I bought some whole cacao beans today
in a Mexican-food supermarket. The beans
themselves are from El Salvador.

I assume these are fermented and dried, but
not roasted. They are easily chewed, with
a nice texture. They have a strong and pleasant
chocolate taste.

The directions on the package say to toast
and peel the beans, add cinnamon, and grind
them, with about 1 tablespoon of the ground
material per cup of boiled water.

I'm surprised at the variation in the size of the
beans and color. Most are a light brown,
but some are almost black, with a wide range
of color between those extremes.

at Sat, 18 Oct 2003 20:20:11 GMT in >,
(Mark Thorson) wrote :

>I bought some whole cacao beans today
>in a Mexican-food supermarket. The beans
>themselves are from El Salvador.
>
>I assume these are fermented and dried, but
>not roasted. They are easily chewed, with
>a nice texture. They have a strong and pleasant
>chocolate taste.
>
>The directions on the package say to toast
>and peel the beans, add cinnamon, and grind
>them, with about 1 tablespoon of the ground
>material per cup of boiled water.
>
>I'm surprised at the variation in the size of the
>beans and color. Most are a light brown,
>but some are almost black, with a wide range
>of color between those extremes.
>
The blackest ones are likely to be Forasteros, especially if they have a
purplish-black tone. It's probable you have a mix of various types of
beans, although without the pods to identify them, it's going to be
difficult to tell if there are Criollos or Trinitarios mixed in. Colour
variation, btw, is very typical. A medium, mahogany-brown is ideal.


--
Alex Rast

(remove d., .7, not, and .NOSPAM to reply)

Alex Rast wrote:

>
> The blackest ones are likely to be Forasteros, especially if they have a
> purplish-black tone. It's probable you have a mix of various types of
> beans, although without the pods to identify them, it's going to be
> difficult to tell if there are Criollos or Trinitarios mixed in. Colour
> variation, btw, is very typical. A medium, mahogany-brown is ideal.

They do have a purplish-black tone, but I'm not
convinced they are a different type, as opposed
to being a variation in the effects of fermentation.

The meat of the normal, light-brown beans is a
very dark color, like dark chocolate. The meat
of the dark beans is light brown, like milk chocolate.
At first, I thought there was a strong flavor difference
between the two, but now that I've started peeling
them, I don't notice much difference. I need to
gather more data.

I found one bean which looked normal externally,
but which had white meat. It had very little flavor,
like a cashew. I assume this was a bean which was
not fermented.

I haven't tried roasting any beans, yet. The beans
are quite good raw, especially now that I've started
peeling them before eating.