Jorge,
I was interested in the posting that you are responding to, not only as
a chocolate consumer but because of my experience as a young kid. I grew
up in Panama and Honduras, the son of an employee of the United Fruit
Company. The company had small-scale cacao production for a time in the
early 1940's, bringing cacao from its own farm and from another grower
on the shores of laguna Chiriqui to Almirante. The beans were opened
and the contents emptied into a vat perhaps 10 ft square and 3 ft deep.
There is a slime surrounding the beans, very sweet and delicious, and
the whole mass was left in the vat to ferment so that the beans could be
washed off and dried by heating in a big, perforated revolving drum.
I have always wondered whether any use is made of the slime that I
describe. I think it would make a wonderful syrup, and what about the
possibilities for an alcoholic beverage after fermentation has taken place?
Mike Marsh
