Process 6: Sort, Sort and Sort…

Hello my fellow chocolate lovers,

I am Takanori Chiwata, the chocolate engineer of COCONAMA CHOCOLATE.

Like our last post, I would like to carry on with “how do cacao beans become chocolate? ”

Last time, I had the chance to talk about how important the drying process is for the quality of cacao beans.
Today, I will be talking about “what comes after drying the beans?”

To begin with, the dried cacao beans are show as below.

Although, not all of them are nice, plump beans like these ones are.

Some may look spoiled…

Some may look flat and have barely anything left inside them…

Some may be stuck with each other…

Some may be chips of wood that’s not even a cacao bean…

Some even has insect inside it….

Like so, many things inevitably gets mixed in with the cacao beans.

For this reason, The farmers always sort the beans out by hand before shipping them like this.

After this, they are sorted out into a bag and are finally ready to be shipped.

Do you have any guess on how much does the cacao beans weigh per bag?

A bag of sugar is about 20kg and a bag of flour is about 20kg as well…

However, a bag of cacao beans could weigh anywhere from 60-70kg!!

Cacao beans maybe sorted out into bags like jute bags, or simply just plastic bags.

Then these bags weighing 60-70kg are loaded into a truck by hands.

I had the chance to help the farmers load the bags into a truck and ended up cutting a few ligaments in my hand…

I truly thank all the farmers who are doing all these hardworks when shipping cacao beans…Please do take care of your backs.

Let’s call it a day now. I hope I was able to share how the cacao beans are treated with care even after the drying process.

After all this, the cacao beans are finally brought to us.

Next time, I would like to post something along the lines of “what do we do with these cacao beans brought to us?” Don’t miss it!

With hopes that you will be able to encounter the perfect chocolate just for you,

Takanori Chiwata