How is Chocolate Made? – Part 2
November 7, 2008
In Part One of this article, we saw how the cocoa beans were grown, harvested and packed ready for shipping. What happens next?
Processing
Before making the cocoa into chocolate, it must go through several steps of processing. Cocoa processing includes converting the beans into nibs, liquor, butter, cake and powder. Chocolate manufacturing includes the blending and refining of cocoa liquor, cocoa butter and various ingredients, such as milk and sugar.
First, the beans are inspected and thoroughly cleaned. Once the beans are cleaned, the processor has the option of roasting them before or after the shell is removed.
The inside of the cocoa bean is called the nib. Generally speaking, chocolate manufacturers prefer to roast the beans before shelling them, while cocoa processors favour the nib-roasting process.
Once the beans have been shelled and roasted (or roasted and shelled, as the case may be), the nib is ground into a paste. The heat generated by this process causes the cocoa butter in the nib to melt, earning it the name “cocoa liquor.” The paste, further refined, may be sold as unsweetened baking chocolate.
The liquor is then fed into hydraulic presses that remove a certain percentage of the cocoa butter, leaving behind a cake containing from 6 to 24 percent of the cocoa’s initial butter. The cocoa cake is either broken into smaller pieces (kibbled) and sold into the generic cocoa cake market, or ground into a fine powder.
Chocolate Manufacturing
To manufacture chocolate, cocoa liquor is mixed with cocoa butter and sugar. For milk chocolate, producers can add fresh, sweetened condensed or powdered milk.
After the mixing process, the blend is further refined to reduce the size of the milk and sugar particles. The mixture is then placed into conches—large agitators that stir the mixture under heat. Normally, cocoa butter is added to the mix at this stage, although some manufacturers add it during the original blending process.
“Conching” further smoothes the mixture. As a rule, the longer chocolate is conched, the smoother it will be. The process may last for a few hours to three full days, or even longer.
After conching, the liquid chocolate may be shipped in tanks or tempered and poured into moulds for sale in blocks to confectioners, dairies, or bakers. It may also be converted into proprietary bars for sale direct to the consumer market.
(Information compiled from the World Cocoa Foundation Website)