{"id":2087,"date":"2012-10-09T12:24:18","date_gmt":"2012-10-09T18:24:18","guid":{"rendered":"http:\/\/www.kerstinschocolates.com\/blog\/?p=2087"},"modified":"2012-10-09T12:24:18","modified_gmt":"2012-10-09T18:24:18","slug":"at-the-cacao-collection-centers-in-quevedo","status":"publish","type":"post","link":"https:\/\/www.kerstinschocolates.com\/blog\/?p=2087","title":{"rendered":"At the Cacao Collection centers in Quevedo"},"content":{"rendered":"
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beans drying at collection center<\/p><\/div>\n

On the 3rd day, we visited several collection centers around Quevedo. \u00a0These centers are where farmers in the area drop off their beans and collect their money.\u00a0 Usually the beans are already fermented and dried, but if the farmer doesn\u2019t have the equipment or wants money quickly, he can drop off the fresh baba.\u00a0 These collection centers are very convenient for the farmers but leave a lot to be desired in terms of promoting quality beans.<\/p>\n

In two of the three collection centers the beans were dried using powerful blowers instead of natural sunlight. \u00a0 Beans are \u201cblow dried\u201d to hasten the drying process so that it takes 10 hours rather than 4 days.\u00a0 I asked Steve Devries his opinion regarding this method, and he is convinced that it kills a lot of flavors that come out of drying the beans naturally.<\/p>\n

We sampled some beans at random and found that many of them were under fermented as well.\u00a0 The beans we split open at Samuel\u2019s farm were brown with nice even cracks, while these were mostly purple.\u00a0 Under fermented beans means the chocolate will taste astringent and will ultimately have to be masked with lots of sugar or vanilla in order for it to be palatable.<\/p>\n

Steve pointed out that bean quality is compromised when you mix all the beans from different farms together, because they will have to be roasted to the most common denominator. \u00a0 The fact that some farmers bring in perfectly fermented beans won\u2019t matter because others might not care as much about the quality of their beans. \u00a0\u00a0This problem is worsened by the fact that collection centers accept both Arriba beans and CCN-51.\u00a0 We noticed that very little is done to prevent them from mixing once they got past the door.\u00a0 So, even if your bar of chocolate claims to use only Arriba beans, chances are it\u2019s not.<\/p>\n

Probably the biggest issue threatening quality is cleanliness. \u00a0 I saw animal feces on the floors of the dryers at one (a good argument agains raw chocolate) and at another, there were chickens nesting in an unused fermentation bin.\u00a0 At one point we saw workers scrambling to clean up an overflowing toilet that threatened to leak on coffee beans\u00a0 which were laying out on the floor to dry!\u00a0 Minutes later we watched in amazement as trucks drove over the those coffee beans. \u00a0\u00a0This is just one example of why it’s very important to know where you food comes from!<\/p>\n

I felt that the visit to these centers made one thing very clear:\u00a0 there is really no better way to insure quality and consistency than by working directly with a farmer.<\/p>\n

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

On the 3rd day, we visited several collection centers around Quevedo. \u00a0These centers are where farmers in the area drop off their beans and collect their money.\u00a0 Usually the beans are already fermented and dried, but if the farmer doesn\u2019t … Continue reading →<\/span><\/a><\/p>\n","protected":false},"author":2,"featured_media":2093,"comment_status":"open","ping_status":"closed","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"footnotes":""},"categories":[108],"tags":[176,300,297,298],"class_list":["post-2087","post","type-post","status-publish","format-standard","has-post-thumbnail","hentry","category-kerstins-news","tag-cacao","tag-collection-centers","tag-ecuador","tag-quevedo"],"_links":{"self":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.kerstinschocolates.com\/blog\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/posts\/2087","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=2087"}],"version-history":[{"count":13,"href":"https:\/\/www.kerstinschocolates.com\/blog\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/posts\/2087\/revisions"}],"predecessor-version":[{"id":2137,"href":"https:\/\/www.kerstinschocolates.com\/blog\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/posts\/2087\/revisions\/2137"}],"wp:featuredmedia":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.kerstinschocolates.com\/blog\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/media\/2093"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.kerstinschocolates.com\/blog\/index.php?rest_route=%2Fwp%2Fv2%2Fmedia&parent=2087"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.kerstinschocolates.com\/blog\/index.php?rest_route=%2Fwp%2Fv2%2Fcategories&post=2087"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.kerstinschocolates.com\/blog\/index.php?rest_route=%2Fwp%2Fv2%2Ftags&post=2087"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}