218: WE FOUND CHOCOLATE HEAVEN HERE

I am Lord Chocolat. Chocolat. Chocolat. Oh, it's like fresh. Walking into Echua for the chocolate tour, we had no idea of the amazing surprises that awaited us. There is a reason it is number one in Antigua. Welcome to Echua Wechua. One of the 24 native languages that Mayans speak here in Guatemala. And the meaning is god of the chocolate or god of the cacao for the Mayan civilization. And over there you will find tropical weather that is the appropriate weather for cacao five years. Okay. And you need to allow another five months to start to receive the first fruits. The cacao is considered a tropical fruit. This is creole cacao. How is the reproduction of the cacao fruits? Thank you to this flower. They just start to appear in the trunk of the tree. The smell of the flower with the leaves that fell down to the floor attract the mosquito in charge of pollinating the flower to get the tiny buds. Most of the plantations we need bees but in this case mosquitoes are useful so they have a purpose. Give us chocolate. Now we love them. There are more than 10 types of cacao in the world but we divide them in three main groups. The first is as you can see here. The fruits they are not hanging up from the tree as any other fruit. They are just like this because it's for the flower. Criollo cacao is the expensive or high quality of cacao you can get in the whole world. Tropical weather necessarily and the scent or flavor is wow incredible. You cannot find another like this but unfortunately it does not resist weather or diseases too much. This is why most of the farmers they prefer work with the second kind of cacao that actually is this one and we know that is forastero cacao. It's less intense related to the flavor however it is resistant to the weathers and diseases. Most persons with a good fermentation they can have a flavor similar to the criollo and it is resistant and they are not taking too many risks. Trinitario cacao is the flavor of the criollo but the resistance of the forage. It's not too organical as this too because it has been handmade. However it is really popular in Congo in Africa. Now they are exporting especially to Switzerland. We are removing some roots but new flowers are constantly appearing on the tree and to have pots like this size or weight you need to allow one month and a half so you are able to get like five or six times pots from the same tree during the whole year. We don't focus too much on the color to remove them from the trees like for example if it is green it's not red but it is red it is red not. We use the color more to identify the kind because we are more focused on the weight of each fruit because we remove them we can find between 20 to 60 cacao beans we need one fruit of this and they have of the other just to create a 70 grams chocolate bar when we open the roots and we find each bean inside of each bean you will find 45 percent cacao butter and 55 percent cacao so this is why you need maybe more than one and a half just for fermentation. It was not practiced by the Mayas because for an organical fermentation without chemical process you need two specific things. We discovered that if a cacao real aromatic but acidic inside means it is high quality and that you can explore and you can earn a lot of money. We are an organical chocolate shop we don't like to use any lecithin of soy any color any preservant we are just cacao sugar or milk we use topping the topping that's it. So now we are going to do this okay okay try only to suck the white part okay I like it I like it now if you like the bitter cacao chocolate bite nice yeah not too bad I like it another common question we usually always hear is Jessica cacao contains caffeine right because after we drink cacao or we eat cacao beans oh really happy and now the natural stimulant we are going to find inside of each one of the beans is theobromine. Theobromine comes from the word theobroma okay I like this chart because I really love to share with person both are natural stimulants as you can see here and they have similar components but they react differently inside your body. Theobromine as well as caffeine they are both stimulants. If you drink or eat cacao will last in your body between 7 to 12 hours but coffee only for tonight. Cacao lowers your heart rate versus coffee raises your heart rate. Cacao has a slow reaction which means you need to lower half an hour to feel that push of energy and with the coffee's immediate reaction the only good thing is that theobromine this stimulant goes directly to activate your head your brain the push of energy is in your head reduce the levels of anxiety the levels of depressions also prevents alzheimer's because as a stimulate your brains help you to be in constant exercise so you are more than 40 let's start to eat a lot of dark chocolate. It contains potassium, magnesium, zinc and antioxidants. Caffeine inside cacao not at all. Theobromine yes huge amounts the cost of a rabbit was 10 cacao beans also when the spaniards arrived and they realized maya use this as money they said let's pay 40 cacao beans and they will work with us 12 hours a day. We divide this fermentation into phases anaerobic, anaerobic so in the first step basically what we do is all the cacao beans fresh cacao then we used to put in the first wooden as you realize because you already tell with me the white polysweet so we have the sugars and how we get natural juice with banana leaves banana leaves they are really rich in juice so what we do is cover the whole boxes in fresh cacao trying that not air pass inside of the boxes for about three days after this period we insert special thermometers if they say it's more than 40 degrees means successful what we do is proceed to aerobic phase which means remove the leaves in the four days usually they are in this purple color and you will say why purple in the middle cacao is purple because it's rich in antioxidants everything rich in antioxidant is purple gray blue berry brown berry strawberry this is not the exception so when they are in this purple color we let that there and what happened acidic bacterias are activated and they start to produce a liquid known as acetic acid that penetrates the center of the beans are produced the smell and bitter or acidic flavor inside of them so seven days of fermentation white cacao represent the anaerobic phase fresh cacao covering with the banana leaves after three or four days purple in the fifth day getting brown because bacterias start to attack the beans and after the seventh day completely brown already for the next step the drying process when we remove the beans from the fermentation step they usually contain 45 percent of moisture water we need to reduce the levels to seven percent most of the farmers that work with coffee or cacao heating wooden boxes just like you can appreciate here plastic bags to avoid any kind of contamination after the other six days of the drying we need to proceed to the roasting process why is so important because throughout this process the beans they finish to expose the lack of water that is now seven percent mayas found this command is male clay and discord that adding the beans here and if they allow until they jump like popcorns it's really easy remove the shell and proceed to the grinding but actually my friends this is the old-fashioned method okay because today in our day we have all the machines similar to coffee industry with the cacao you need to roll the beans together with the shell and only one temperature is handled because if you increase at the moment of the grounding will take like burn but if you decrease when we insert the beans in the vibration machines just to remove the shell easily is not possible so this is the important how mayas actually discover they can drink the cacao one day they started to recollect wood to turn off the fire and the very old pots usually when they start to turn like old they start to have like this brown color you know and they confuse with the wooden color and they added the pots on the fire but it contains moisture you know so oh it's something and they touch it and when they touch it they say oh you can remove this yes and they leave this and with the fingers they imagine the beans like this while they started to discover oh more pressure more powder and they said let's add water to this and when they tried they started to say chocolate chocolate this is the origin of the of the word chocolate comes from the nahuatl aztecas in the noshtitlan chocolate chocolate ata pure water but the accurate translation from nahuatl to this language is bitter juice because this is really bitter without honey or nothing cacao is really intense throughout the days they discovered that squeezing a flower called vanilla it was less intense or smooth so the first thing they added was vanilla no honey no pepper no blood no nothing and when the spaniards arrived and just in the mayas share for the first time the cacao they showed them the vanilla and Hernan Cortes returned with the cacao in vanilla and presented as one of the most expensive spices from other continents the most way to part from mayas actually was the last step metate stones if you see a jaguar face because they consider jaguar protectors in their culture some mayas they used to have this as a ritual the running of the cacao ladies they really love where it is it's a traditional indumentary but actually it's of different colors because when the spaniards started to come and take appropriation of our land they discovered several groups and to avoid confusion they decided to select each color for a different group so for example you are just in Antigua let's wear purple if you are in the city green just to avoid confusion and this is called tlayoca and it represents the cucurican snake this is a ritual for the cacao yeah and you need to go to the four cardinal points like the north like the south the other why because we are requesting permission to universe and then you go they discovered that adding these incisions and putting fire below these stones as I already explained you inside of each coco bean you will find 45 percent of butter at the moment of pressure the butter used to run away through the lice they already collect the cacao butter in plates and then they use it as a beauty product to treat the horse during the battles because it regens the skin so quickly and also to cook it so good oh it's like fresh wow we are going to learn no more than four minutes they need to smell really good while we are waiting for this I will start with the tasting of the different kinds of cacao we have available in the store how we manufacture real white chocolate extracting the most expensive you can have from the beans in the cacao butter how it looks real cacao butter like this beige extract huge amounts of butter you need special machines as hydraulic pressure friction this is why a pound has a cost of 55 dollars 300 quetzales in a pound you will find 454 grams if we divide in 70 grams you are not able to manufacture maybe more than 240 chocolate bars if you want to earn some money you cannot sell it less than five dollars now this is a marketing class right right it is a marketing class okay so we can do it this because we are not in huge mass where market is really knowledge people about cacao there are puree formulates 50% butter 25% sugarcane 25% milk and this is what but commercial brand they cannot afford this they started to substitute the real cacao butter with vegetable butter or palm oil so they use vegetable butter sugar milk and artificial flavor of chocolate 90 percent 10 percent but white sugarcane and 90 cacao yeah i better know why this is the best then we have a 20 percent sugarcane 80 cacao then we have the most commercial dark chocolate in the world that is 70 percent 30 percent sugar and 70 cacao 25 percent white sugarcane and 25 percent powder milk why powder milk jessica why not liquid milk the first man who added milk on the chocolate peter daniels from switzerland but he started adding the 25 percent using liquid milk everything that contains water creates life which means no more than 10 days and fungus and also the chocolate bars then he tried using condensed milk but the same thing happened thank you to mr henry nestle because when the son born was not able to drink normal milk from the mummy and due to love to his son added instead of the liquid milk powder milk and the lifetime changed from 10 days to nine months without chemical process at all so they were considered the fathers of the milk chocolate industry so they found the way to improve the lifetime however the man who made the milk chocolate famous in 90 countries in the 70s or 80s milton hershey's from the u.s when he visited europe he tried milk chocolate and when we realized we can make chocolate and you can create shapes he said imagine if a lady like cats they are and i can sell chocolate cats it will be a hit so this is the rose influence if you can see it's when they yummy because the seven percent of water is exposed so they cook inside the shell now you see it has some lines or breakage yeah a water was exposed these are the shells oh the shells wow so you use the shell for the tea and you're going to start to add two and three go ahead thank you we are the birthday boy is the champion here my friend inside of here just straight water they share honey and cinnamon we usually take two tablespoons of the husk for a cup of water boiling five minutes this is so cool and the increase energy clean your kidneys and i've never heard the tea remember i told you the royalties to drink yes so this is what they drank cacao ground in pepper and chili right that's right i will honey yeah hot water i will just put a little bit and you will feel like like kind of hot yeah but don't open okay until they say because if not you're going to thank you very much man it's so much fun and from more distance more chances they had to pray for me or frost it was important for them because they consider the frost fertility for the ladies in the middle and watch while they were mixing chocolate she's so beautiful look what eyes what i smile and she's producing a lot of foamy when you're mixing cacao i will get married this girl ah now we are going to try the royalty shot or mayan goddess chocolate are you ready oh yeah cheers my friends cheers i am lord chocolate man wow so chilly licorice because when spaniards has to come to america and maya realized i need to offer something to this guy because it's the first time in our life and they had three important it means in their culture corn jade and cacao and they say if we share tomato tortilla too cheap but if we share something of jade really expensive so in the middle we have chocolate let's offer a cup of chocolate to our friends when a spaniard received the cups and saw the shoticle just brown browning in the water they thought it was poop and they didn't accept it and you know that in spanish we call the poop caca and they said i won't accept this because they are giving me caca to drink now a language this is the first theory second theory by accident they show him how prepare the shot he tried when he arrived to spain he brought with himself the most expensive spices during this century of years they used to drink cacao with all of this but just with hot pure water no milk one day one of the princess in spain decided got married with a man in fisserland and they say let's offer chocolate and in fisserland when they are preparing everything they say it's good they need something more critical and they added for the first time liquid milk and this is how they start to call it the new world chocolate the european style cinnamon from india vanilla from here from us the white sugar is for the tropical countries and that's it the european chocolate cheers oh wow and the aniseed is like wow thank you for the birthday guys maybe you're a firework thank you jessica this is incredible what i who would have ever thought i mean all of this knowledge fun flavor and happiness all in one tour this is killer