The Chocolate Farm: September 2012

Home Grown Disaster

We are simultaneously very proud of this batch and very sad about the way it turned out. It is made with our own sugar and 70% cacao. The taste is very nice but unfortunately we had one of those mysterious disasters which befalls anyone crazy enough to try and temper chocolate in the tropics.
(Tempering is highly dependent on humidity and temperature. And in the tropics, both of those elements are usually hostile to a successful tempering.)
Everything went very well. The fermentation of the beans was good, the roasting was good, all went well with the grinding and mixing, the sugar was grown on our farm and it seemed like the tempering went well. But when we opened up the rack that held the bars overnight while they cooled we could see that we had a severe case of blooming (blooming is when the chocolate turns white and the texture becomes chalky.)

And we couldn't tell why. We have had chocolate making sessions that had similar conditions and the chocolate came out great. But not this time....

Fortunately, we only attempted to temper a small part of the batch. We are bringing the rest of it to California where we will temper it under better conditions.

UPDATE!!!

We are now in California and we have tempered the rest of the Homegrown batch and it is beautiful! Just another example of how easy it is to temper in a temperate climate and how hard in a tropical climate.

Nothing to do with chocolate - I just like this picture. Marcos is the happy farmer with the big jackfruit

Harmonia

We named this batch Harmonia because everything went so smoothly. And that is not always the case when making chocolate in the countryside of Costa Rica.

Unfortunately, we will not have too much of this batch available for sale because the majority of it is spoken for by Keli and a few others who need sugar free chocolate.

This batch is 80% cacao and 20% Xylitol with a bit of vanilla.

Anna's Roast

Anna is our next door neighbor at the Chocolate Farm. In fact, her and her family are our only neighbors for quite a stretch. You can go for a mile in either direction and not meet anybody except a cow or a worker trudging up the road to their work on one of the ranches in the area.
We trained Anna to help us roast cacao. It takes about 20 to 30 minutes to roast a pound and a half of beans in one of our cast iron pans. So even roasting two pans at a time it still takes a long time to roast enough beans for a big batch.
Anna's kids grew up, of course, on their farm and they are used to helping out with all the chores. So when Anna goes to work they quite naturally help out. They know how to do winnowing already because they winnow the family's rice and beans. They are very good at getting all the shells out of the beans.
I like to use a hair dryer because it is a little quicker but it can also blow away some of the cacao.

This batch was 70% cacao and 30% organic evaporated sugar cane juice. (Not our sugar cane - we saved that for a batch called "Harmonia.")

Batch #1 was only ground for 4 hours but is still quite smooth. Batch #2 was ground for 8 hours. Both batches have very subtle additions of vanilla and cinnamon. We could only tell the difference with a side by side comparison. They are both very smooth with a hint of tannin at the end.