Cocoa Beans

Cocoa pods grow directly on the trunk and main branches of the tree and are cut by hand when ripe — they are non-climacteric and do not ripen after cutting, so ripeness at harvest is judged on the tree by colour and sound. The pods are opened, usually within a few days, and the seeds are scooped out surrounded by a white, sweet pulp. That pulp is the fuel for everything that follows.

The wet seeds are heaped under leaves or placed in wooden boxes and left to ferment. Yeasts and bacteria consume the pulp, generating heat and acids that penetrate the seed and kill the embryo, which is the trigger for the biochemical changes that produce flavour precursors within the bean. The mass is turned periodically to keep the ferment even. After several days the beans are spread out to dry, traditionally in the sun, until they reach a moisture at which they store and ship.

The ferment can fail in both directions. Under-fermented beans retain a slaty, purple interior and give astringent, bitter chocolate with no developed flavour. Over-fermented beans go hammy and putrid, and carry off flavours that survive roasting. Between those failures sits a window that a farmer judges by heat, smell, and time — and the judgement is made on a smallholding, at the end of a harvest day, with no laboratory anywhere in sight.

The industry's standard check is the cut test: a sample of beans is sliced open and the interiors are examined and counted by category — well-fermented brown, partly purple, slaty, mouldy, insect-damaged, germinated. That count is the core of cocoa grading, and it is a direct read-out of how the ferment and drying went. Drying carries its own trap: dried too fast, the beans stay acidic because volatile acids cannot escape; dried too slowly or in humid conditions, they mould, and cocoa carries a documented ochratoxin risk that importing markets regulate.

Cocoa beans are graded on the cut-test defect count, bean size as count per unit weight, moisture, and freedom from foreign matter, mould, and infestation. Origin carries real weight: the bulk trade in West African cocoa is a large, fairly standardised flow, while fine or flavour cocoa from specific origins and genetic groups trades separately at a premium against different expectations.

• Slaty and purple beans — under-fermentation, the most common quality failure
• Mouldy beans — from slow or interrupted drying, with associated mycotoxin risk
• Insect-damaged and germinated beans
• Flat and undersized beans, giving poor nib recovery
• Smoke taint from artificial drying over poorly designed fires
• Foreign matter and pod fragments in the delivered lot

Beans move from farm to buying station to port in bags, and ship to grinders in bags or bulk. Like coffee, cocoa is priced against futures markets with physical lots trading at differentials for origin, grade, and certification, and like coffee it is vulnerable to taint and to condensation damage in containers on long ocean routes.

Grinding is what the commodity exists for. Beans are roasted and cracked, and winnowing separates the nib — the kernel fragment that is the primary product and the actual raw material of chocolate — from the shell. The nib is ground into cocoa mass, and pressing splits that into cocoa butter and cocoa press cake, which is milled into cocoa powder. The shell removed at winnowing is a genuine by-product with feed, fuel, and mulch outlets.

• Food — chocolate and confectionery, via nibs, mass, butter, and powder
• Beverage — cocoa powder for drinking chocolate and flavouring
• Industrial — cocoa butter in cosmetic and pharmaceutical use
• Feed and energy — cocoa shell as feed material, fuel, and mulch