Roasting Cacao for Fun and … More Fun!

I have always been curious about cacao when traveling to coffee areas. It turns out it’s fun to roast at home as well!

When I travel to coffee-growing regions, I am always excited to see cacao trees, or cacao being sold in the local marketplaces. I made a habit of buying any cacao I found, and trying to roast it in my toaster oven at home.

I have encountered the Theobroma Cacao tree in many coffee-producing countries, although it tends to generally grow at lower altitudes. (By the way, cacao is the name before roasting, and cocoa refers to the product after roasting, to my knowledge).

I have mostly found crossover between coffee and cacao in IndonesiaUSDA is (obviously) the United States Department of Agriculture. USDA also had coffee plant breeding programs in the past and one variety they distributed to Indonesia and was..., especially Sulawesi, BaliCoffee from the Indonesian island of Bali was formerly sold mainly to the Japanese market. Perhaps it is the changing face of world economics that finds the first..., FloresFlores is an Indonesian island, and as a coffee bears more resemblance to the coffees of Timor-Leste, New Guinea and Java than to the wet-hulled coffees of Sumatra..., SumatraIndonesians are available as a unique wet-hulled or dry-hulled (washed) coffees. Giling Basah is the name for the wet-hulling process in Bahasa language, and will have more body.... I have seen cacao production in Central and South America too: GuatemalaGuatemalan coffee is considered a top quality coffee producer in Central America. Due to our proximity to Guatemala, some of the nicest coffees from this origin come to..., EcuadorEcuador has everything it takes to grow great coffee. Positioned between Colombia and Peru, the interior mountain ranges have plenty of altitude, weather patterns, and ideal soil for..., ColombiaColombian coffee is highly marketed and widely available in the US. They have been largely successful at equating the name Colombian Coffee with "Good" Coffee. This is half-true...., PeruPeruvian coffees have Central American brightness but in a South American coffee flavor package overall. The good organic lots do have more of a "rustic" coffee character.: Organic..., although it is generally in different areas than high-grown arabicaArabica refers to Coffea Arabica, the taxonomic species name of the genus responsible for around 75% of the worlds commercial coffee crop.: Arabica refers to Coffea Arabica, the... coffee. I have seen cacao in UgandaWhile Arabica was introduced at the beginning of the 1900's, Robusta coffee is indigenous to the country, and has been a part of Ugandan life for centuries. The... as well. I have not visited or seen the intense production areas in Africa, on the Ivory Coast or Ghana, as we don’t get any coffee from West Africa.

A Side Trip into Cacao Roasting

Everyone may not be able to travel and buy cacao from local markets, but interest in cacao is certainly widespread. In fact, there is a “Sweet Maria’s of Cacao” so to speak — Chocolate Alchemy is a business solely dedicated to sharing the joys of roasting and producing chocolateA general flavor or aroma term reminiscent of chocolate. But what type? Usually described with more specifics.: Chocolate is a broad, general flavor or aroma term reminiscent of... at home. I can’t recommend them enough; I am their customer too.

Sweet Maria’s isn’t going down the chocolate river. Believe me…coffee keeps us busy enough and we wouldn’t pretend to know about all the facets of producing chocolate. That’s the Chocolate Alchemy zone.

That being said, roasting cacao is fun! As a home coffee roastingThe application of heat to green coffee seeds (beans) to create palatable material for brewing a great cup!: Coffee roasting is a chemical process induced by heat, by... person, you might already have everything you need to roast cacao. There are some basic things you can do with cocoa nibs or powders, like making a quite amazing fresh-roasted cocoa tea. Or you might enjoy tasting the fresh roasted cocoa as is. I definitely do! Plus, if you like cocoa and chocolate the the amazing smell of roasting cacao alone is worth the experience!

Although we’ll be leaving it to the experts, we’ve had a great time experimenting with cacao! It was interesting to roast samples and comparing them to coffees that have strong cocoa flavor profiles. One of the highlights was a cocoa cuppingCupping is a method of tasting coffee by steeping grounds in separate cups for discrete amounts of ground coffee, to reveal good flavors and defects to their fullest.... where we compared two cocoa origins, Ecuador and Uganda. We weren’t even sure if a traditional cupping format was going to work when we started, but it actually went pretty well! We were able to pick out discernible differences of varietal characteristics, a write a flavor profileFlavor Profile implies a graphical impression of a particular coffee, whether it be an artistic portrait or data graph of the perception of flavor compounds. In the case... for each individual cocoa.

If any of this seems interesting to you or seems like something you want to try, we definitely recommend you check out our other library articles on cocoa and cacao:

• Roasting Cacao at Home in A Behmor Coffee Roaster or Oven
• What to do with your fresh roasted cocoa!
• Check out our Video Overview of Cacao Roasting and Livestream Replay on Cacao too…
• Chocolate and Coffee: Flavors
• (Very Old) Article on my first attempt to roast Cacao (originally published in 2000)
• (Also quite old) About Roasting Cacao