Hawaiian Chocolate

This week on the Farm Traveler Podcast, and just in time for Valentine's Day, we're gonna talk about chocolate. Specially, we are interviewing Daeus Bencomo from Lavaloha in Hawaii. Lavahola grows single-origin Hawaiian chocolate and Daeus will give us the whole scoop of how chocolate is made in Hawaii.

"After you harvest your cacao pods, you're gonna want to split them and inside the cacao pod is the fuzzy, white bean and inside that bean is purple. After you split all your pods, put them in a bin, rotate them and mix them real good every couple of days until they reach 110 to 120 degrees. Once they reach that max temperature, that means they are fully fermented and they are ready to be taken out and dried. The drying period takes a little bit longer, I'd say 2 - 3 weeks, depending on what our rain situation looks like."

Daeus also says the Hawaiian agriculture industry is much more diverse that others might think.

"On this island, the big island, one of the big ag commodities is cattle. We have a lot of cattle ranches going on over here. Pretty expensive beef patties on your hand. You can buy a $15 burger without any condiments. It's a pretty good burger though. We do have some great beef products out here. the Chocolate industry is relatively new. I'd say it's only been around for the past 20 years."

To listen to the rest of my interview with Daeus, or to hear other Farm Traveler podcast episodes, just search for Farm Traveler on your favorite podcast app, or go to www.thefarmtraveler.com.