Chocolate, Part 2

Welcome back. As we headed back home after the amazing visit to the chocolate plantation, I was the proud owner of a cocoa pod. Time has arrived for some experimenting. The banana is in there just for scale because this is a very scientific experiment.

 If you google the subject, you might find people suggesting all manner of methods for opening a cocoa pod. However, this is the method I learned from the expert: you just smack it a few times against a tree. We don't have any trees in our apartment, but we do have this handy counter top.

 After cracking the pod, you just sort of pull it apart like this.

Yep, there's slimy goo in here. Would you like to eat some?

 You're kidding, right? You want me to pick that thing up and stick it in my mouth? That's really gross. 

I think we can let one of them go, for science. Just don't bite it.

 I cut the top off a plastic pop bottle and cut holes in the bottom for drainage. Then I pulled out all the inards and dumped them into the bottle. This was my fermentation tank. According to everything I have read, it won't ferment unless you have on the order of 25 pounds or more. But I've only got one pod, and this is just an experiment. We're not expecting much.

 Ugh. This really is slimy.

 OK. The slime covered beans are all sitting in the bottle. The top of the bottle will go upside down and be a sort of non-air-tight lid. The stuff is supposed to drain and ferment for a week.

 Hmm . . . what can I do with these?

 So, this has been sitting in the laundry room fermenting for a week now. I stirred up the beans a few times and kept dumping the juice that drained off. It smells sort of like vinegar. Pretty strong. Something chemicalish was definitely going on here.

 They look a lot more like beans now. Or maybe some kind of bugs. We choose not to think about bugs. Beans. Yes, they look like cocoa beans.

 I have rinsed them a couple times. They're soft and squishy now.

 At least one place on the web suggested it would be a good idea to let the beans soak in water for a couple hours before laying them out to dry.

 So here they are, 48 beans. There were 49, but Tom sucked on one. We threw that one away. It's all part of the experiment. We shall now wait while these dry for a week. They're supposed to dry in the sun. We don't get any sun in our apartment. So, I guess they'll just sort of dry in whatever fashion we can manage. Stay tuned.