Fermenting cacao at home

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The last remaining batch of cacao with origin from Aurora served as my breakfast today. After having nibbled and spat the raw cacao beans I made a new batch for fermentation.

There were 2 kinds of pods - one was a rugby size pod, greenish in color with soft and almost even surface while the other two pods regular size with golden orange color with defined ridges or uneven rugged surface.

I observed that the the beans of the rugby size pod have bigger beans as well that has darker brownish color while the regular size pod  has whitish/pale color smaller beans. Total number of beans from the former were 44 good beans and 5 fleshy but empty beans. The other two pods contain 48 and 49 good beans.


Rugby size cacao pod

 Regular size cacao pod

This is how the bean look like when cut lengthwise:

 Cacao beans - Left - whitish/pale color and Right - brownish bean (rugby size)

I will be doing 10 days fermentation and this is the look of my fermentation box:
(The cover is leaves of home grown sweet potato from our balcony.)