Controlling cocoa bean fermentation for enhanced chocolate flavour

The cocoa market is segmented into bulk (95%) and fine/flavour (5%) sectors. Fine/flavour offers a range of fruity and floral tastes, in addition to the typical cocoa flavour, it fetches a premium price over bulk cocoa, and is used by boutique bean-to-bar chocolate producers. Colombia is known for its fine/flavour cocoa, and connecting smallholder female cocoa entreprenuers in Colombia to bean-to-bar boutiques and consumers in the UK offers an opportunity to improve these farmers livelihoods. Fermentation carried out in farms not only removes the pulp from cocoa beans, but also converts cocoa beans into the good-tasting and full-flavoured beans used for chocolate. The challenge is the inability of small farms to produce high quality cocoa beans due to the largely uncontrolled fermentation carried out on-farm. Because fermentation happens naturally by microbes from the environment, it is uncontrolled and can vary widely, giving rise to big differences in the quality of the cocoa beans. Enhancing fermentation offers new opportunities to improve the flavour and quality of chocolate. Using portable, hand-held DNA sequencing equipment we will work with smallholder cocoa farmers on their farms in Colombia to measure the microbes that are fermenting their cocoa beans. This will give us important clues about the nature of the fermentation process. By working with both Vegan Chocolates by Luisa Limited (VCBL) making premium chocolates in the UK, and Colombian cocoa farmers, we will develop new ways on the farms to better perform the cocoa bean fermentation, to improve the flavour and quality of the premium chocolate made from these Colombian cocoa beans. This offers a real business opportunity for both the Colombian farms and UK chocolate maker as the premium chocolate market is expected to expand at 7 - 10% over the next 5-years.