citrusy like a lime. Together with a refreshing taste, the cacao pulp also comes with a long array of nutritional properties: Vitamin E, D, B, and magnesium to name a few. It’s known that jungle animals, especially monkeys, don’t even consider the cacao beans, but aim at the sweet pulp.

They open the pods, discard the beans, and enjoy the tasty substance. In the production of chocolate, the opposite happens: 75% of the cacao pulp is discarded, and the remaining 25% is used during fermentation.

The cacao pulp, also called “baba” or “mucilage”, is a white, sticky and fleshy substance that surrounds the cacao beans inside the pod. Not only it is totally edible for both animals and humans, but it is also gifted with a unique and enchanting taste.

Fruity, sweet, tangy and slightly acidic, the cacao pulp offers the perfect mix of tropical fruits like mango, pineapple, passion fruit, and lychee. Exactly like it happens with the cacao beans, also the pulp has different tasting profiles depending on the cacao variety

For example, some pulps taste a lot like sweet mangoes, while others are more pungent like a pineapple, or citrusy like a lime. Together with a refreshing taste, the cacao pulp also comes with a long array of nutritional properties: Vitamin E, D, B, and magnesium to name a few. It’s known that jungle animals, especially monkeys, don’t even consider the cacao beans, but aim at the sweet pulp.

They open the pods, discard the beans, and enjoy the tasty substance. In the production of chocolate, the opposite happens: 75% of the cacao pulp is discarded, and the remaining 25% is used during fermentation

Step 3 Fermenting

Here Raul is rotating the beans after the first 48 hours of fermentation. The beans are moved from one box to the next, in order to mix well and introduce oxygen for the aerobic phase of fermentation. The fermentation process can take between five and eight days.