Cocoa beans

India Idukki Hills 2025

Origin: India, Idukki Hills
Type: Forastero and Trinatario
Harvest Year: 2025

This is the third time I’ve offered a bean from India and interestingly, mostly as I don’t like to stereotype entire diverse countries, it is remarkably similar to that first bean....except better.

The aroma starts off with the tangy aroma of dried peaches. There is a slightly tangy note that is not at all sharp or harsh and really, is downright mouthwatering. It beautifully offsets clear candy like sweetness and tropical fruit. In many ways it reminds me of candies that I've had abroad that are flavored by spices not found here in the USA. I find it really interesting how no one flavor component stands out, noting the really round shape in the spider chart. The overall impression is a chocolate that tastes of a higher percentage that you might expect. The nut flavor is light almond and the spices are those of allspice, cinnamon and clove.

I’m left with an interesting seeming contradiction of sweetness and refreshing effervescence. As I talk about in the roasting section, this bean has a very remarkable lack of inherent astringency that allows the roasts to be kept very light as there is no raw astringency to roast out. To that end, this is a bean that responds to a light and heavy hand and although you may get more flavors (as expected) with a heavier hand, I feel the bean shows better with a lighter hand where the profile is not rounded out so much.

And here I'm going to hopefully not scare people away. Unlike many beans I offer, this one is not suited really well to inexperienced roasters. Frankly it is a bit touchy and if you don't get it right (I'll of course tell you how to get it right) you might be a bit disappointed. Check out the Roasting tab for more on that.

This bean is missing the classic green banana astringency present in most cocoa beans when raw. Because of this you are both able and want to keep the roast light....but you also need to make sure it is roasted fully or you run the risk of not developing flavors. On the flip side, if you take it too deep you run the risk of turning the nut flavors excessively bitter and making the whole profile harsh and unbalanced.

I mentioned this is not for novice roasters. You really need to roast by smell and back off the heat whenever you find it getting sharp. You need to treat this beans with kid gloves. What that means is at least a 3 minute development phase and 3:15-3:30 is better. You then need to slow the roast down even more and eek out at least 2 minutes in the finishing phase and 3 minutes would not be amiss but don't take to too long or you hazard dulling the flavor. And through all of that, you really don't want to get much above 246-248 F EOR.

Profile Drum Roasting: The lighter profile I ended up with was 15:45/18:45/20:30 @ 240 F. The higher one was 13:20/15:10/19:15 @ 254 F and I think although interesting was a little higher than it should have been.

Behmor: I really don't recommend using the Behmor unless you have a thermocouple probe in it. There is just too much variability and this bean doesn't signal by aroma as you need. If you do have a probe, use P1 profile until 170 F and then P3 Manual mode (50% power) until 222 F, then down to P2 until 240-245 F. Kid gloves I tell you.

Oven Roasting: You will need an IR thermometer. Roast 2 lb of beans. Preheat your over to 325 F. Place your cocoa beans in a single layer on a baking sheet and into the oven. Stir the beans at 5 minutes and check the temperature. Continue roasting until the surface temperature reads 205-215 F (it may well vary across the beans). At that point, turn your oven down 10-15 F above your target EOR, in this case 240 + ~15 = 255 and continue to roast, stirring every 5 minutes until approximately 245 F. Again, there will be variation but the beauty of this method is having turned the oven down it is difficult to over roast. The important part here is to get good momentum going in a hot oven and then basically coasting to finish. You may not get much chocolate or brownie aroma with this one.

India Idukki Hills

GoGround Beans & Spices works with 113 micro-farmers across the Idukki Hills in southern India’s Kerala region.
A social enterprise led by Ellen Taerwe and Luca Beltrami, GoGround’s centralized fermentation and drying center in the village of Udumbannoor is operated by a team of local Malayalis. The majestic landscape of the green hills of Idukki, rich in biodiversity, creates exceptional conditions for cocoa cultivation. An abundance of fruits and spices including coconut, papaya, mango, jackfruit, black pepper, nutmeg and cardamom can be found intercropped with the cocoa trees.
While many varieties of Trinitario and Forastero thrive in Kerala, the locally developed “Mankuva” is most commonly found throughout the Idukki Hills. Beans are fermented for approximately 6 days in 3-tiered cascading Wild Jack wood boxes. Following fermentation, they are transferred to covered wooden tables for sun drying.