Forum Activity for @Rodney Nikkels

Dear David,

The Conacado beans are normally well fermented but quite acidic. So you would need to roast them adequately and than grind them for the first 12 hours (we roast at 130 degrees C for around 45 minutes, using a ball roast). During this first stage additional heat could be added in order to reduce the acidity further. The cocoa mass than reaches a 75 degrees C. After this stage you can (should) add some extra cocoa butter (3-5%) and than add the sugar, grind for an extra 2 days and you'll have a super chocolate.

Best!

Rodney Nikkels

Dear Steve,

We also have two Selmi's and include nibs (through the Selmi) and sometimes other inclusions (like bacon) that we mix outside the Selmi. Cleaning the Selmi is quite a task, so we prefer to keep dark and milk chocolate separate (the reason why we use two) and avoid to the max any inclusion (nib is fine because you can re-work if needed. Mixing outside the Selmi works well, but you need to be quick!

Rainins and almonds don't go through a Selmi so you would need to mix in a bowl before it goes into a mold.

Best and success

Rodney Nikkels

Amsterdam

Dear Andy,

How do you cool the chocolate? In a fridge? Perhaps some additional airflow could make a difference? The centre is also where the last heat is concentrated and a active airflow could be of help to reduce quicker the temp of the core of the chocolate?

Best and success

Rodney Nikkels

Amsterdam

Dear Donny,

I have made that winnower a year ago and it still works well. I assume you refer to the piece of pipe you'll need to cut out and use to create a kind of convection in the supply tube? You'll just put it in-side, place look at the photo's that are placed on the site where you got it from. The system works oke for small scale, a constant supply is crucial to obtain a oke efficiency (depends a lot on the cracking of the beans).

Good luck!

Rodney

Hi Brian,

Just for your info, I'm since some three years not involved in Original Beans anymore, and I must say the beans from Piura are to my knowlegde a true criollo, but not a true "porcelana" (what we thought initially, and actually this was discussed during the workshop and reviewed afterwards by a Venzuelan expert that visited all regions around Piura).

We have sent photos to the people in the US and actually they mentioned based on the bean cut and shape of the fruit, that around Piura the cocoa is very likely the same Andean Criollo related to the Nacional as you have in your region. Well, anyway, Peru has an interesting future, when looking at the fine flavour cocoa beans, and all initiatives (like yours) are more than welcome to promote it.

Best !

Rodney

Hi Brian,

Thanks for the clarification!But how do you the cocoa is the "rarest", you haven't tested all others is it? Perhaps genetic pureness is not as rare as you might think . Do I understand it right that the cocoa is pure "nacional" in the sense that it is the pure nacional from Ecuador? Was the cocoa introduced from Ecuador into Peru or what is the connection? You have any info about that?

Best and succes with the beans! Chocolate (from your beans) being sold in Holland?

Rodney

Dear Brad,

I've met Mr Brian some years ago in Piura, where we were organising a workshop with the APPCacao (Asociacion Peruana de Pequenos PRoductores de Cacao) whereby all information about the criollo beans of Peru was presented. He at that time was new into cacao and I guess was interested in the subject and started a program in the Maranon region I assume. Is his cacao the "rarest cacao"? Well, if you use the % white beans it would definitely not be the rarest, around Piura f.e. much higher % white is found, and actually thanks to the work of Cepicafe (a producer coop) farmers are replanting the white criollo since some years.

Best

Rodney Nikkels

Dear Panod,

Perhaps you could try to increase the temperature upto 75 degrees Celcius during the grinding for some 12-24 hours? You could use a hair dryer or some other device for this, but be sure the temp goes up!

Best

Rodney Nikkels

Hi Clay,

You're right, it is a very sad story and this should have been avoided. I think it mainly has to do with too big ego's forgetting what it was all about. Fair Trade as a movement was started to offer small scale farmers access to the international markets in order to be able to export their produce to the market, avoiding intermediation and thus obtaining a better price. A lot has changed and power-play came into it. Worker rights are in a way protected by law in many countries, espcially on those estates that are interested in the Fair Trade logo, so what is the benefit?

Would be interesting to see how this would work out for cocoa estates...

Best

Rodney Nikkels

Hi Brad,

Interesting to read! You mention your porcelana is so acidic, but why is it so acidic, you know? You mentioned that beans are not properly fermented, but from a porcelana you would expect proper fermentation isn't it?

Best

Rodney Nikkels

Amsterdam

Dear Daniel,

We tested also some DR beans (organic), did two roastings, one starting at 150 C for 8 minutes and than to 130 C for another 17 minutes (25 in total). This restulted in excellent aroma, no bitterness in the nibs. The other roasting was a bit higher temp and longer, but the nibs lost a bit the cocoa and other aroma's. I think you should not go too high with the roasting, otherwise it will turn bitter, also not too long. We didn't make chocolate yet from these beans.

Best regards

Rodney Nikkels

Chocolatemakers,

Amsterdam, Holland

To all,

Just form a side-line, this whole discussion is not really interesting to be honest. So could you please do this off line? I guess you know how to find each other?

Best regards from a remote Amsterdam

Rodney Nikkels

Dear Matt,

Although I don't know the color ex (we have the selmi one system, the smallest). I definitely would buy a machine that can be opened and cleaned, and the Color Ex is such a system. We need to flush the machine and cocoa butter doesn't work because the pump doesn't pump pure butter, it is too liquid. So you'll loose the first 1-2 kg while changing chocolate. This is quite inefficient and I would wish we had bought the one with the removable srew. From the reseller I understood that it's quite simple to remove and clean it. For the rest the Selmi works excellent I must say, but perhaps others do as well.

Best regards,

Rodney Nikkels

Chocolatemakers, Amsterdam,

The Netherlands

I quickly checked the web-site (perhaps it's not the correct one), but the Maison Caillier site (ch) looks quite old fashioned to me, with the Swiss Alps etc. To be honest, I don't see how they are going to play a leading role in the way people consume chocolate. In the coffee industry companies like Stumptown, Intelligentcia Coffee really "Rock", very different from the old swiss chocolate school. So, to be honest, I don't understand what they actually want, company marketing is not in line with the company believes.........and that is not going to be very convincing, a camera in Ecuador won't make much of a difference.

Best regards

Rodney

Dear Mark,

Thanks for the observations, and you are right, applying P & K is not the most environmental sustainable solution (although the N is normally causing the most harm in terms of soil acidification and related N2o emissions. The basic issue is that crop removal (cocoa beans to be consumed in the West) equals nutrient removal. In a closed system (amazon rainforest) cocoa pulp is eaten by animals and the beans end up on the soil to regenerate. When humans start to harvest and remove the beans the nutrients should be replenished to be able to produce cocoa on the long run. The other option could be to accept relative low yields (250 kg), but more hectares are needed to grow cocoa (world demand is growing with 2% per year).

These extra hectares needed are just the remaining forest patches with high biodiversity value (and enormous carbon content in the biomass and soil!). So that's basically why a better management of what already has been cut down would make sense, first by applying all nutrient recylcing measures, and supply the missing nutrients in sufficient cuantities to maintain a healthy balance. The Soil Organic Matter content should be maximized and soil life be supported as much as possible, but where nutrient reservoirs are low, some sort of replenishment should take place (organic or in-organic). The basic reason is that low yields will push farmers in the end towards the remaining forest borders in order to start cocoa farming in these buffer zones (high prices have the same effect!).

I think you are right with your suggestion to maintain a 30% in tact, but farm preparation has been (sometimes) done by timber companies. As free service they offer to remove the trees so farmers can plant cocoa. As extra service they also take away the trees, so the farmers don't need to worry about them anymore. That is the reality of the world we live in.

Perhaps we should consume less chocolate, or chocolate made from beans that can only grow combined with other trees (like the criollo's)?

In terms of envirmental impact the fine flavour beans are much much better that the full sun cocoas! But we should be prepared to pay a decent price for these cocoa beans (at least to compensate for the lower yields).

The current limited premium for fine flavour actually is perhaps not and incentive for farmers to grow more fine flavour beans.

Best regards

Rodney

Hi Kristy,

Thanks for your feedback! Cocoa farmers in Ghana have yields from 280 kg/Ha (eastern region) upto more than 1 MT in the Western regions (recently converted forest lands). The difference is mainly caused by the availabilty of soil nutrients (cocoa requires P & K mainly) and pest and disease control (25% is lost due to pest and diseases). The relative poor soils in West Africa needs some sort of replenishment, otherwise after 15 years you'll end up with an exhausted system.

Moderate yields of 800 kg/Ha would for the average farmer result in a doubling of their income. An expansion from 1.8 to 3.6 Hectare combined with a bettter yield would have an serious impact!

Many of these issues cannot be solved from a supply chain perspective, but actually have to do with how you build a healthy commodity sector. After de de-colonisation in Africa ('60-'70) and structural adjustment programs from World Bank and IMF, followed by a collapse of international trade agreements that resulted in a oversupply and low commodity prices we end up with so called orphan commodities like cocoa, meaning little investment in farmer training, research, extenson services, availability of planting material, fertilizer availability, timely finance (for harvest, but also plantation renovation).

Within that context still the Ghanian cocoa farmer is pretty well served, compared to many other cocoa farmers!

Don't want to make the issue more complex, but this in my opinion is the situation the cocoa sector needs to deal with. In the end, we as consumers have had 50 years of declining chocolate prices (Lidl sells chocolate at Euro 0,35/100 gram), and it is time to really invest in order to make cocoa farming a decent business.

All the best

Rodney Nikkels

Well, we live since a couple of years in a period of relative better cocoa world market prices and people seem to forget that in the period 1994-1999 and 2002-2007 commodity prices were (very) low. FT system guaranteed a minimum price for the cocoa beans and made it feasible for farmers and coops to survive. Origins like Peru where fine quality cocoa beans are exported by producers coops have benefited from this (Naranjillo, Acopagro, Cepicafe) and I must say that without the price protection from FT it would have been much more difficult. The basic problem is the demand side combined with a too low premium in times of cocoa world market prices above the fair trade minimum price. Fair Trade is not the solution for all issues, but a guaranteed minimum price for a tree crop is a helpfull tool to maintain your farm and not uproot and shift to annual crops.

The yearly cost of $ 2500 for FT certification (my estimation for a producer organisation) is in my opinion not the issue to be honest (for exports you would normally need at least 1 container, being 18 MT of cocoa beans, with a FOB value of $ 54.000)

From a farmer perspective, the small size of the farms combined with low yields is much more an issue. If you have a 1 hectare farm with a yield of 500 kg of beans, it is impossible to earn a decent income. In addition, for fine flavour beans, the relative small mark-up for precious beans is a crucial bottleneck, espcially considering the lower yields of the criollo cocoa (nacional at 350 kg/Ha in Esmeraldas, Ecuador compared with a 1,2 MT when using CCN51).

Best regards

Rodney Nikkels

Hi Sunita,

Thanks for sharing your vision, you're right, interesting things are happening in cocoa as well. To be clear, I'm not against Fair Trade, I think the principles are great, but it lacks a quality focus and a pricing mechanism. With all solution built in the "systems" world, you'll start to loose the human connection, and perhaps that is the biggest problem, when trying to solve social and invironmental issue. A value chain so be a chain of values, broader than only financial value.

I've been organizing tastings in the past and sure, people are more "open" with a piece of chocolate. It seems to affect the brain function!

Best regards and success with the tastings (I really like the name: chocolate garage!)

Rodney Nikkels

Hi Clay,

Having been involved in coffee certification for quite some years (various schemes) and not having found THE solution yet, I was wondering if you could share some of the concept you're developing under the cocoassure domain. In coffee, companies also have developed their own approaches, Starbucks, Nespresso, Intelligentsia coffee etc. Some have blended existing systems (like Fair Trade) with personal believes and arrangements with suppliers (Dean Bean, Uncommon Grounds, George Howell and many others). All off them have developed specific relationships with their suppliers. This relationship building in cocoa seems to be more complicated, perhaps because traders don't want to disclose the exact origin of the cocoa bean? What have you identified as the core elements to make the cocoa market more fair for farmers and their families?

Best regards

Rodney Nikkels

Dear Clay,

I think you're right, Fair Trade will not adapt itself to the new reality of higher commodity prices, and indeed it is even questionable if the FT minimum price level covers the real cost of production. This level was set in the beginning of the 90s and has not been corrected for inflation f.e. In the coffee sector a interesting approach has emerged, partly caused by a need to compensate farmers for investments in quality improvements. Within cocoa the situation is even more critical, the criollo farms on average produce much less per Ha than the so called hybrids or improved varieties. In order to really protect this genetic resource the market must compensate for the lower output levels. Perhaps for Venezuela this is happening but many farmers with interesting bean varieties on their plots actually receive market rate or a little bit in addition. They than incline to shift to "improved varieties".

In coffee the system implemented is the "Cup of Excellence", whereby per country the best coffees are selected by the industry (internal process). In addition, an international expert panel will rate the samples and the lots will become available for an international auction. The consequence is that this triggers a quality focus from the ground up. The prices paid are upto ten times the world market price. The beans are not treated as a simple commodity but as a crucial material to develop a superior product.

For fine flavour cocoa beans this could be a very, very interesting path. Buyer can compete for specific lots and the one willing to pay the highest price will get it. Does this sound as a fair practice for both sides? I won't solve the bulk cocoa market issues in terms of cost and benefit, but at least it can start a process to valuate cocoa differently. The commodity market make a small cocoa farmer in Ghana compete with one in f.e. Papua New Guinea, which in my opinion will never result in a fair price level, but into a race to the bottom.

Actually in coffee Fair Trade has not done much to improve quality, although the fat premiums were partly invested in small infrastructure to improve product quality (the same actually has happened in cocoa small holder coops in Peru, they have been able to develop themselves into a new origin of interetsing cocoa beans, partly because of the gains from their participation in the Fair Trade market. An interesting example of this is Cepicafe, a coffee organisation that started to develop the cocoa sector in Piura some years back.

In former days Fair Trade certification was free for producers, the costs were covered by fees higher up the chain. Some six years ago this system was changed because of pressure from outside, that wanted FT to comply with ISO 65 criteria (standard for certifying bodies). This introduced additional costs for external validation for certification holders.

Best regards

Rodney Nikkels

Dear Clay,

I think the calculation is quite correct. It is even worse when multi certifications are involved. During the times of low commodity prices as we have seen during the period 1998-2008 Fair Trade purchasing conditions offered farmers a guaranteed minimum price of USD 1750,- /MT of beans and a fixed premium for organic. So, when markets were at USD 1000,- an additional 750,- was received by the coops. The last 3 years commodity prices (in coffee and cocoa) went up to far above the Fair Trade minimum price, so the benefit is the "premium",, which is small as can be seen in your example. So the "fairness" is designed around the minimum price and social and environmental premiums. But when markets go up, the price effect evaporates. In my opinion the minimum price has beenimportant for many small holder coops to remain in business, but with the current markets the premiums should be adapted and the costs of external verification and internal control be reduced to the max.

I hope this clarifies a bit about the background of the Fair Trade principles.

Best regards

Rodney Nikkels

Dear Seneca,

You're totally right. All that can be done to reduce environmental impact should be done, and all that can be done to locally add value, the same (principles of slow food?). In coffee we have seen a recent growth of the consumption of quality coffee in countries of origin, perhaps the same will happen with chocolate. As far as I know some countries are net exporter of beans and net importer of chocolate products (Nicaragua, Peru). The emerging small batch processing could bring a positive change to this...

Best regards and thanks for the link

Rodney

Dear Clay,

Thanks for the feedback! To my knowledge (but perhaps it's too limited) not all cacao's do equally well in full sun systems, especially the criollo's require quite some shade (their natural habitat). In shaded systems the application of fertiliser is less effective in terms of production increase (the limiting factor is sunlight?).And very true, the origin of the fertiliser (organic/inorganic) matters quite a lot.

In Peru the farmers seem to replace coca production for cocoa. Coca is quite bad and after a couple of years result in highly degraded land. Cocoa is much better and at the same time sequesters carbon while being planted (especially when shade trees are added as well).

Best regards

Rodney Nikkels

Dear Seneca

Just a quick comment regarding the carbon footprint from fine chocolate. The carbon emission from transport is relatively limited, compared to the emissions from production stage (farms) and the chocolate manufacturing stage, therefore I don't think it matters much where the chocolate is manufactured, especially because the large scale industry is relatively efficient in terms of GHG emissions per TM of output. Perhaps for the fine chocolate industry the source of energy is something to consider (wind, water, solar, bio-mass?)

For tropical commodities, like cocoa beans, the carbon emission caused by deforestation plus the use of agro-chemicals are by far the most important GHG sources. In that sense one could say that the fine flavour (criollo, trinitario) beans do have limited impact compared to the west african cacao systems (land converion from secondary forests to cocoa plantation) or the Asian cacao production (highly fertilised). The criollo cacao beans don't cause much land conversion and use very little inputs in most cases (especially when grown by small holder farmers).Perhaps the increasing demand for fine flavour beans triggers the conversion of degraded land back into cacao farms?

It is a complex subject, so I hope I didn't make it more complex......

Best regards

Rodney Nikkels