TheChocolateLife::LIVE – Solar Drying Cocoa w/ GrainPro’s Diego Lara

By TheChocolateWire | 2 years ago | 4 min read

Examples of drying tech I encountered in Ecuador in 2003.

Streaming WorldWide LIVE from Brooklyn NY on Friday, May 27th beginning at 12:00 EDT.

When most people start talking about post-harvest processing, the focus tends to be on fermentation. And while good (we’ll set aside the discussion of ‘proper’ for now) fermentation is important, proper drying and storage are equally important.

For most, sun drying is the preferred, time-honored, method, and a wide variety of approaches have been developed to improve the sun drying process.

But sun drying is not always easy. The two photos in the featured image were taken by me in Ecuador in 2003 – the large image one wet day along the Rio Napo and the small image on a demonstration farm near Naranjal outside of Guayaquil. In some places, conventional sun drying is impossible, and so a number of approaches to drying that include burning fuels – from propane to coconut husks – are employed.

In this episode of TheChocolateLife::LIVE GrainPro’s Diego Lara will be joining me to discuss two different technologies they’ve developed to address some of the challenges of drying and alternatives to building expensive infrastructure.

If there is time, we’ll also be discussing some of the challenges of storing dried cocoa and solutions GrainPro offers for that purpose.

Resources

SP4052MSD0815 2 Grainpro Bubble Dryer SBD Flyer

SP4052MSD0815-2 Grainpro Bubble Dryer (SBD) Flyer.pdf

868 KB

SP3002ATC049 4 Grainpro Collapsible Dryer Case CDC Flyer

SP3002ATC049-4 Grainpro Collapsible Dryer Case (CDC) Flyer.pdf

1 MB

SP4053MSD0116 5 Grainpro Hermetic Bags SGB Flyer

SP4053MSD0116-5 Grainpro Hermetic Bags (SGB) Flyer.pdf

1 MB

[L] Bubble dryer w/ solar panel; [C] Insects/larvae in a GrainPro bag; [R] Stuffing containers.

Other Galleries – Solar and Other Dryers in the Americas

[L] Grenada (2010); [C] Ingemann, Nicaragua - stainless steel on top of concrete; [R] Screenshot Zoom call (2021).

[L] Propane fire for drying beans; [C] Moving the beans during drying, [R] Care needs to be taken to ensure the beans are not roasted/burned. All photos taken on the Rancho San Jacinto outside Naranjal, Ecuador (2005).

[L] Drying tables inside large “room” Ucayali River Cacao (Peru, 2017); [C] Drying tunnel Agrofloresta (Tabasco, MX, 2017); [R] Drying cocoa on asphalt pavement (Venezuela, 2006).

[L] Perforated stainless steel drying table, Mendoá; [C] Drying room w/ wood fire, Fazenda Venturosa; [R] Raised wooden drying pad, Fazenda Provisão. All photos taken in Bahia state, Brazil (2017).

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Live Stream Links header image original by Jason Rosewell / Unsplash