TheChocolateLife LIVE - Deep Dive into Cut Tests

By TheChocolateWire | 3 years ago | 3 min read

Original photo Clay Gordon – Venezuela 2006

Episode 33 streams live starting at 12:00 EDT on Friday, April 15th.

Since my first trip to a producing country (Ecuador) in 2003, my understanding of cut has evolved - in unexpected ways.

The TL;DR for this post (non-spoiler alert – you’re going to have to listen to the live stream for the full story) is that most people do not understand what cut tests are good at – and what they are very, very bad at.

In this Deep Dive episode of TheChocolateLife LIVE I will cover:

Why the modern cut test was developed.
What cut tests are good for.
What cut tests are bad at.
What almost everyone misunderstands about cut tests.
Why do cocoa guillotines cost so #!@^¡ much?
Fundamental problenms with the methodology.
One evaluation step almost no one performs – that everyone should!
and more, as well as take questions live.

CutTests TheChocolateLifeLIVE

The presentation file used in the live stream.

cutTests-TheChocolateLifeLIVE.pdf

5 MB

ISO 2451:2017

Cocoa beans — Specification and quality requirements

ISO

A link to the ISO standard for how to perform a cut test. As with all ISO standards, only some introductory information is available. You’ll have to fork over CHF 118 (Swiss francs) for the details.

[L] – Venezuela 2006; [R] – Ecuador 2005

[L] – Nicaragua 2015 not color corrected; [R] – same photo fixed white balance and remove color cast.

Examples of cut test reference images. The image at the lower left shows the reference image – to the left of the color chips – that is most commonly used, created at the Cocoa Research Centre at the University of the West Indies in Trinidad. Sources: [UL] C-Spot.com [UC, UR, LR] Researchgate.

Live Stream Links

Watch/Participate on YouTube, Facebook, or LinkedIn.

TheChocolateWire Channel on YouTube
TheChocolateLife on Facebook
LinkedIn

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Want to participate? Ask questions and post comments during the live stream or afterwards in the post comments! There is no need to download any special new software – just use the YouTube, Facebook, or LinkedIn app or go to the page in a browser.

Live Stream header image original by Jason Rosewell / Unsplash

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