Six days of fermentation: a visit to our Idukki farm

People are often surprised to learn that the flavour of chocolate is decided less in our workshop than on the farm, in the six days after the pods are opened. Every year Ravi spends a week in January with Joseph, who grows the cacao for our Idukki bar on four acres near Kattappana.

The pods are harvested ripe, when they turn from green to yellow, and cut open the same day. The wet beans, still covered in sweet white pulp, are scooped into wooden boxes about a metre square, lined and covered with banana leaves. Within a day, wild yeasts begin to ferment the sugary pulp. The heap warms up, reaching 45 to 50 °C by the third day, and a smell like vinegar and overripe fruit fills the shed.

Joseph turns the beans by hand every 48 hours, moving them from one box to the next so that air reaches every part of the heap. This is the step that turns a bitter, purple seed into a brown bean with the chemical ingredients of chocolate flavour. Too short a ferment gives a flat, astringent bar; too long, and it tastes of ham.

After six days the beans are spread on raised bamboo mats under a plastic roof to dry for about a week, raked several times a day. When they reach about 7% moisture, they are bagged in jute and sent to Puducherry. We cut open a sample of every lot, and if the beans are not brown all the way through, we tell Joseph why.