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.

Anthony and Julieta winnowing in the breeze

Anna and her daughter Kimberly roasting cacao in our kitchen

Winnowing with a hair dryer

Our Big Meeting

 We don't have any pictures to document the landmark meeting we had with Hugo Hemmerlink, the premier organic cacao producer and exporter in Costa Rica.  It's too bad we don't have pictures because this is such a big deal for us. It has been three years of working to perfect our fermentation and drying production on the Chocolate Farm in order to produce beans meeting the standards for his company. He will then make chocolate liquor or chocolate from the beans and sell them to chocolate makers in Europe and the U.S.  

We talked about the different ways our chocolate will get out there to chocolatiers and the different certifications needed to meet the requirements of the various buyers.  The first one, getting the “organic” cerfification is first on our list.  Though we will not do this for now, mainly because the expense of the certification compared to the amount of beans we can sell does not make economical sense.  Rather then pay the $2000 for the certification, we actually paid for worm castings fertilizer for the trees and this year plan on a special forest derived organic mulch/fertilizer as well as compost tea all harvested from the primary forest on our land.  We’re not organically certified but we do go above and beyond any requirements for being organic and hope that we will attract people who can appreciate this. 

Prayer Batch

Prayer was a name we came up with because we had some beans that seemed to be so good we felt it is the best fermentation we have ever had.  But you never know how all the other factors will shape it, so we just prayed.  And it is an amazing batch, in fact i think it's the best we'v ever made.

These beans had a darker color then most of the beans we produce and it turns out that it's because they were left out in the forest for some extra days (by accident) and so probably what happened is that they fermented for longer.  It's kind of like cheese, sometimes mistakes make the best cheese, and it can't be repeated.

70% made with organic Dulce, just the sugar cane boiled and deyhdrated.  Here's pictures of the dulce going into the dehydrator

"Jeffrey Chocolate"

Giovanni and Jeffrey discussing pruning techniques

Hello Jeffrey!

While we have been making chocolate this time we have been honored with a guest by the name of Jeffrey Castro Arroyo. So we are naming this batch “Jeffrey” because the chocolate is infused with his good humor and energy.

The fermentation for these beans was a little shorter than usual because we wanted to make chocolate this week and we only had a short time at the Chocolate Farm. This is the first harvest of the season and we wanted to make chocolate NOW. The taste is rich and chocolatey with just a hint of bitterness at the end. So mellow that we didn't have a problem making this batch 80%. Our first ever at 80%.

I think that we are going to have some great tasting chocolate.

We took a part of this batch and added more sugar to make some at 65%. This was also an interesting experiment since we only ran the grinder for an hour extra with the extra sugar. I think this created a problem with the tempering process. The chocolate started getting stiff at 83 degrees when normally it will not start to stiffen up until it gets to about 80 or 81 degrees.

The tempering process is always hard here. Because of the climate, at 8PM the temperature outside is still close to 80 F. That means that inside the house it is a little hotter. We have sometimes had to temper the chocolate outside the house in order to get it down to the required temperature.

We didn't have any fillings this time. No peanut butter, no hazelnuts, just “chocolate puro.” We used local organic sugar, called “tapa dulce.” We added some cacao butter from ChocolatAlchemy.com and that's it for the ingredients – cacao, organic dehydrated cane juice and cacao butter.

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.