Today has been a day to work on some products.  I had already started by extracting chocolate essence from cacao solids a few weeks ago but then the falling apart of the piggie cages necessitated sorting out our furry friends (is everybody sick of hearing about Guinea Pigs yet??) and making essential oil had to be put on hold.  However, now that the piggies are sorted we can get back to more serious considerations…

The initial extraction is a post for another time (when I do it again) but it basically involves taking cacao solids (preferably after the cacao butter has been removed from the fermented, roasted beans) with a solvent using an extractor.  The result is a dark brown liquid which while plenty aromatic does not qualify as an essential oil, it is more like a tincture.  This is what I started with today.

The next step involves the removal of all of the solvent using the apparatus shown below…

The solvent is carried over the apparatus and is collected (not shown) to be re-used for future extractions.  The pay dirt is what is left in the flask at the end…for a litre of original extract this takes about twenty-four hours and leaves a very dark brown, thick and syrupy liquid.  This product is the essential oil; it is a very, very concentrated broad spectrum natural chocolate flavour and yields what is called an Absolute.  As a little aside, essential oils are usually produced by steam distillation while the Absolute is produced by solvent extraction.

Our final product looks like this…

Yes, this is one of the things we sell and when the shop is ready you can get it in The Apothecary.  You can also get a description in our Product Description Pages.

Have a good weekend.

0