74 COCOA 



All cocoa beans used at the Bournville factory 

 undergo a thorough process of Cleaning. The cleaning 

 is done by a wonderful machine, which most efficiently 

 performs a number of duties in achieving its main 

 purpose. We watch shower after shower of beans 

 being fed to this machine from sacks into a large 

 hopper. We see the beans jumping and wrestling to 

 free themselves of such impurities as dust, loose threads 

 of sacking, and loose bits of shell; during this sifting 

 process the machine rejects foreign bodies and immature 

 beans, together with any clusters of fully-developed 

 beans that have become stuck together as a result of 

 mildew caused by bad fermentation, or of careless drying, 

 or of getting wet on the journey . After this first general 

 cleaning the beans pass from our sight into the monster 

 tunnel -like body of the machine. Here, by means of 

 meshes, they are graded into three sizes known as 

 broken, flat, and plump to facilitate more thorough 

 cleaning, and the cleaning of each grade is continued 

 by a separate set df fans. 



From the cleaning machine raw cocoa emerges in 

 two streams, one consisting of broken beans and called 

 " fine," the other of whole beans, both flat and plump 

 specimens, called " coarse." The fine material is 

 carried off to undergo a further and special process of 

 cleaning; the coarse material the technical adjective 

 is misleading as it signifies superior quality has been 

 thoroughly cleaned in the machine we have seen, and 

 is now ready for the next stage of preparation, which 

 is to say Roasting. 



Cocoa beans are roasted in their shell. There are 

 several types of roasting machines, some heated by 

 coke, others by gas. Roasting takes about an hour; 

 towards the end of this time the operator in charge of 



