Gallery | qcida

COCOA GALLERY

Newly planted cocoa trees in Queensland, are best protected from wind and excessive sunshine.

Cocoa seedlings grow quickly once planted, and can reach 1 metre within 6 months. They are best protected from excessive wind and harsh sunlight till their natural foliage becomes more dense.

Cocoa trees flower continuously all year round. The delicate flowers are only about 1cm wide, and grow from the trunk and branches of the cocoa tree. It takes about 5 months for the flower to grow to a ripe cocoa pod.

This is how they start, tiny. A fully grown cocoa pod can be up to 30cm long.

Cocoa pods change colour as they ripen into a range of purples, browns, yellows, oranges and reds. These are not yet ripe.

Cocoa pods stay green until they ripen in the last few days to an array of colours including yellow, orange, red, brown and purple.

Magnificent colours of a ripe Queensland cocoa pod, ready to be harvested and transformed into chocolate.

Harvesting Queensland cocoa pods is done carefully by hand and can be a laborious job. It's nice to appreciate all the hard work that goes into producing chocolate!

Freshly harvested Queensland cocoa pods ready to be split and the beans extracted.

Cocoa pods have a thick shell (approximately 1cm thick) and contain between 20-30 beans covered in a white mucilage.

A freshly harvested Queensland cocoa pod with part of the shell removed to reveal the healthy beans inside, covered in white mucilage.

Cocoa beans are a purple colour, and grow on a central placenta inside the cocoa pod, covered in a white tropical tasting mucilage.

The beans need to be removed carefully from the split cocoa pod, and gently removed from the placenta that holds them in place.

Removing cocoa beans from freshly harvested and split cocoa pods is still done by hand in many places. QCIDA is researching ways to mechanise this for safety and greater efficiency.

Although mechanised bean extract is being investigated, Queensland cocoa beans are presently removed carefully by hand.

Freshly extracted wet cocoa beans from a Queensland cocoa plantation.

Once they have been extracted from their pod, wet cocoa beans are then fermented for several days.

Wet cocoa beans are fermented to enhance their flavour. Fermenting is a critical step that influences the final chocolate taste.

Drying fermented cocoa beans in the magnificent Queensland sunshine.

Dried Queensland cocoa beans, ready to be roasted and turned into chocolate!

Grateful acknowledgement is made to Daintree Cocoa Pty Ltd for supplying these photographs of cocoa in various stages of growth and processing. Post-Harvest processing of cocoa is a critical step in developing the base flavour influences for chocolate which is to be made with it.

COCOA GALLERY

Cocoa beans about to be removed