THE PRODUCTION OF CHOCOLATE
Chocolate is a key ingredient in many foods such as milk shakes, candy bars, cookies and cereals. It is ranked as one of the most favorite flavors in North America and Europe. Despite its popularity, most people do not know the unique origins of this popular treat. Chocolate is a product that requires complex procedures to produce. The process involves harvesting cocoa, refining cocoa to cocoa beans, and shipping the cocoa beans to the manufacturing factory for cleaning, coaching and grinding.
Chocolate production starts with harvesting cocoa in a forest. Cocoa comes from tropical evergreen Cocoa trees, such as Theobroma Cocoa, which grow in the wet lowland tropics of Central and South America, West Africa and Southeast Asia. Cocoa needs to be harvested manually in the forest. The seedpods of cocoa will first be collected. After the cocoa pods are collected into baskets, the pods are taken to a processing house. Here they are split open and the cocoa beans are removed. Pods can contain upwards of 50 cocoa beans each.
As a second step, the beans undergo the fermentation processing. They are either placed in large, shallow, heated trays or covered with large banana leaves. If the climate is right, they may be simply heated by the sun. Workers come along periodically and stir them up so that all of the beans come out equally fermented. During fermentation is when the beans turn brown. This process may take five or eight days. Afterwards, farmers simply spread the fermented seeds on trays and leave them in the sun to dry. The drying process usually takes about a week and results in seeds that are about half of their original weight.
Once the cocoa beans have reached the machinery of chocolate factories, they are ready to be refined into chocolate. Generally, manufacturing processes differ slightly due to the different species of cocoa trees, but most factories use similar machines to break down the cocoa beans into cocoa butter and chocolate. Firstly, fermented and dried cocoa beans will be refined to a roasted nib by winnowing and roasting. Then, they will be heated and will melt into chocolate liquor. Lastly, manufacturers blend chocolate liquor with sugar and milk to add flavor. After the blending process, the liquid chocolate will be stored or delivered to the molding factory in tanks and will be poured into molds for sale. Finally, wrapping and packaging machines will pack the chocolates and then they will be ready to transport.
To sum up, in order to turn cocoa pods into well-processed chocolate, one needs to collect the pods, refine them into cocoa beans and process them at chocolate factories. Thanks to the people who work in this industry, we are able to have this delight whenever we want some.
