We were originally scheduled for a 11AM tour at Belmont Estate, but we arrived later in the afternoon due to our doctor and pharmacy adventures in the morning.
It was an hour’s drive north, so we brought a traditional Grenadian chicken roti lunch. These were massive, and held a thigh, wing, and drumstick each, bones included. Enough for two meals for each of us. EC$13 each.Admiring the towering palms while the guide gave us a bit of history.Initially a coffee and sugar plantation in the 1600s, Belmont Estate was first owned by the French. It was then owned by a Scot after the British took over in the late 1700s, before being purchased by indentured servants for £35,000 in 1944. Sometime in the 1800s, this 400-acre estate switched to nutmeg and cocoa production.Table showcasing the local produce. Some highlights: bergamot peel is used to make Earl Grey tea; the husk of the calabash nut is used for making bowls; starfruit is also called ‘five-finger fruit’, and is in the same family as ‘one-finger fruit’. The cacao beans are in a calabash bowl, which is also a common plant in Grenada.There are 3 types of cacao on Grenada: Forasteros, Criollos, and Trinitarios. The cacao tree takes 4-5 years to mature from seed and can only be pollinated by sand flies (aka, No See Ums). It takes the pod 4-5 months to ripen after pollination, and they are yellow, bright red or orange when ripe. Our guide asked Felix to harvest a ripe pod.Our guide cracked it open (see the video below for his high tech method) so we could munch on the sweet pulp. The pulp and seeds are separated from the outer pod. The outer pods are left to decompose and fertilize the trees. The beans with their surrounding pulp are then packed into these wooden bins and covered with banana leaves and jute bags. Yeast converts the sugars in the pulp to alcohol and carbon dioxide. Bacteria then oxidizes the alcohol to lactic acid and acetic acid.The fermentation (‘sweating’) process generates heat (as high as 113°F), which activates enzymes in the beans to produce chocolate flavour and develops the chocolate colour. The beans are turned from one bin to another every two days to increase oxygenation and to prevent them from burning and rotting due to the heat of fermentation. We were able to put our hands in the bins and it was significantly hotter than ambient temperature.After six days of ‘sweating’, the beans are dried in these massive two-layered wooden drawers for eight days. When it rains, the drawers are pushed in under the drying house to keep the beans dry. This is the traditional method of drying cacao beans (the drawers were originally built for drying coffee). In the traditional method, the beans were walked on with bare feet every 30 minutes to increase air flow so they dry faster. See us ‘walking’ the cacao beans in the video below.Today, the beans are mostly dried using the Solar Convection Drying House, which is easier and faster, only taking six days.Instead of ‘walking’ the cacao, the cacao is turned by hand.When dried, you can crack open the bean and peel off its shell to reveal cacao nibs. This is 100% pure organic cacao. This machine sorts the beans to remove remove flat, wrinkled, shrivelled beans as they won’t have nibs. It also sorts them by size. Large and medium sized beans are used to make chocolate while the small beans are ground to make cocoa balls for cocoa tea.Sorting and grading of small batches is done by hand and then the beans are bagged for transport and export. These days, Belmont Estate no longer exports beans as it’s more profitable to produce and sell chocolate. In the past, when the beans were being exported, there was an additional step of polishing – this was done manually by putting the beans in huge copper pots and ‘dancing’ on them, or automatically using a polisher, which was just a large drum with arms so the beans rub against each other to accomplish the polishing. The beans are then roasted to further develop their chocolate flavour. Pure chocolateMilk powder and vanilla is added for milk chocolateThese are grinding machines, where the nibs are ground with sugar for 5 days into liquid chocolate. The liquid chocolate can be compacted into cocoa cakes to extract cocoa butter. The by product of this process is cocoa powder, which is when you grind the cocoa cakes into powder. Cocoa butter is used in skin care products or to make (cheap) chocolate.At Belmont, they age their chocolate for three months in big slabs to further develop flavour.When the cocoa butter crystallizes, it forms crystals of random sizes (some large enough to be seen with the naked eye) which causes chocolate to crumble rather than snap. Tempering, the final step in chocolate making, heats (and cools) the chocolate in a controlled manner so that small uniform sized crystals are formed. At this stage, the chocolate is poured into moulds.Chocolate bars are wrapped manually.Of course, at the conclusion of the tour, we got to sample different types of chocolate produced here. YUM!Grenada produces 20% of the word’s nutmeg production (Indonesia produces 75%). Nutmeg is apparently the reason why Grenada is called the Isle of Spice. The loft area is where they’re drying nutmeg.The nutmeg nut needs to dry for 6-8 weeks before being cracked open for its parts: mace and nutmeg. Grenadians use the nutmeg fruit in jams and jellies, the mace and nut as a seasoning, and the outer shell as mulch. GPa found Mango Nutmeg jam in the grocery store, and we had that for breakfast almost daily.GPa managed to capture this sample of the accounts on the estate.Bats in the rafters.GuavaBananasPlantainsOther edibles growing on the estate.
Of course, Nolan’s drone came out at the end and he got some amazing overhead shots.
The drying drawers.Bird’s eye view of the Belmont Estate.
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2 thoughts on “Belmont Estate: tree-to-bar chocolate experience”
Another step is crushing the dried cocoa beans and vacuuming away the shell pieces.
I forget how the cocoa butter was processed to make white chocolate, which is visible in the tempering area. The tour was educational, and so inexpensive.
Belmont estate also offers a huge restaurant to appeal to visitors. The north end of the island was a full hours drive from the south, but the traffic is sparse away from the capital.
Another step is crushing the dried cocoa beans and vacuuming away the shell pieces.
I forget how the cocoa butter was processed to make white chocolate, which is visible in the tempering area. The tour was educational, and so inexpensive.
Belmont estate also offers a huge restaurant to appeal to visitors. The north end of the island was a full hours drive from the south, but the traffic is sparse away from the capital.