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Post by max3732 on Jan 24, 2020 18:10:43 GMT -5
I'm thinking of buying some more cocoa trees and for some reason the only places I can find sell trees with yellow pods. I already have 4 of them and thought it would be nice to have 2 red ones. Can you tell anything about the flavor of the bean or how many beans it will have based on the color? I'm in south Florida so would the trees with red pods be more difficult to grow? I just don't understand why the places here only have yellow
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Post by Ben on Jan 27, 2020 9:41:11 GMT -5
I have no information on if they'd be more difficult to grow, but I'd assume that the different color pods come from a different variety of cacao tree. As such, my guess would be that they would have some difference in flavor.
Do you know which variety you currently have, and what the red ones you'd like to get are?
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Post by Sebastian on Feb 2, 2020 9:09:55 GMT -5
Pod color has very little bearing on flavor - you can, in fact, have multiple colors of pods on a single tree, as each flower can be independantly fertilized by whatever other trees are around it (or even self fertilized by the tree it's growing on).. Cacao flavor is incredibly complex, so it's difficult to narrow it down here - but the primary drivers are genetics (to a degree), fermentation and drying protocol, bean maturity and disease state at harvest, and how the beans were roasted and milled.
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Post by max3732 on Feb 2, 2020 19:33:33 GMT -5
Thanks! Unfortunately I don't know anything about the trees that I have other than that they are "yellow pod" ones. On the same tree I had some pods that were large and others that were small.
I ended up buying 2 more yellow pod trees. I did buy a single red pod and planted about half the seeds that had already sprouted and put the other half with a yellow pods I had from my trees and am fermenting them now.
I didn't realize that the drying protocol had an effect on the flavor of the beans. Is it bad to use a dehydrator?
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Post by Sebastian on Feb 4, 2020 17:41:51 GMT -5
What you need to manage is the rate of drying - what you're trying to achieve is a 6-8% final moisture level, but it matters VERY much how fast you get there. Ideally, you'd like to reach your 6-8% final moisture level in about 5-7 days - any faster than that, and you risk case hardening the outside of the bean and trapping moisture (and sour acids) in, and any slower than that you risk the beans molding.
Will a dehydrator work? Sure - just be sure you don't dry too fast, lest you end up with beans that will rot because they're not as dry as you think they were, or are very sour.
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