Day 4 – Science!

Science time, today we needed to be like sponges! We learnt so much today, even if some of it went over our heads! What was really impressive was the work going into speeding up the process of selecting better tasting, disease resistance productive plants. We split into 4 groups, each looking at a different aspect of the cocoa production process and at the (top secret) work taking place. I was lucky enough to be able to extract some cocoa DNA and map it onto agar, using liquid nitrogen in the process….very cool!

We spent a good two hours in the lab, going through a number of processes to extract the DNA from some Cocoa leaves (every tree planted at the MCCS has its DNA tested). It’s amazing how much information is contained in such a small sample, you can barely see the result of our hard work in the picture!

Today has really been a day of science and understanding, so much information to take in, I certainly feel smarter, not bad for a morning work! Time for the “Chocolate Lab”, the home of  MCCS’s very own Willy Wonka. It was time for us to make some of our very own chocolate, from beans grown at the MCCS. First we needed to collect some of the beans put out to dry on the roof earlier (like the pictures from day 2), the beans dried on the roof come down a shoot to be collected and 60kg bags filled and sealed ready for sale.

After a brief smell test , we hand checked some pre-fermented beans, and placed them into an over to roast them to develop the chocolate flavour. Once cool, we crushed the beans ready for the Winnower machine to remove the husks (skin of the bean) and leave the nib (the fermented flesh of the bean).

The crushed nibs are pored into a mechanical heated pestle and mortar and turned into cocoa liquor (the main ingredient in chocolate) after an hour and half; it’s amazing to see something that looks like coffee granules turn into a liquid. By adding sugar to cocoa liquor you can create a very dark rich chocolate, most modern chocolate you buy in the supermarket will have extra cocoa butter added to make it smoother as well as milk powder.

All the ingredients

Time for temper:

Tempering chocolate ensuring it sets correctly, there are many ways the fat in chocolate can set, from making the chocolate look white and greasy (fat blooming) to having a very low melting point – not useful in countries like Brazil! We used the low tech approach of cooling it rapidly on granite tables, then filling up moulds with our delicious creations!

Our group tasted a range of cocoa liquids exploring the flavour of different varieties of Cocoa species, some are brilliant for making chocolate and some are truly horrendous – unfortunately usually the ones with the highest yield – better for the cosmetic industry than for eating!

Time to give back – now the chocolate had time to cool, it was time to get it out of the mould and see what the associates at the MCCS thought about our production!

A brilliant day, we have learnt so much, now to get some much needed rest before our long awaited football game tomorrow.