I am new to the chocolate life, this is a great site! I would love help out there regarding the best approach into growing good beans in the Pacific Island. Currently we do grow beans however not good enough for the external market. What beans do you recommend? Any suggestions please. Thank you in advance for your time:)

updated by @tiana: 04/09/15 08:23:30

Is it that the beans aren't of good stock, or that the post harvest handling procedures are not appropriate? My suspicion is that the beans are just fine, but the knowledge required to properly prepare them once mature is lacking. If that's the case, no change in planting material will help that i'm afraid.

Hi Sebastian,

Yes, I am already in the process now, im doing research on what is the best procedure. To compare to what it is we do.

Do you know of the best procedure currently out there?

Thank Sebastian for your time I appreciate it

"Best" is one of those words that everyone likes, but means something different to everyone who hears it.

What you'll need to get your arms around is

1) Harvesting mature pods.

2) identifying removing damage/disease

3) fermenting

4) drying

and THEN you'll be able to make good chocolate. "best" for fermentation and drying above can vary a great deal, depending on what your targets are. I'm afraid it's very difficult to distill what you need to know in these areas in a few minutes on the web, but there's a great deal of info on these boards to get you started. It'd probably be a good use of time to spend a solid week reading everything here and compiling it to start.

Where is your plantation?

Thanks Sebatian im on to it now:)