2kg 32% Single Origin Hot Chocolate - Sierra Leone

The cacao tree
The main ingredient of chocolate is cacao, which grows on six-metre-high cacao trees. It takes six months for the flowers of the cacao tree to turn into fruit pods. When they’re ripe, they’re red, orange or yellow – and as big as footballs.

Cacao beans
The farmers cut the pods from the trees with machetes or long bamboo poles with knives attached. Some countries grow pods all year round, but harvesting normally peaks between September and November, and April/May and July

Fermenting the beans
The white, fleshy beans are split from the pod, and left to ferment for three to five days. This process changes them into the flavour and colour of chocolate.

Making cocoa
The dried fermented beans are transferred to the factory, cleaned and roasted, then dehusked to give cocoa nibs. The nibs are ground to a paste. This ground paste is finally pressed to create two things; one is cocoa butter, which comes out of the cacao as oil, and the other is the cocoa we use in our hot chocolates.