Local farmers
Beyond Fairtrade
The price for cocoa beans paid to Grenadian producers is marginal compared to the price of fancy chocolate. So Mott began to fantasize about making dark chocolate with a cooperative that would actually benefit the cocoa farmers. Grenada’s world famous cocoa would be used to create top quality, socially-responsible chocolate bars right in Grenada.
Ten years ago, together with two partners and a startup loan, he embarked on this chocolaty journey. Fine chocolate making is a rather complex process involving several different machines. There are many ways to do it but very few tree-to-bar producers - and importantly based in the country of origin. This is how to make chocolate, tree-to-bar: Fresh, pulpy cocoa beans are first harvested from the pods growing on cocoa trees. They are then fermented in a large wooden box for about seven days, and sun dried. The fermentation gives rise to all the chocolate flavors. The dry cocoa beans are roasted, shelled, and ground together with sugar into a paste. Pure cocoa butter, pressed from other roasted cocoa beans, is added to this paste, and the mixture is further ground, tumbled, and sort-of slow-cooked for up to 24 hours. The resulting finished liquid chocolate is then tempered, moulded, and cooled into chocolate bars. The machines used in the process are the machete and cocoa harvesting “knife”, roaster, winnower, melangeur (chocolate grinder), cocoa butter press, refiner/conche, tempering/molding machine.
© Melt 2013
