Sacha Cacao

14/02/2025

PARMOR, injertado sobre súper árbol. Tolerancia, resistencia y alta productividad

12/02/2025

10/02/2025

Estamos en el radar, dentro del *catálogo de cacaos comerciales del Ecuador*

09/02/2024

08/01/2024

A beautiful chocolate bar to showcase one of the latest trends in craft chocolate: CASHEW MYLK 🥛🥜

Once upon a time coconut mylk was the perfect vegan alternative in chocolate. But its strong caramel and nutty flavors often obscured the delicate nuances of single-origin cacao. Then came the trendy oat: pretty bland with hints of earthy and grainy notes, it became the perfect background to highlight the flavors of fine cacao without interfering (and to also cash in on the oat craze!). But in the past year a new curious competitor has risen 👀

Cashews have a gentle yet rich taste characterized by a delicate nuttiness, a lovely creaminess, a hint of sweetness and, dare I say, a floral reminiscence. They also don’t contain a lot of natural fat compared to other nuts (think of the fattier Macadamia and Brazil nuts), so chocolate makers can more easily control the mouthfeel of their chocolate.

In South Tyrol, Karuna Chocolate recently launched this dairy-free bar crafted with cashews: 60% Ecuadorian cacao (Esmeraldas), raw cane sugar, 14% cashews, cacao butter, salt. This bar leans more towards a dark-mylk chocolate than a mylk chocolate. For this reason, I think it will reveal even better how fine cacao and cashews interact.

👅 FLAVOR PROFILE

On a light coffee background, tasting notes of banana and coconut intertwine with rich flavors of butter, bread and brownies. The nuttiness is subtle and gentle, acting more as a “halo” around the chocolate than a strong flavor inside of it.

Comforting, slightly fruity, rich and softly nutty.

🦷 TEXTURE

Although far away from the creaminess of mylk chocolate, the cashews accelerate the melting point for a rich mouthfeel.

Velvety.

🛠 TECHNICAL CHARACTERISTICS

Low bitterness, not too sweet, zero acidity and subtle astringency.

Very balanced.

In conclusion, the cashews let the cacao flavors stay prominent, never interrupted, always shining as the main protagonists. No strong flavor is added, but there is definitely extra creaminess and more nutty nuances. Cashews have a more delicate flavor profile than coconuts, but more creaminess potential than oats.

Have you ever tried making mylk chocolate with cashews? 👇🏼

08/01/2024

Explora el mundo de los Estándares Internacionales para la Evaluación de la Calidad y el Sabor del Cacao (ISCQF) y el Cacao de Excelencia (CoEx! 🍫✨ Adriana Arciniegas Leal nos comparte información clave:

✅ Estos estándares nos permiten hablar un lenguaje común en toda la cadena de valor, avalados globalmente. Se puede medir, caracterizar y evaluar el cacao y derivados de manera completa.
✅ Trazabilidad, inocuidad y certificación de calidad son fundamentos esenciales para evitar la subvaloración de nuestro producto. Se paga mejor por lo que se conoce.
✅ ISCQF y CoEX son protocolos, programas y herramientas valiosas disponibles de forma gratuita, diseñados bajo análisis de la ciencia sensorial.
✅ Facilitan el acceso a mercados diferenciados, subastas de los mejores lotes y reconocimientos de calidad a nivel mundial.

Más información en la Presentación “Estándares y nuevas herramientas CoEx para calidad del sabor del cacao” en: https://sicacao.info/categoria/sicacao/.

Foto de archivo.

08/12/2023

Explore the diversity of microbes found in sediments with our Winogradsky column interactive that allows students to visual how microbes establish geochemical gradients based on their metabolic strategies. https://bit.ly/WinogradskyBI

19/11/2023

Poda de mantenimiento 🌳🌱

cacao

14/11/2023

Weird flavors, off notes and unpleasant aromas are a clear sign that something went wrong in the journey from cacao tree to finished chocolate.

But do you know that specific notes can tell you exactly WHAT went wrong? 🔎🍫

There is a clear distinction between defects born during the bean to bar process and defects born at the farm level (or during transportation and storing). It’s important to recognize these defects to trace back what happened and fix it.

A chocolate maker might get erroneously blamed for defective cacao beans he/she tried to do the best with. Or the cacao producer might get erroneously blamed for excellent beans that the chocolate maker was incapable of processing properly.

Here are some major chocolate flavor defects and what they mean:

👊🏼 INTENSE BITTERNESS = roast too high

When bitterness is too strong and unpleasant, the culprit is a roasting temperature way too high for those specific cacao beans.

📦 PLASTIC or CARDBOARD FLAVOR = “flavorful” packaging

The wrapper material is interfering with the chocolate flavors by bringing about its own taste.

🍄 YEAST FLAVOR = fermentation too short

A yeast-like flavor in the chocolate (of the unpleasant kind, not a lovely note of beer) is a sign of residues left from an incomplete or rushed fermentation process.

🍖 HAM FLAVOR = fermentation too long

If the cacao beans are over fermented, they will develop a flavor reminiscent of ham.

🔥 SMOKE or BURNT RUBBER FLAVOR = use of a mechanical dryer

When natural drying under the sun isn’t possible, mechanical dryers are used, but will confer unpleasant smoky and burnt rubber nuances to the cacao beans.

🥴 HIGH ASTRINGENCY = drying too quickly

Instead of slowly escaping, the tannins get locked inside the beans when drying happens too fast, therefore increasing the sensation of dryness in the mouth.

😷 MOLDY FLAVOR = improper drying

If the cacao beans don’t drop their internal humidity to 7-8%, that humidity will accompany them during months of transportation and storing, turning the beans moldy by the time they arrive in the hands of chocolate makers.

What other bad chocolate flavors do you know and what's their cause? 👇🏼

12/11/2023

Pasión por el cacao

If ROASTING is a crucial step for chocolate flavor development, what happens when you skip it entirely? 🍫🚫🔥

I discovered these 2 Mashpi Artisanal Chocolate bars at the last Salon du Chocolat in Paris, but didn’t taste them on the spot as I envisioned a quiet comparative tasting in the comfort of my house in Florence.

The same exact Nacional Cacao beans are turned into 80% dark chocolate, simply one bar is roasted and the other one is not. Who’s getting curious already? 🥸

The only times I enjoyed unroasted chocolate was when:

🖐🏼 the craft chocolate maker was also the direct importer of the beans (even involved in the fermentation process at origin) and knew that particular cacao from the inside out;

🌱 that specific cacao variety allowed for an unroasted profile because of the spectacular tasting notes and absence of defects showcasing already in the fermented-dried state.

If a chocolate maker has many single origins in the assortment and skips roasting on all of them, I have a hard time believing that all those different cacaos are equally suited for an unroasted profile indiscriminately.

But let’s bring the focus back to the bars in front of us and let’s get started:

80% UNROASTED

Tasting Notes: vegetal, honey, flowers, black tea, orange blossom 🍊🌺🍯

There are none of the flavors usually associated to roasting such as coffee and nuts. The tasting notes are lively, fresh and bright, mostly belonging to the sweet, floral and herbal groups. These flavors are more reminiscent of “raw cacao” than “processed chocolate” as we know it. The wild, savage and tropical side of cacao comes out and teleports you right inside the farm.

80% ROASTED

Tasting Notes: butter, roasted almonds, bread, wine, white pepper 🍷🍞🌰

The most delicate nuances from the unroasted bar are muted by the roasting process in favor of stronger and more intense flavors. Instead of the farm at origin, this bar teleports you inside a chocolate factory, with the typical cocoa aromas emanating from the machines.

I truly enjoyed the vibrant and natural complexity of the unroasted bar, making it my favorite of the two.

Which one would you choose?
And is roasting truly as crucial as they say? 👇🏼

06/11/2023

🦠🍂🌳Artículo que propone una nueva clasificación funcional de la microbiota edáfica con relación a su papel en los mecanismos de adqusición de nutrientres 🦠🍂🌳

Microbial interactions for nutrient acquisition in soil: Miners, scavengers, and carriers

https://doi.org/10.1016/j.soilbio.2023.109215