$708.00
Description
Join us for 5-days in paradise on a journey for chocolate. Practice farm skills in cacao orchards, visit with cacao researchers and farmers, learn about fermentation and drying for cacao, get hands on with bean to bar chocolate. March 8-12 2015.
Do you love chocolate and thirst to learn more about how cacao is grown and made into chocolate? Never tasted the delicious lychee or mangosteen-flavored pulp of the cacao fruit? Want to see how the days-long process of fermenting cacao affects the micro-terroir of the chocolate flavor? This is the perfect tour for you! We’re having a cacao boot camp with everyone from Hawaii, mainland, European, and beyond chocolate makers and chocophiles coming out here to experience and learn cacao planting, cultivation, harvest, and fermentation and chocolate making for 5 days.
We’ll introduce you to the cacao growers and fermenters throughout Oahu, an area we call the Napa Valley of cacao due to the amazing diversity of cacao flavors and microclimates in each valley up and down Windward Oahu and the North Shore. Each day we’ll visit, learn, and participate in a different aspect of cacao growing and processing with expert farmers, fermenters, agroforesters, university researchers, and chocolate makers in Hawaii’s burgeoning chocolate industry. In the only place in the US where cacao grows, you’ll have beautiful accommodations near the beaches of Lani Kai and Kailua or famous Waikiki, and you’ll be driven between each of the spots each day, with time off in the evenings to enjoy all the amazing local food that Kailua and Honolulu has to offer.
Walk into the cacao orchards of Oahu the moment you step off the plane and begin your journey into chocolate making, Hawaiian style.
Itinerary (details may change):
• Day 1: Cultivation: Visit a small hillside organic cacao farm on O‘ahu’s windward east coast to help plant cacao trees grown along with vanilla, taro, guava, and many other tropical fruits. We’ll test for ripeness, harvest & crack cacao pods.
• Day 2: Fermentation: O‘ahu cacao researchers from academia & industry will show you how fermentation can be tuned to bring out the natural fruity, acidic, aromatic, floral, and spicy flavors of cacao from different regions of Hawai'i and the world. Optional evening beach trip and group dinner.
• Day 3: Value added cacao, roasting, & conching
• AM: Morning Farm Trip:
We'll visit a long-standing cacao & fruit farm on O'ahu's northeast tip, where cacao
grows among bananas, papaya, taro, Passion Fruit, and vanilla in full sun within
feet of the beach, and we'll see how this farm is using cacao and all their farm
produce to make amazing jams, spreads, drinks, and lunches for their visitors.
• PM: Cacao Roasting & Starting a Grind: Chocolate Making Workshop 1. We will begin the process of chocolate making by Roasting cacao together and analyzing the steps and stages of a proper cacao bean roast. Then we will crack and winnow the beans to prepare them for the grinder.
• Day 4: Cacao agroforestry, conche completion, & inclusions
• AM: Morning Field Trip: We'll visit the experts at the Hawai‘i Agricultural Research Center to see how they raise hundreds of cacao seedlings in a shaded nursery, work cacao in with an agroforestry program interspersed with native Koa trees, and how cacao is selected and bred for Hawaii's unique climate.
• PM: Chocolate with Inclusions: Chocolate Making Workshop 2. We will check on the progress of our grind begun the afternoon prior and taste farm-specific Hawaiian cacao as fine chocolate. We’ll practice adding inclusions to tempered chocolate, preparing chocolate molds and pouring bars.
• Day 5: tree-to-bar, tempering, wrapping
• AM: Morning Farm Trip: Visit and learn about making chocolate tree-to- bar at the pioneering Lonohana farm on the North Shore within site of the famous Banzai Pipeline surf spot. We'll talk to Lonohana's founder Seneca about how he started a cacao farm on Pupukea's gentle slopes and how he's turning this unique cacao into Hawai'i's newest es
