The Kind of Cacao That Manufacturers Like6
Planters have suggested to me that if the users and producers of cacao could be brought together it would be to their mutual advantage. Permit me to conceive a meeting and report an imaginary conversation:
PLANTER: You know we planters work a little in the dark. We don’t know quite what to strive after. Tell me exactly what kind of cacao the manufacturers want?
MANUFACTURER: Every buyer and manufacturer has his tastes and preferences and—.
PLANTER: Don’t hedge!
MANUFACTURER: The cacao of each producing area has its special characters, even as the wine from a country, and part of the good manufacturer’s art is the art of blending.
PLANTER: What—good with bad?
MANUFACTURER: No! Good of one type with good of another type.
PLANTER: What do you mean exactly by good?
MANUFACTURER: By good I mean large, ripe, well-cured beans. By indifferent I mean unripe and unfermented. By abominable I mean germinated, mouldy, and grubby beans. Happily, the last class is quite a small one.
PLANTER: You don’t mean to tell me that only the good cacao sells?
MANUFACTURER: Unfortunately, no! There are users of inferior beans. Practically all the cacao produced—good and indifferent—is bought by someone. Most manufacturers prefer the fine, healthy, well fermented kinds.
PLANTER: Well fermented! They have a strange way of showing their preference. Why, they often pay more for Guayaquil than they do for Grenada cacao. Yet Guayaquil is never properly fermented, whilst that from the Grenada estates is perfectly fermented.
MANUFACTURER: Agreed. Just as you would pay more for a badly-trained thoroughbred than for a well-trained mongrel. It’s breed they pay for. The Guayaquil breed is peculiar; there is nothing else like it in the world. You might think the tree had been grafted on to a spice tree. It has a fine characteristic aroma, which is so powerful that it masks the presence of a high percentage of unfermented beans. However, if Guayaquil cacao was well-fermented it would (subject to the iron laws of Supply and Demand) fetch a still higher price, and there would not be the loss there is in a wet season when the Guayaquil cacao, being unfermented, goes mouldy. I think in Grenada they plant for high yield, and not for quality, for the bean is small and approaches the inferior Calabacillo breed. Its value is maintained by an amazing evenness and an uniform excellence in curing. The way in which it is prepared for the market does great credit to the planters.
PLANTER: They don’t clay there, do they?
MANUFACTURER: No! and yet it is practically impossible to find a mouldy bean in Grenada estates cacao. Evidently claying is not a necessity—in Grenada.
PLANTER: Ha! ha! By that I suppose you insinuate that it is not a necessity in Trinidad, where the curing is also excellent. Or in Venezuela? What’s the buyer’s objection to claying?
MANUFACTURER: Simply that claying is camouflage. Actually the buyer doesn’t mind so long as the clay is not too generously used. He objects to paying for beans and getting clay. However, it’s really too bad to colour up with clay the black cacao from diseased pods; it might deceive even experienced brokers.
PLANTER: Ha! ha! Then it’s a very sinful practice. I don’t think that ever gets beyond the local tropical market. I know the merchants judge largely by “the skin,” but I thought the London broker—.
MANUFACTURER: You see it’s like this. Just as you associate a certain label with a particularly good brand of cigar so the planter’s mark on the bag and the external appearance of the beans influence the broker by long association. But just as you cannot truly judge a cigar by the picture on the box, so the broker has to consider what is under the shell of the bean. One or two manufacturers go further, but don’t trust merely to “tasting with their eyes”—they only come to a conclusion when they have roasted a sample.
PLANTER: But a buyer can get a shrewd idea without roasting, surely? You agree. Well, what exactly does he look for?
MANUFACTURER: Depends what nationality the bean is—I mean whether it was grown in Venezuela, Brazil, Trinidad, or the Gold Coast. In general he likes beans with a good “break,” that is beans which, under the firm pressure of thumb and forefinger, break into small crisp nibs. Closeness or cheesiness are danger signals, warnings of lack of fermentation,—so is a slate-coloured interior. He prefers a pale, even-coloured interior,—cinnamon, chocolate, or café-au-lait colour and—.
PLANTER: One moment! I’ve heard before of planters being told to ferment and cure until the bean is cinnamon colour. Why, man, you couldn’t get a pale brown interior with beans of the Forastero or Calabacillo type if you fermented them to rottenness.
MANUFACTURER: True! Well, if the breed on your plantation is purple Forastero, and more than half of the cacao in the world is, you must develop as much brown in the beans as possible. They should have the characteristic refreshing odour of raw cacao, together with a faint vinegary odour. The buyers much dislike any foreign smell, any mouldy, hammy, or cheesy odour.
PLANTER: And where do the foreign odours come from?
MANUFACTURER: That’s debatable. Some come from bad fermentations, due to dirty fermentaries, abnormal temperatures, or unripe cacao.7 Some come from smoky or imperfect artificial drying. Some come from mould. Unfermented cacao is liable to go mouldy, so is germinated or over-ripe cacao with broken shells. Some cacao unfortunately gets wet with sea water. There always seems to me something pathetic in the thought of finely-cured cacao being drowned in sea water as it goes out in open boats to the steamer.
PLANTER: You see, we haven’t piers and jetties everywhere, and often it’s a long journey to them. Well, you’ve told me the buyers note break, colour and aroma. Anything else?
MANUFACTURER: They like large beans, partly because largeness suggests fineness, and partly because with large beans the percentage of shell is less. Small flat beans are very wasteful and unsatisfactory; they are nearly all shell and very difficult to separate from the shell.
PLANTER: When there’s a drought we can’t help ourselves; we produce quantities of small flat beans.
MANUFACTURER: It must be trying to be at the mercy of the weather. However, the weather doesn’t prevent the dirt being picked out of the beans. Buyers don’t like more than half a per cent. of rubbish; I mean stones, dried twig-like pieces of pulp, dust, etc., left in the cacao, neither do they like to see “cobs,” that is, two or more beans stuck together, nor—.
PLANTER: How about gloss?
MANUFACTURER: The beauty of a polished bean attracts, although they know the beauty is less than skin deep.
PLANTER: And washing?
MANUFACTURER: In my opinion washing is bad, leaves the shell too fragile. I believe in Hamburg they used to pay more for washed beans; although very little, I suppose less than five per cent., of the world’s cacao is washed, but in London many buyers prefer “the great unwashed.” However, brokers are conservative, and would probably look on unwashed Ceylon with suspicion.
PLANTER: Well, I have been very interested in everything that you have said, and I think every planter should strive to produce the very best he can, but he does not get much encouragement.
MANUFACTURER: How is that?
PLANTER: There is insufficient difference between the price of the best and the common.
MANUFACTURER: Unfortunately that is beyond any individual manufacturer’s control. The price is controlled by the European and New York markets. I am afraid that as long as there is so large a demand by the public for cheap cocoas so long will there be keen competition amongst buyers for the commoner kinds of beans.
PLANTER: The manufacturer should keep some of his own men on the spot to do his buying. They would discriminate carefully, and the differences in price offered would soon educate the planters!
MANUFACTURER: True, but as each manufacturer requires cacao from many countries and districts, this would be a very costly enterprise. Several manufacturers have had their own buyers in certain places in the Tropics for some years, and it is generally agreed that this has acted as an incentive to the growers to improve the quality.8 But in the main we have to look to the various Government Agricultural Departments to instruct and encourage the planters in the use of the best methods.
Notes
1 For full details see the pamphlet by the author on The Practice of Fermentation in Trinidad.
2 Philippine Journal of Science, 1917.
3 Journal of the Chemical Society, 1912.
4 Comptes Rendus, 1913.
5 Dr. Paul Preuss, Le cacao. Culture et Préparation.
6 For further information read The Qualities in Cacao Desired by Manufacturers, by N.P. Booth and A.W. Knapp, International Congress of Tropical Agriculture, 1914.
7 Cameroon cacao sometimes has an objectionable odour and flavour, which may be due to its being fermented in an unripe condition, for, as Dr. Fickendey says: “Cameroon cacao has to be harvested unripe to save the pods from brown rot.”
8 The Director of Agriculture, in a paper on The Gold Coast Cocoa Industry, says: “We are indebted to Messrs. Cadbury Bros., of Bournville, for a lead in this direction. They have several agents in the colony who purchase on their behalf only the best qualities at an enhanced price, and reject all that falls below the standard of their requirements.”