Cocoa And Chocolate
The Tree, The Bean The Beverage

68 THE COCOA AND CHOCOLATE INDUSTRY offen, in artificial drying, quality is sacrificed to a spurious efficiency. There is always a tendency to hasten the process and hence either high temperatures are used which destroy the oxidase, or the drying is done in vacuo and there is no oxygen to complete the oxidation. Sometimes worse errors are committed and the beans become very brittle and even slightly burned, or they may become tainted with the odour of the smoke which comes from the wood fires used for heating. The beans are easily spoiled, and with artificial drying skill is needed to avoid getting a dark uneven product. So far in our observations on the cultivation and preparation of cacao, there have been few instances where the planter has received assistance from the engineer, but in the case of drying it is the engineer who has pointed out that sun-drying is costly, tedious, imper-fect, and uncertain, and a large number of engineering firms have given attention to this subject. There are a great variety of machines on the market for the planter to choose from, and if he does not wish for ever to be at the mercy of the weather, he will be wise to ascertain the costs and see whether they would pay on his particu-lar plantation. The simplest method of drying is by hot air and for small plantations the simple tray-drier, “ Mayfarth’s Patent,” or the well-known Hamel-Smith rotary dryer (D. Bridge & Co.) are the most suitable. For larger plantations which can afford a steam-engine, the Gordon rotary drying machine or the Guardiola (McKinnon & Co.) is probably more suitable. Emil Passburg and George Scott & Co. make excellent vacuum drying machines, but the author has not had the opportunity of judging the characteristics of the cacao dried by this method. The illustration of the Gordon rotary drying machine shows part of an installation in one building containing four machines, each