{"id":2025,"date":"2012-10-09T12:22:46","date_gmt":"2012-10-09T18:22:46","guid":{"rendered":"http:\/\/www.kerstinschocolates.com\/blog\/?p=2025"},"modified":"2012-10-09T12:22:46","modified_gmt":"2012-10-09T18:22:46","slug":"samuels-cacao-farm-quevedo-ecuador","status":"publish","type":"post","link":"https:\/\/www.kerstinschocolates.com\/blog\/?p=2025","title":{"rendered":"Samuel’s Cacao Farm, Quevedo, Ecuador"},"content":{"rendered":"
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On the road to Samuels Farm.<\/p><\/div>\n

On day 2 of our trip, we had an early breakfast and then caught the bus to Quevedo, a city in the Los Rios region of Ecuador, and one of the top cocoa bean exporting centers in the country.<\/p>\n

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Samuel in the plantion.<\/p><\/div>\n

After a long but picturesque 6 hour drive narrated by our excellent guide, Pablo, we arrived at Samuel von Rutte\u2019s farm. \u00a0Samuel is a swiss immigrant and former Nestle employee who moved to Ecuador years ago to become a cocoa farmer. \u00a0 \u00a0He now has thousands of trees and supplies many local and international chocolate companies with premium quality beans. \u00a0He also supplied us with a premium quality meal of \u00a0homemade empanadas and chocolate mousse, which we hungrily gobbled up before \u00a0taking a walk around the plantation. \u00a0Samuel’s trees are purely Arriba Nacional, a type of \u00a0forestaro cacao that is indigenous to Ecuador and considered to be a fine flavor bean. \u00a0 The success of the cocoa industry in Ecuador is linked to the \u00a0Arriba cacao because it is said to have a distinctive flavor profile(floral) that can\u2019t be found in the CCN-51, the other and perhaps more common type of bean available in the country. \u00a0 The demand for Arriba cacao is so high now that \u00a0farmers are encouraged to plant them over the CCN-51 even though the latter are easier to grow.\u00a0 \u00a0Whether or not the Arriba can still be found in its pure form is another story and I’ll go into that later.<\/p>\n

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The men on the drying pad.<\/p><\/div>\n

After our walk we saw Samuel’s fermentation and drying set up. \u00a0Samuel has a special technique to ferment the beans. \u00a0Instead of dumping all the baba (raw beans with mucilage) into fermentation bins and rotating them over the course of 4 or 5 days, he does something called dry fermentation. \u00a0Once the beans are removed from the pod, he spreads them out to dry for several hours. \u00a0He then piles them up overnight to allow them to ferment for 2-3 days. \u00a0In wet fermentation, it takes days for the enzymes to permeate the husks. \u00a0Using Samuel\u2019s technique, the moisture is removed from drying the beans first, which allows the fermentation to start more quickly. \u00a0\u00a0 By doing this, the bad-tasting acids that normally stay trapped in the wet process, are eliminated straight away and the chocolate tastes less bitter and astringent.<\/p>\n

After our tour, Samuel let us try some of his 100% chocolate and it was amazingly sweet, smooth, and lacked any bitterness at all. \u00a0We all bought lots of bars to take home with us.<\/p>\n

 <\/p>\n

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Dry fermentation in progress.<\/p><\/div>\n

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A perfectly fermented bean.<\/p><\/div>\n

 <\/p>\n

 <\/p>\n

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Opening the cacao pod.<\/p><\/div>\n

 <\/p>\n

 <\/p>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"

On day 2 of our trip, we had an early breakfast and then caught the bus to Quevedo, a city in the Los Rios region of Ecuador, and one of the top cocoa bean exporting centers in the country. After … Continue reading →<\/span><\/a><\/p>\n","protected":false},"author":2,"featured_media":2031,"comment_status":"open","ping_status":"closed","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"footnotes":""},"categories":[108],"tags":[176,297,298,303],"class_list":["post-2025","post","type-post","status-publish","format-standard","has-post-thumbnail","hentry","category-kerstins-news","tag-cacao","tag-ecuador","tag-quevedo","tag-samuel-von-rutte"],"_links":{"self":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.kerstinschocolates.com\/blog\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/posts\/2025","targetHints":{"allow":["GET"]}}],"collection":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.kerstinschocolates.com\/blog\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/posts"}],"about":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.kerstinschocolates.com\/blog\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/types\/post"}],"author":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.kerstinschocolates.com\/blog\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/users\/2"}],"replies":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.kerstinschocolates.com\/blog\/index.php?rest_route=%2Fwp%2Fv2%2Fcomments&post=2025"}],"version-history":[{"count":19,"href":"https:\/\/www.kerstinschocolates.com\/blog\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/posts\/2025\/revisions"}],"predecessor-version":[{"id":2135,"href":"https:\/\/www.kerstinschocolates.com\/blog\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/posts\/2025\/revisions\/2135"}],"wp:featuredmedia":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.kerstinschocolates.com\/blog\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/media\/2031"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.kerstinschocolates.com\/blog\/index.php?rest_route=%2Fwp%2Fv2%2Fmedia&parent=2025"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.kerstinschocolates.com\/blog\/index.php?rest_route=%2Fwp%2Fv2%2Fcategories&post=2025"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.kerstinschocolates.com\/blog\/index.php?rest_route=%2Fwp%2Fv2%2Ftags&post=2025"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}