Cocoa And Chocolate
The Tree, The Bean The Beverage

66 THE COCOA AND CHOCOLATE INDUSTRY These enclosed drying grounds are called barbecues1 or tendales. On the Gold Coast the merchants and others dry cacao on cement floors, and it has been suggested that a drying floor of Portland cement, made impervious with “ pudlo ” and coloured black, would be ideal. In the West Indies large wooden trays or platforms are used, called boucans.1 In order to shelter the beans when rain comes on, and to shield them from the excessive heat of the mid-day sun, the platforms are fitted with sliding roofs, or the trays are arranged to run on rollers one under another. The area required to dry the product from each 1,000 trees (about 15 cwts. per annum) is at least 80 sq. ft. The climate in some districts is such that the cacao cannot all be dried by exposure to. air and sun, and unless the planter can assist the drying by artificial means, he is faced with severe losses due to his cacao going mouldy. In some cases a fire can be lighted to heat the platforms, either by hot air or hot-water pipes, when drying is proceeding too slowly. In San Thomé there are covered-in drying platforms which are always heated by artificial means. In Grenada the author saw a room fitted with trays on which, by means of air warmed by hot pipes, the cacao was dried in 36 hours. Various enterprising engineering firms gell drying machines and these are being used in increasing numbers by the planters. From the point of view of quality, sun-drying is always to be preferred because the changes due to 1 The meaning of the two words barbecue and boucan are closely related. Barbecue is Spanish in origin, and meant a framework on which meat was smoked or dried. Boucan is Carib for a similar thing. The French piratical adventurers, wno so remorselessly plundered the Spanish in the West Indies during the seventeenth Century, dried or smoked their meat on a boucan, and hence were called buccaneers.