From Cacao Bean to Fermented Chocolate Innovation
Feb 09,2023
Feb 09,2023
Bean to Bar describes the entire process of manufacturing chocolate bars starting from cacao beans. This term also refers to the craft chocolate movement, which began growing in the late 2000s, that seeks to transform the chocolate production landscape where the mainstream practice had been to melt down pre-blended chocolate bars and add unique flavorings.
Whosecacao, the business we spoke to for this article, is taking the Bean to Bar concept to the next level, or perhaps, a step deeper into the process. Whosecacao begins with processing cacao at farms to enhance the flavor and quality of its beans and continues all the way to producing and selling finished chocolate products. We interviewed Fukumura Akira, the CEO of Whosecacao, who says the key to their process is fermentation.
Whosecacao is a cacao development venture that develops cacao beans, supplies cacao and chocolate ingredients to various producers, and collaborates with major manufacturers on cacao R&D projects. It also crafts its own original products as a Bean to Bar company. When asked about his motivation to start the business, CEO Fukumura Akira shared his story in a lighthearted tone.
“I’ve always loved chocolate and enjoyed chocolate from supermarkets and convenience stores. But when I checked the ingredient labels on the back for health reasons, I started noticing things. For instance, I’d thought that cacao was the main ingredient of chocolate, but since cacao was listed further down the ingredients list, I wondered whether chocolate actually contained that much cacao. I also started wondering if cacao was very expensive or hard to come by.”
Fukumura also enjoyed perusing industry maps and looking up how industries are structured. This pastime also fueled his interest in the chocolate industry.
“Even though chocolate is a truly global food commodity, the industry’s inner workings remain quite obscure. That really intrigued me. There was so much that I didn’t know, like how are cacao farms actually run? I wanted to find these things out.”
Cacao pods
Fukumura quit his job at an IT venture firm with the goal of starting his own business at 25. Having always loved backpacking and traveling the world, he decided to visit cacao farms in Indonesia. He says he was shocked by what he saw there.
“They spread the cacao out to dry right on the roadside. People just walk over them with their shoes on — it’s pretty careless. I felt a huge disconnect between how we appreciate chocolate, thinking ‘This is delicious’ or ‘Cacao is good for you,’ and the reality of that scene.”
Fukumura visiting a farm in Indonesia (Photo courtesy of Whosecacao)
Fukumura was also surprised by how simple the fermentation method was, which involved placing cacao in wooden boxes and covering them with banana leaves.
“When I first visited Indonesia, it was the world’s third-largest cacao producer. Despite producing cacao for so long, the industry had continued without any thought of improving the quality of the cacao or enhancing its flavor as a food product. Part of the reason is that the farmers are essentially part-time farmers, and they rarely get the chance to taste their own cacao.”
The inside of a cacao pod contains 30 to 40 beans encased in pulp (Photo courtesy of Whosecacao)
Much of Indonesia’s cacao was in fact used to bulk up other cacao products and its cacao butter was used in cosmetics. It was not being produced as an ingredient for delicious chocolate.
“Back then, I did know that cacao needed to be fermented. But I couldn’t tell whether the cacao right in front of my eyes had been fermented or not. Despite not even knowing the basics, I moved around and visited many cacao farmers and had them show me how they did things, before going back to Japan.”
Back in Japan, Fukumura wanted to learn more about cacao and chocolate, so he decided to take a job at a well-known producer of craft chocolate. Through his work, he learned the process of turning high-quality beans sourced from around the world into chocolate. He then went independent and founded Whosecacao. Wanting to get involved in cultivating quality beans, he made the decision to live on an Indonesian farm and work alongside the producers so he could engage directly with the cacao.
A cacao tree bearing magnificent pods (Photo courtesy of Whosecacao)
When asked where he got so much motivation to pursue cacao, Fukumura gave the following answer.
“The only people who can grow cacao are the people on the farms. But making delicious chocolate from that raw ingredient has become the privilege of so-called developed countries — countries that have been eating chocolate all along. I thought that if we could produce good cacao, it would be a huge opportunity for the farm producers, and that succeeding together with them on this business would also be an opportunity for me.”
It would be ideal, ultimately, if the farms could produce chocolate themselves. But getting to that point will take much time.
The first step was to produce higher quality ingredients than before. This marked the start of a collaboration between Whosecacao and Indonesian farms to develop delicious cacao.
“I had the idea that the key to producing delicious cacao lay in its fermentation,” says Fukumura. Fermented cacao is brown, while unfermented cacao is purple due to the presence of anthocyanin. The cacao he saw in Indonesia varied in color, from brown to purple — a telltale sign that the cacao was not being fermented consistently. The cacao varieties from Central and South America, the main cacao producing regions, are popular for their rich floral aroma. Indonesian cacao, however, has a strong polyphenol content and a bitter taste. This was one reason why the taste of Indonesian cacao was looked down on.
Cacao, in general, undergoes two processes, described below: alcoholic fermentation (primary fermentation) and lactic acid fermentation and acetic acid fermentation (secondary fermentation).
1.The cacao pods are placed in wooden boxes and wrapped with banana leaves.
2.Yeast is activated by creating an anaerobic environment (no air is allowed in). Alcoholic fermentation takes place, producing alcohol that is nourished by the sugar in the pulp encasing the cacao beans.
3.The cacao, after undergoing alcoholic fermentation, is placed in an aerobic environment (air is let in) so that it undergoes lactic acid fermentation and acetic acid fermentation.
4.The cacao is then dried and it changes color from purple to brown.
Drying cacao beans in the sunlight (Photo courtesy of Whosecacao)
Fukumura tried repeated experiments with farm workers aiming for this two-stage fermentation. They fermented cacao under many different conditions and tasted the results. Unfortunately, he says, they were far from successful.
“We tried varying all kinds of things: how many days for fermentation, how many days for letting the cacao rest, how many times to rotate the cacao. But no matter what we tried; they didn’t taste good at all. The farmers started asking me: ‘Why isn’t this working?’ I’m no fermentation expert, so I didn’t have an answer. But I couldn’t just tell them ‘I don’t know’ and leave. I was really baffled by this problem.”
What eventually came to his mind was the fermentation of saké and wine. Japan has a rich culture of fermentation. Moreover, research about saké and wine fermentation is more advanced than cacao fermentation, and there are numerous research papers and studies available. As he pored over the literature, Fukumura started noticing things that all types of fermentation had in common. He gradually learned about the optimal temperature range for yeast to ferment effectively, the differences between anaerobic and aerobic activities, and many other factors.
He realized that fermentation might also hold the answer to the bitterness of Indonesian cacao.
“I read that soaking sour persimmons in shochu distilled alcohol removes the astringency. I wondered if maybe soaking cacao in alcohol could do the same.”
After making this discovery, Fukumura put his energy into the primary alcoholic fermentation stage. He meticulously created an environment where the yeast could thrive and multiply more effectively, based on what he had read in research papers and articles. He even recalled smelling a strong alcohol odor at a certain farm during his initial cacao farm tour.
“I realized that farms where the alcoholic fermentation progressed well had this kind of smell. And since our farm didn’t have this smell, our alcoholic fermentation was off. So I set out exploring the temperature range where the yeast works the best, in pursuit of this smell. We tried a lot of different ideas, like wrapping blankets around the wooden boxes lined with banana leaves and starting fermentation during the day to maintain that warmth through the night, since the area had extreme temperature swings between morning and night. After trying all different things, suddenly one day the smell of alcohol finally burst forth from the cacao.”
Unfermented cacao (left) and fermented cacao (center and right). The color and aroma change depending on which microorganisms are dominant. “What Whosecacao values the most is the Ginjo-saké-like aroma that arises from the cacao,” says Fukumura.
“Until then, I had been only thinking about the actions I needed to take for the cacao,” says Fukumura. The answer to successful alcoholic fermentation, instead, was devoting himself to tending to the microorganisms to create an environment where they could work effectively. The invigorated fermentation produced much more alcohol, which in turn drove the subsequent acetic acid and lactic acid fermentation processes better.
“When we finally got it right, we had a big celebration with everyone at the farm who helped with the development. From that point, we kept pushing ourselves to figure out which microorganisms to allow to dominate in order to balance out the flavor, until we finally created the ideal cacao flavor.”
Fukumura brought his newly developed cacao back to Japan and immediately started making chocolate. He recalls that as soon as he tasted the finished chocolate, he felt the enormous potential of Indonesia and the potential of fermentation.
“I had never tasted delicious chocolate made with Indonesian cacao beans until that moment. I, too, once held the association that Indonesian beans equal yucky chocolate. But then we made incredibly delicious chocolate from the beans we’d harvested and brought back. We thought: ‘Wow, isn’t fermentation amazing? We made something incredibly delicious from Indonesian beans!’ It was moving to realize that if you can put the pieces together right, you can create something of quality even in a place long thought incapable of producing delicious things.”
Whosecacao is now developing cacao with cacao farmers across Southeast Asia, including Thailand and Vietnam as well as Indonesia. The company has created many original products made with cacao from these farms. And beyond wholesaling cacao products, it also collaborates with craft chocolate producers.
“Currently, we are creating products with the concept of letting people enjoy the aroma of cacao. Most people don’t know the true aroma of cacao. But we are well aware of it, and we feel chocolate without that cacao aroma is lacking in some regard. We really crave that aroma. We believe that aroma is a defining characteristic and the charm of fermented foods — that addictive quality that makes you want to eat more of it. If we can capture the true aroma of fermented cacao in our products and customers taste and are moved by it, then I’m certain more people will take an interest in cacao’s aroma.”
The very first product from Whosecacao was called Brittle. These brownies feature a chocolate base made with generous amounts of cacao with added specialty cacao nibs for a crunchy texture.
Fermented Terrine (left) lets you savor the rich fermented notes of two ingredients: cacao and cream cheese. Lingots Raw Chocolate (right) produced by nel Craft Chocolate Tokyo is marked by the vibrant aroma of undeodorized cacao butter.
In 2022, Whosecacao entered its new Yuzusansho [yuzu citrus and Japanese pepper] product in the Drinking Chocolate category at the International Chocolate Awards, one of the world’s largest international chocolate competitions. It received the highest score and was awarded the Gold award.
“It was truly gratifying to see Southeast Asian cacao and Japanese ingredients and fermentation culture recognized in a chocolate product with such a long history in Europe. It also made me feel there is still so much more we can do.”
Whosecacao’s new Yuzusansho product won a Gold award in the Drinking Chocolate category at the International Chocolate Awards
Despite his successes, Fukumura has a sense of an impending crisis.
“The process of fermenting cacao is labor intensive and demanding. Despite this, farmers were receiving prices only slightly above those for growing other crops. Consequently, more and more farms are abandoning cacao cultivation. In fact, when I first visited, Indonesia was the world’s third-largest cacao producer, but it has now dropped to fifth place. A real disparity is growing with Central and South America countries, where cacao farmers receive government backing.”
“This isn’t just about supporting farms; it means that if things continue, we will no longer be able to source delicious cacao beans,” says Fukumura. “We have entered a phase where we must collaborate with Southeast Asian countries, which like Japan have ancient fermentation cultures, and somehow construct an environment for producing and securing quality ingredients.”
He further emphasizes that this requires more fermentation specialists within the chocolate industry itself.
“Japan has a long-established fermentation culture. We do extensive research as well. That’s precisely why I want more fermentation professionals and researchers to enter the chocolate field. I want to share Japanese fermentation and Southeast Asian cacao with more people. I believe this is an opportunity to introduce a completely new culture to the world, distinct from the traditional Western chocolate narrative.”
CEO of Whosecacao Inc.
CEO of Whosecacao Inc.
Born in 1991 in Ishikawa Prefecture, Fukumura traversed Central and South America during his university days and worked at venture capital and IT venture firms after graduation. Following this, he trained in chocolate production at Dandelion Chocolate Japan. He then established Whosecacao Inc., a cacao development company. The company develops specialty cacao beans in Southeast Asia and Tokyo’s Okusawa and operates a wholesale business for chocolate ingredients.
Whosecacao Inc.
https://whosecacao.com/