Repairing the Drying Rack

Jim and Carlos working hard

That is a big rack!

Pouring concrete, wheelbarrow by wheelbarrow.

 Concrete forms, Costa Rican style.















The Secadora is our drying rack for the cacao which has been fermenting.  We still use the same rack that Nacho the original owner used, although it has needed work each year.  This week it finally stopped rolling out. The concrete the rollers move on finally started crumbling away.
 We have been using two shelves that roll out up to now.  But with all the care and special fertalizer we have used over the last three years we are expecting a huge harvest this year and are fixing the rack so that not only the two shelves work but the lowest third level on the ground can be used as well.  We'll also have to buy another horse for bringing the cacao from the forest.  Miloo is too old for this much work and the guys have been telling us for a while that it's too much work for him and we need another horse.
   Carlos is our one and only carpenter in the area and very dear to us. He has been away on a job working construction in another part of the country.  We saw him last Sunday while taking a trip to the river in the village of Balle and he was telling us how cold it was up in the mountain where he was working.  Something happened and he decided to quit and come home.  We're so happy!!!  and he looks happy too.  He's mixing all the cement by hand and re-making the tracks for the racks to slide on.  Giovani and Humberto are washing one of the racks, so you can get an idea of the size.  Lots of space for lots of Cacao.

Red Light Batch

 The proud parent shows off the latest batch of chocolate.













We made this batch two days after the Fan batch. These beans were fermented for a shorter time. We liked the taste of these beans a lot and the chocolatecame out great.
The tempering also came out great which is a marvel as the temperature was very close to the 81 degrees that the chocolate needs to come down to. Keli was out with a headlamp lighting me as I tempered the chocolate with the tile that use for tempering balanced on a concrete block. It has to be done at night because during the day there is no way to get the temperature that low.
We had to go outside because it was just too warm in the house. And we had to use a red light on the headlamp so that bugs wouldn't be attracted and fall into the chocolate. Hence, the name, the Red Light batch.

The Fan Batch

We are rebooting our blog so we can keep track of the different batches of chocolate we are now making at the Chocolate Farm.
On May 12th we made chocolate for the first time in a while. The beans were dark in color and had been fermented and dried by Giovanni and Raul while we were in the US.
We roasted the beans in a cast iron pan. Cacao content is 75% (but tastes like 80%.) We used  Rapunzel organic evaporated cane sugar (imported from Whole Foods in California.)
Cacao butter is from chocolatealchemy.com. The fillings we have for this batch are coconut and raisin and roasted almonds, spicy hearts and some sunflower seed butter fillings just for us (because we left those untempered.)
And we added some vanilla and cinammon to the whole batch.
This batch has a slightly acidic quality which will fade over time as the chocolate ages (just like wine) and the flavors mellow.
We are calling this batch “the Fan” because we needed all the neighbor kids to fan the chocolate to help cool it down enough to reach the critical tempering temperature. In this picture it looks like they are fanning Jim but they are actually working hard to get the temperature down just one stubborn degree. It needed to get to 80.5 degrees F and it seemed to be stuck at 81.5 degrees F.   Perhaps because the ambient temperature was 79 degrees!