COCOA OVERLOAD! || KOFORIDUA|| GHANA || July 2018 || Part 2

My apologies for the delay, I finally had time this week to do a short blog post continuing the story of Koforidua…

Day 9 – Saturday, July 28th, 2018

The next morning, with my bruised diaphragm, I pulled myself out of bed, showered, got dressed and headed downstairs for breakfast. I of course didn’t eat anything because, ugh, I just couldn’t. I was still feeling nauseous but I was not about to miss one of the parts of the trip I was looking most forward to. We were going to the Cocoa Research Institute of Ghana that morning and me being a food science/where food comes from/how it’s processed nerd, I HAD to bring my ass on to this institute and see this process! I also work for a bake mix company and we deal with A LOT of cocoa and chocolate so it was amazing to be able to see the raw material and understand the process starting from the farm!

We got on the bus and I felt a little better while sitting but not much. Have you ever been sea sick, on a rocking cruise ship, for like two days, while the ship’s captain was speeding down the ocean trying to out run a hurricane? Well that’s what I felt like that Saturday, but again, I was not about to miss cocoa!

Side note: I’ll tell the story of my family vacation to Bermuda at another time.

We got off the bus once we reached our destination and I powered through the tour. The cocoa process begins with harvesting the cocoa pods from the trees. Due to the high demand for cocoa around the world, the institute was tasked with developing a cocoa tree that would produce pods with the same delicious full bodied flavor from the trees grown most commonly in Africa and native to South America, which take about 6 - 8 years to produce fruit, are sturdier plants, and produce higher yields, but at a faster rate. *Phew* (wipes forehead), that was one of the runn-iest on-iest sentences, I’ve ever written; hope you guys got all that.

There are three main types of cocoa pods:

Forastero (Amazon Variety), which the Amelonado species falls under. This variety originated in south America and was introduced to West Africa.

Criollo which is a rare variety and less resilient to unfavorable growing conditions. Of course, this variety’s flavor is considered a delicacy.
Hybrid Variety, which Trinitario falls under (grown in Trinidad and all over the Caribbean and central America).

The Cocoa research institute of Ghana, through cross pollination, took the best attributes from all three varietals to create a hybrid plant that produces high quality pods in as little as 3-5 years. They also work with farmers to teach them best practices for higher yields and give guidance to ensure the farmers are treated fairly.

After the pods are harvested, they are broken and then fermented through a variety of methods depending on the farmer’s capabilities.

There are 4 types of fermentation:

Box fermentation
Tray fermentation
Heap fermentation
Basket fermentation

Example of Heap Fermentation where leaves are placed over piles of cocoa beans to create the warm, moist environment.

All the methods result in the same end product. The process of fermentation, which is allowing the cocoa beans to sit in a moist, warm place (“sweating”), causes the white pulp that surrounds the beans to mature and turn into liquid. The liquid is then drained off exposing the beans and allowing the flavor of the cocoa to start to develop. The Cocoa Institute also does research to create products like drinks, pectin, jams and jellies, wine, vinegar, gin, and brandy from the fermented liquid; no waste!! They also create products from the cocoa pod husk and the cocoa beans, obviously.

After fermentation, the cocoa beans are then dried in the sun before packaging, storage, and shipment to different cocoa and chocolate companies for further processing. Further processing being, cracking the beans open, roasting the beans, grinding them to create cocoa mass, and pressing them to separate out the cocoa butter from the cocoa mass. Then all the stuff is added in different ratios with other ingredients to make chocolate and blah blah blah… They didn’t go into further processing in detail at the institute but I figured I shouldn’t leave you in suspense. I know it would’ve killed you wondering what happened next. Haha!

Covered drying system protects beans from the rain

We cracked one of the beans open and it actually smelled like cocoa after drying. I’m not sure why that surprised me.

We were also shown where they store all the pods that were affected with black pod disease, which is a disease caused by pathogens that can survive anywhere on the plant. If the disease spreads it can destroy entire crop fields of cocoa trees which would be devastating for the farmer and significantly reduce the cocoa yield, causing the price to increase. The Cocoa Research Institute is constantly working on ways to reduce the threat of this disease in the cocoa plants.

After the tour, we went to go view the cocoa pods and purchase products made using the cocoa beans. It was a Saturday and the usual gift shop was closed but “Uncle” knew the lady who used to run the institute so we got a private showing of products at her home. It was extremely nice of her to open her home to us.

The group tried some of the white pulp from the inside of the cocoa pod. It had the sweetness of passion fruit with a very slight banana-y flavor.

We then ate lunch at a restaurant about 30 minutes southeast of the institute called Chris’s Cafe. I only ate pineapple and drank pineapple juice, as I still wasn’t feeling well. Here is a picture of the super interesting pineapple I ate.

Extremely interesting pineapple that you should definitely spend time looking at. It was tasty!

I ended up going back to the hotel and sleeping the rest of the day while the rest of the group went to Boti Falls. They sent me pictures which I’ve added below but I wish I could have seen it for myself… guess that means I just have to go back to Koforidua to see what I missed. Apparently, they had to climb 250 stairs to get to the falls?... I’m glad I missed that part. Ha!

That was the end of Koforidua. Next time on Travel Blog Thursday, I’ll be telling the story of our stay on the Volta River, the bead factory, and learning to weave Kente cloth at the Kente village. This is the last of the Ghana trip before we headed into Togo.

Until next time…

Thanks for reading all these words!

Now you know bookoo more stuff about cocoa then you did before, huh? … I guess you should be beaucoup thanking me? See what i did there?!

Thanks for putting up with me :)

Love ya lots!

Taste Tutor

TRAVEL BLOG THURSDAY - KOFORIDUA || Part 2