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Finca Educativa Don Juan #1: Cacao Tour

A finca is a large property, or country estate. In my experience, there is always a variety of types of farming on a finca.

This finca, as you can tell from the name, was set up with an educational purpose. In addition to farming, they provide tours of their farm.

We visited this finca on the high school trip to Costa Rica that I helped chaperone in the summer of 2022. Our main activity here was a walking tour through the finca’s cacao farm. We learned about the history of cacao and the traditional process for harvesting it and turning it into chocolate. Our kids then made their own and sampled some different chocolate inspired treats.

The Cacao Tree

According to our tour guide Johnny, back in the day, the cacao tree was considered the Tree of God. Indigenous people considered it a gift from God. Only the elders and elites were allowed to eat the cacao fruit.

Rosita de Cacao

This is the flower that buds on the cacao tree and will grow into cacao fruit:

Cacao Pods

It seems that there are three main colors of cacao pods: Green, yellow, and red. The greens produce the “best chocolate flavor”—a “rounded,” smooth chocolate taste. The yellows produce a somewhat bitter, light chocolate taste. The red pods produce the worst chocolate—a very bitter, “low chocolate” flavor. I only saw green and red pods on this tour.

Monkeys and Cacao Migration

The red cacao pods, thanks to their unappealing taste and the help of monkeys, are responsible for the spread of cacao throughout tropical regions of the Americas. According to Johnny, monkeys found the red pods inedible. So, they would do what humans (and Liam in the picture below) now do when we go on cacao farm tours: Open the pod, suck the fruit (the white stuff) off the seeds inside, and then spit the seed. The cacao plant originated in South America, but it was through this “suck and spit” process that monkeys brought the seeds and the plant to new places like Costa Rica.

Fermentation

Once you open the cacao pods, you can use the seeds to make chocolate. The first step in this process is fermentation, or the chemical breakdown of the substance by bacteria. You put the pulp-covered beans in covered bins so that microbes that feed on the pulp can ferment the beans, which starts to develop the distinctive chocolate flavor.

Drying the Seeds

Second, you dry the seeds. The seeds at the bottom of the picture below have been drying for three days. The seeds at the top have been drying for 10 days.

Rolling/Mashing the Seeds

Disclaimer: I’m not sure if this is the proper terminology, but “rolling” and “mashing” is what it looked like Johnny had our kids doing, so that’s what I’m going to call it.

Anyway, the third step in making chocolate from the cacao plant is rolling/mashing the seeds. Crushing the seeds breaks their shells and releases the cacao nibs that are inside.

Because we were learning how the indigenous people of Costa Rica made chocolate, of course Johnny had to recreate the experience as authentically as possible for us. So, as was typical, while some were mashing the seeds, he had the onlookers perform a ceremonial song and dance.

As you’ll see in the video below, two of our boys got carried away and began mashing the seeds a bit too aggressively. If you watch until the end, you will see Johnny halt the ceremony and hear him tell them that, because the cacao was sacred to the indigenous people, if anyone spilled anything during the ceremony, they would be sacrificed. So, unfortunately, “You’re dead,” Johnny tells these two boys—Hahaha!

“Fanning” the Shells-Nibs Mix

Fourth, after rolling the seeds to break them apart, you are left with a mixture of shells and nibs. So, the next step in this traditional process is to “fan” the mixture as you dump it slowly into a bowl in order to remove the shells and make it “nibs-only” (or at least with as few shells as possible). The idea is that, because the shells are lighter than the nibs, if you “fan” the mixture as it drops towards the bowl, you can blow away the shells while the nibs, which are heavier, fall into the bowl.

Grinding Nibs —> Cocoa Powder

Fifth, you put the cacao nibs through a hand grinder to get the next from of the cacao: Cocoa powder.

Powder —> Fondue

At this point, Johnny started to show us a few different “final products” that you can make. One option is that you can use the cocoa powder to make chocolate fondue. You can whisk together the cocoa powder with milk in a saucepan over heat to make the chocolate fondue. Below you can see the fondue bar that Johnny and Melenda prepared for us.

Powder —> Paste

Another option is to put the cocoa powder through a paste-maker to get cocoa paste.

The machine you see Johnny using in the picture below, he said, is modern, so I’m assuming that the indigenous people must have either not made cacao paste, or had a different way of making it that Johnny didn’t teach us.

You can see the paste on the plate in the picture below.

Also, do you see the mug underneath the “arm” of the machine? It is there to collect liquid extract that is used to make cocoa butter and sometimes applied by humans to their skin because of its exfoliating properties.

Paste + Milk = Chocolate drink

Then, you can stir the cocoa paste into a jar of milk to make the drink that we know in English as “hot chocolate,” or in Spanish, simply “chocolate.”

Create Your Own Dessert

Finally, Johnny let the kids make their own snacks. He put out cacao nibs, cocoa powder, and various spices and sauces, and gave each kid a banana leaf in which they could mix their ingredients of choice to make their own chocolate-based concoction.

Adiós

Adiós, Johnny y Melenda. Gracias por un buen tour.