How to Store Cacao Beans for Long-term

Store and keep your Cacao beans for a long period of time. This is useful for those who want to preserve their seeds by keeping them fresh and in good condition.

Chocolate: a product enjoyed by people of all ages, all around the world. Be it in a  bar, in a drink, in a dip, a spread, or in beauty products - chocolate is widely consumed and greatly loved. But roast cacao beans - the primary ingredient of chocolate - are grown best in tropical climates. This means large amounts of beans need to be stored and transported from one place to another to form the global US$ 134 BN industry. So what’s the best way of storing green coffee beans? We’re glad you asked! 

How are Cacao Beans Grown?

A long and complex process is what ensures the best quality of beans are made into the chocolate people consume. Beans are plucked, sorted, fermented, and dried to perfection. These processes affect the taste, acidity, and flavour profile of fermented cacao beans and are hence highly controlled by farmers. 

Enemies of The Bean

At the storage stage, there are certain detrimental factors that affect the quality of beans: 

1. Moisture: Cacao handlers need to ensure beans stay dry as moisture affects something called the Free Fatty Acids (FFA) of beans. When moisture levels increase so do the FFA levels in a bean. This reduces the rich and bitter taste of the fermented cacao beans to acidic and rancid. 

2. Fungal growth: On the flip side, if cocoa beans dry too fast they run the chance of being contaminated by fungal growth. To stave off fungal growth, a moisture level of 6-7% is ideal for beans. 

3. Insects: Nothing draws insects more than poorly stored cacao coffee beans. The use of proper vacuum packaging bags or hermetically sealed bags ensures that the beans never find themselves home to numerous insects. 

The Storage Solution

To counter these problems, cacao handlers and farmers employ the use of bags, bins, and boxes to store the beans safely. But oftentimes, cloth and canvas bags do not provide the right protection and bins, and boxes prove more harmful to storage than helpful. At this point, post-harvest problems can reduce all the efforts made during the harvesting and growing period of beans. This is where Ecotact’s eco-friendly multilayered hermetic storage bags and vacuum packaging bags come in handy! 

The Ecotact Appeal 

Ecotact is one of the world's largest hermetic packaging suppliers with superior 9 layers protection to store cacao beans. We are redefining food storage with our multilayered hermetic storage bags that are specifically made to lock in the freshness of beans over long periods of time. With over 2 decades of expertise, our hermetically sealed bags are here to protect beans from dirt, insects, mold, and more all while retaining their freshness as if they were plucked from the farm just yesterday.