Chocolate Making

It is often desirable to evaluate how cocoa mass flavour potential translates into chocolate where the interplay of sugar and other ingredients in the matrix is important in holistically assessing the full potential of a bean sample. Additionally, cocoa mass tasting is more technically challenging to perform compared to chocolate evaluation since acidity, bitterness and astringency are sometimes dominant attributes. Often the cocoa mass alone does not display the full flavour potential that will be present in the chocolate and sometimes flavours that are present in the cocoa mass are not present in the chocolate and vice versa.

The recipe used in chocolate making for this purpose is important and standard formulations range between 65 – 70% cocoa mass with 2 – 10% added deodorized cocoa butter used. The recipe shown below, which does not require the addition of lecithin, has now been adopted by the Cacao of Excellence Programme.

The cocoa butter, sugar and any soya lecithin used must be neutral tasting to avoid influencing the flavour inherent in the cocoa mass. Sugar can be evaluated by placing a 50 – 120 g sample in a jar large enough to hold at least twice that amount, securely capping the jar and warming it to 50°C. It should be held for at least 1 hour at 50°C then uncapped and immediately smelled. An acceptable result is a sugar that has no inherent odour.

The chocolate should be refined to less than 20 microns measured using a micrometer. Conching at a low temperature (not more than 55°C) should be kept to a minimum, if used at all, to retain the intrinsic flavour potential of the bean whilst gauging its performance as a chocolate.

More details can be found in Chapter 14 - Processing cacao mass into dark chocolate in the Guide for the Assessment of Cacao Quality and Flavour” (Cacao of Excellence, 2023).