Chocolate Production

In the making of chocolate, three major varieties of cacao beans are used. These are ‘Criollo’, ‘Forastero’ and ‘Trinitario’. Criollo is the rarer and more costly variety. Forastero is radically hardier and has a better yield than the Criollo with a slightly more chocolately taste . After harvesting the cacao pods, comprising the cacao beans are fermented for 3-7 days after which they are quicly dried out to prevent the development of mould. Subsequently, the beans are roasted, graded and grounded. Afterwards, the cocoa butter is separated from the resulting chocolate liquor. Pressing or Broma process is obtained here. The remains are called cocoa powder.

For making different types of chocolate or couvertures, chocolate liquors are blended with butter in changeable amounts. The chocolates are classified according to the quantity of cocoa liquor. Cocoa liquor is highest in Plain dark chocolate, next comes Milk chocolate. The amount of cocoa in White chocolate is almost nil . In the amalgamation process, an emulsifying agent such as Soya lecithin is added. Nowadays, some manufacturers use PGPR, an artificial emulsifier. The texture of the chocolate depends on a process known as conching. In this last but one process in the making of chocolate, cocoa and sugar particles are made so small that the tongue cannot sense them. It takes about 72 hours to conch high quality chocolate. After this procedure, the chocolate mass is kept in a tank and heated for roughly 45-50 degrees Celsius. The final process in making chocolate is tempering. The tempering procedure produces constantly small cocoa butter crystals. Thus, the unvarying shine and crunchy bite of correctly processed chocolate is obtained.

The fats in cocoa butter can crystallize in 6 different forms. The fifth form is the ideal one for making good chocolate. The characteristics of these crystals are that they are smooth, solid, have best cracks and thaw near human body temperature. In the whole process of tempering, maintaining specific temperature at certain levels is important. Otherwise, if any instances of excessive heating occur, the temper gets damaged and the entire process has to be repeated. There are 2 classic ways of tempering chocolate. In the first one, the softened chocolate is placed on a heat-absorbing surface. If adequate crystal seeds are there, then the chocolate is lightly warmed to working temperature. In the second method, solid chocolate is stirred into melted chocolate to ‘inoculate’ the liquid chocolate with crystals. A candy thermometer is used in the whole process. As chocolate is very susceptible to temperature and humidity, the ideal storage temperature is between 15 and 17 degree Celsius. The relative humidity should be less than 50%.