Cocoa And Chocolate
The Tree, The Bean The Beverage

54 THE COCOA AND CHOCOLATE INDUSTRY undergoes is more curious, or presents more interest to the enquiring mind, than that of fermentation. Although cacao is fermented in nearly all the countries in which it is produced, the exact object and original intention of this process remain obscure. While good methods of cacao fermentation have been practised for many years, the literature on the theory of the subject— already voluminous—contains no full explanation which is generally accepted. The practice of fermentation is comparatively simple, but the actions and reactions which occur are complex and difficult to describe in non-technical language. One is quite used to the idea of the production of beer by the fermentation of an extract of malted barley, and of the production of wine by the fermentation of grape juice, but to some readers the association of cacao and fermentation will be new. Although the word “ fermentation ” is correctly used in connection with cacao to indicate a kind of spontaneous decomposition which produces alcohol, it may easily convey a wrong impression, for the small amount of alcohol produced is not the object or the end of the process, the alcoholic liquid being a by-product which is thrown away. In the production of beer, and in the leavening (rising) of bread the presence of yeast is essential; it is equally necessary in the case of cacao, but whereas with the two former the yeast is deliberately added, in the fermentation of cacao the yeast falls in accidentally from the air or comes from the outside of the cacao pods, or from the sides of the vessel in which the cacao has been put, and is distributed by a tiny fruit fly {Drosophila melano-gaster). In this respect it resembles cider manufacture, the fermentation in which, until recently, had never been started by a selected and carefully cultivated yeast, but by the mixed “ wild ” yeasts of the air.