Tree to Bar
Cacao growers are our collaborators in bringing the final Third Bean product to you. Come along as we take you through each quest of the bean's odyssey to its final form.
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No wonder we love it so much. Humans have been growing, harvesting, fermenting and consuming cacao for thousands of years. Read More
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The coastal region of Ecuador, just west of the volcanic Andean mountain range, is where the voyage begins. Read More
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Freshly extracted beans meet beneficial microorganisms, as they're taken through the oldest and simplest flavor-building process. Read More
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Things heat up and flavor ensues, as the beans are shucked from their shells and arrive to meet the chocolatier. Read More
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Here at Third Bean, it's our privilege to undertake the last challenge on the chocolate journey to melty perfection: aligning its crystal structure. Read More
The Oldest Indulgence
Ecuador is known for its delicious variety of FFC (fine flavor cacao) bean, known as Arriba or Nacional.
In 2002, chemical traces of the specific cultivar were found in containers from the Olmec civilization, making it one of the very first sites with evidence of chocolate growth and consumption, as early as 3,300 B.C.E. The chocolatey beverages of the Olmecs eventually branched out to the Mayans and Aztecs, and took on several other forms and uses throughout South and Central America. The cacao bean and its many iterations has been consistently valued and deeply ingrained in various ancient cultures.
A Mayan priest demonstrating a Chac Chaac ceremony in Yucatán, Mexico.
The many channels and estuaries surrounding the Guayas are speckled with small haciendas growing cacao trees.
Up the Guayas River
This same ancient cultivar makes its way across the world when a XIX century Swedish explorer asked some locals where the chocolatey smell came from as he boated along the Guayas River. Their response was "de río arriba," meaning "upstream." From then on, the strain became known as the Arriba bean. Perhaps we could do better to learn some spanish before introducing a cacao cultivar to the entire global chocolate market!
Perhaps we could do better to learn some spanish before introducing a cacao cultivar to the entire global chocolate market!
The aroma of the Arriba bean has been described as nutty, floral, with notes of jasmine and fruity, with notes of orange.
Our cacao still grows at this very site in coastal Ecuador, where the famous chocolate smell perfumed the Guayas River.
Grow
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The Cacao Tree
Cacao pods grow on small, evergreen trees harvested over a period of several months at multiple intervals throughout the year. Some of the cacao trees closest genetically to the original Nacional bean are still standing at over a hundred years old.
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Farmer-Owned Haciendas
Small land owners with farms ranging from one to five hectares (~2.5-12.5 acres) make up about 90% of Ecuador’s cacao producers. The beans we use for our chocolate are grown in the Los Rios, and Guayas regions, where the volcanic soil is rich with minerals, which, combined with the tropical, humid climate, make for excellent cacao growing conditions.
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Spectrum of Colors
The fruit of the cacao tree is a football-shaped pod that comes in various colors depending on genetics and degree of ripeness—green, yellow, orange, red, purple or maroon. Cacao pods ranges from 8-14 inches long and, unlike an avocado or cherry, which hangs from a stem, the pods grow directly from the tree's main branches and trunk.
Ferment
Like sourdough, kimchi and tempeh, chocolate is one of the many foods made better though the interference of enzymatic microbes. Fermentation breaks down energy-rich compounds, often making foods more easily digestible, nutrients more bioavailable, and of course, flavor profiles transform dramatically.
Fermentation Station
If you've experimented with fermenting any foods at home, you know that the process involves whatever microbes are present in the area. Some studies have linked these site-specific wild yeast and bacteria to the deep caramel notes and roasted nut aroma in the final chocolate.
We Want the Funk
Once the cacao pods are harvested, farmers extract the fresh beans and load them into wooden boxes. The beans ferment for 7 days, during which time the enzyme activity heats them to over 115F. The process transforms the color, from purplish to deep brown, and significantly reduces the bitterness and astringency of the bean.
Out to Dry
The beans are then laid out and turned every few hours to sun dry. This stops the fermentation process and prepares the beans for stable travel to our processing center in Sunset Park, Brooklyn.
Roast
Once they arrive in New York, the fermented and dried beans are loaded into a steel roaster and heated, as a steel paddle stirs and agitates them. Roasting accomplishes a few things, including moisture reduction and flavor development.
Pinky up!
The absence of water is one of the reasons chocolate maintains it's silky texture without seizing and clumping. A thoroughly dry bean also ensures that the final chocolate keeps well at room temperature for long periods of time.
The roaster adjusts time and temperature slightly (233F-250F for 18 to 30 minutes), depending on the depth of flavor already present in that particular ferment.
During roasting, the inner bean or nib (this is unprocessed chocolate!) contracts slightly from its outer shell.
For the chemistry and culinary nerds out there:
The Maillard reaction and Strecker degradation take place during this process, as the volatile acids are reduced and the sugars and amino acids are converted into hundreds of various flavor compounds.
Strecker degradation is a chemical reaction which converts an α-amino acid into a related aldehyde of significant flavor value.
Winnow
Once the roasted beans are cooled down, they're cracked into large pieces, and a blower separates the lighter shells or husks from the heavier cacao nibs, in a process called winnowing.
Grind
Now stone cylinders in a melanger grind down the nibs into a chocolatey paste. Some chocolate makers will add milk powder, other flavorings and sugar during the grinding process.
Since we use an uncommon sweetener in our chocolate, we make our additions of salt, vanilla bean, mesquite powder and coconut sugar just before the final step: tempering.
Temper
We arrive at the last challenge on the chocolate odyssey to its final form. It's the practice we repeat every time a bar is poured or a filled bonbon is molded. To understand the importance of tempering chocolate, we think about what makes the texture of chocolate so amazing: the way it snaps when you first bite in and then melts almost immediately to buttery disarray. These sensations only occur when we take the chocolate through a process that realigns and stabilizes its structure.
The cocoa butter in chocolate can take on 6 different molecular shapes, or polymorphs, and only one out of the 6 give us the snap and melt we love. That unique polymorph is called a Type V (five) or beta crystal. Tempering is the process of heating and cooling the chocolate so as to form an abundance of these tightly stacked and especially stable Type V crystals.
If it sounds complicated, it kind of is! An actual chemist over at Chocolate Alchemy explains the crystal structure using Lincoln Logs, as simply and accurately as I've been able to find.
C’est fini
We decorate the chocolate bar molds by tempering and flicking colored cocoa butter with a brush, before pouring the dark chocolate into each painted cavity.
After 24 hrs, the bars contract and release from their molds as if to say, I'm ready to eat!
