THE FRUIT

  • Cacao is a truly incredible fruit that grows in the tropical rainforest close to the Equator.

    It is native to Central and South America but has been spread widely across the Globe for the last couple of centuries.

    Unlike most other fruits it grows mainly on the trunk of the tree and not on the branches.

    On the outside it is one of nature’s most beautiful fruits. It has a thick and colourful peel, ranking from green to yellow to red in all possible variantions depending on the specific variety.

    Inside it looks more like a creature from an alien movie. Its almond sized seeds are connected along a set of strings and covered in a juicy, white pulp with the most amazing tropical and sweet flavours.

    The seed itself (which is falsely called a “bean” by big industry just like coffee beans which are in fact berries) looks like a human brain and taste bitter and a bit dry. It is however a true superfood and nature’s perfect meal.

    When it is fermented, dried and roasted its incredible aromas develop and it is that part which can be processed into a drink or a chocolate bar.

    It has long been broadly accepted that there are 3 main varieties of cacao. Forastero, Criollo and Trinitario (the last being a hybrid of the two others).

    Criollo was thought to be the original, most rare and most delicate of the 3 where as Forastero, due to its disease resistant properties, was taken to West Africa where is was exploited, hybridized to being even more disease resistant and mono cropped throughout large farms. More than 70% of the World’s current cacao production comes from here and child labor used by big industry is a considerate problem.

    In recent years however the interest in “fine flavour” cacao (high quality, sustainably farmed) has grown quickly. Starting with the passionate souls of the “Bean-to-Bar” movement a true chocolate revolution has begun where small scale chocolate makers source only the highest quality heirloom cacao varieties directly from small farmers or cooperatives. With simple machinery that was reverse engineered from big industry they make ultra high quality chocolate from bean to bar in their little workshops. Before this trend ALL chocolate produced worldwide came from big factories.

    Due to the chocolate makers’ intense search for the best and rarest cacao some studies have been made showing that there are many more varieties than the 3 well known ones. There are also lots of natural hybrids - all falsely called Trinitario by the industry.

    To say that the best cacao has to be from the Criollo variety is like saying that the best wine has to come from Merlot grapes which of course is far from the truth. Many other heirloom varieties contain just as complex flavour profiles and health benefits.

  • Cacao is composed of roughly 50% healthy fats and 50% fiber with low levels of carbohydrates and proteins.

    It has the highest magnesium content of any edible plant and is likewise high in iron and calcium.

    Other beneficial minerals are zinc, copper, sulfur, potassium, tryptophan and anandamide. And vitamins count both E, several Bs and a little A.

    Cacao also contains mild psychoactive stimulants such as Theobromine (think caffeine without the crash!), as well as antioxidants such as flavanoids and oleic acid (which has antioxidant properties).

    Consuming cacao has shown to boost energy, reduce stress, treat depression, lower cholesterol and high blood pressure, increase focus, reduce PMS and fight free radicals among many other benefits.

THE DRINK

  • The known history of cacao goes all the way back to the 1900s BC. Archeological findings show rich evidence of the earliest Mesoamerican civilization, the Olmecs usage of cacao as well as later the Mayans and the Aztecs.

    Common to all the cultures is that they made a drink of it.

    It was (and still is!) partly used as lunch in the fields by hardworking farmers who mixed it with corn into a wholesome and energizing drink.

    But it was also used as a sacred drink in ceremonies due to its mild psycoactive and heart opening properties. This drink was not the sweet hot chocolate we know today, but an intense drink often made with spices like chili, cardamom or cinnamon.

    In the 15th. century during the Aztec empire the fermented and dried cacao seeds were so valuable that they were used as a currency to pay tax or buy goods at the market with.

    Unfortunately the sacred drink was also used in rituals involving human sacrifice.

    Later by the 16th. century the Spanish conquerors took the sacred drink to Europe where it quickly became the favourite drink to be enjoyed by royalty.

    To sweeten the intense drink the Europeans quickly began adding sugar and honey to it.

    With its popularity came demand and exploitation started. Cacao plantations spread across tropical colonies (especially in West Africa), as did a fast growing slave market. Machines were developed for a more efficient production and big industry grew.

    The word "cocoa" was invented and is still today the English industry term for all altered states of the cacao fruit. When it is ground into nibs, processed into a paste, a liquor or a powder as a raw ingredient in chocolate making, cacao becomes cocoa. (The word was probably created by big companies because their chocolate was so far from the magical plant's original state, that you couldn’t call it by its real name anymore. Cocoa is thereby a falsification of Cacao one could argue!).

    In the mid 1800s the English chocolate maker Joseph Fry discovered a way to mould chocolate into solid bars, and the first real chocolate factory was born. Then came milk and later white chocolate and the rest is history…

    As mentioned when we fast forward to today a revolution to make chocolate great again (as well as ethically justifiable) has begun with the bean-to-bar chocolate makers.

    Along side however an even smaller revolution has started to take chocolate back to its roots as a potent and sacred drink.

    We at Evolve Cacao are honoured to be part of that journey.

  • So what is this traditional cacao drink and why is it better than the cocoa powder drink we all know?

    Well first off there is no comparison to the cocoa powder drink. Cocoa powder is a waste product no matter if it is the chemically treated dark one from the supermarket or the “RAW” ones from the health food stores (read why in point 6 in the “Misconceptions” section below). Cocoa powder is heavily treated and is only the fiber part of the cacao seed.

    The traditional cacao drink is made of whole cacao seeds. Nothing added, nothing removed (except the husk). It is the fermented and lightly roasted seeds of the Theobroma Cacao plant that are then gently ground by stones or metal rolls until the inherent oils are melted by the friction and the particles are so small that the mass becomes a liquid.

    Since the oil in cacao seeds (cacao butter) solidifies at room temperature this liquid becomes a hard block of cacao after some time. These blocks are then chopped up or moulded into minor blocks - and there you have 100% pure cacao ready to melt and drink.

    As mentioned in the “Fruit” section above it is a nutritional power house, and most of this gets lost in the heavy processing of the cocoa powder or industrial chocolate.

    So could you just melt a dark chocolate bar from the supermarked and drink that?

    NO because:

    1) it is a heavily processed industrial product - read poor quality mono cropped cacao, badly treated and often moldy cacao beans, heavily overroasted to cover the bad flavours.

    2) In most cases it has lots of white sugar and additives such as soy or sun flower lecithin.

    3) You have no idea where it comes from and what the farmers got paid (or if there was child labor involved).

    You could technically use bean-to-bar chocolate but it also has sugar and often added, industrially made cacao butter.

    If you want all the benefits and effects of cacao, go for the purest of the pure!

  • “Ceremonial grade” is not a protected label and there is no official definition to what it really is.

    The term is mostly used by people who drink cacao for spiritual and self development purposes. It is used to describe the the purest possible cacao drink.

    So whether you drink cacao in ceremonies or just for the health benefits “Ceremonial Grade” is indeed a label of quality!

    For us at Evolve Cacao our “Ceremonial Grade” label means:

    1) Heirloom cacao beans grown biodynamic and 100% natural in the rainforest. This means no lab made hybrids and no mono cropped cacao fields.

    2) Directly traded with 100% traceability to the farmer.

    3) Light, natural fermentation and sun drying of the cacao beans at the farm.

    4) Minimally processed and made by US! This means hand-sorting the beans, light roasting over open fire and gentle grinding in a stone grinder.

    5) Nothing added and nothing removed. Well maybe we could add some wild harvested herbs or a few organic spices to some variants at some point.. :)

    6) As a bonus we have put a lot of pure intention, deep gratitude and heart felt love into every single bean we have held in our hands because we believe all things are energy and this energy will do you good!

the myth

  • Some of the most ancient histories and myths of the Mayan culture are gathered in the sacred narrative the "Popol Vuh”.

    For centuries The Popul Vuh was only passed on orally until is was first written down in the 15th. century and later translated into Spanish in the 17th. century.

    It contains many stories of both the first humans and the Mayan Gods - including the Mayan creation myth.

    Due to the ancient nature of the language in the Popul Vuh, its long oral passing and the complexity and symbolism of the different stories, its myths have been interpreted in different ways.

    The following is one interpretation of part of the creation myth and cacao’s origin. May it serve the highest good of All: 

    “Ixcacao was a Goddess who possessed alchemical plant wisdom.

    She gifted the sacred cacao to the villagers and taught them to grow and harvest it so that they could all live in abundance.

    The King Ekchuan saw this Goddess and commanded her to be his wife and to teach him all there was to know about this cycle.

    Then after cacao was traded as gold and drunk in ceremony by the Gods.

    Eventually, as greed grew, cacao became an industry that earned great wealth while depleting the Land and the Spirit of Gaia.

    The Spirit of Cacao was stolen for its vigour and wisdom and Ixcacao was raped and exploited.

    She fled this dread and went into many years of exile to lick her wounds and heal.

    Centuries passed of cacao being exploited and the Lands depleted.

    The wounded masculine gained more and more power and the wounded feminine detached and gave away.

    But as with all that is cyclical, things evolve. Cacao was said to come back to life when unity is most needed.

    That time has now come where Ekchuan and Ixcacao have healed apart and are finally able to meet again in authentic love and freedom.

    Where both parties are realizing and integrating a new truth of unconditional love for All that is.

    The mergence of differences into unity as they all play a part in the great balance of the cycle of life.

    So with a hero and a heroine’s journey to initiation, The Cacao Spirit is re-awakened and its heart opening fruit of abundance is once again here to assist.”

the EVOLUTION

  • Even though cacao has always been and still is (!) enjoyed and valued as a sacred drink in rural Mexico and Guatemala, the fruit’s potent properties got lost by the West already with the Spanish conquerors.

    Luckily times are changing and the drink in its true form has now been re-discovered in recent years by passionate souls from the West and is quickly gaining ever more popularity.

    It is however still mainly used as “ceremonial cacao” for spiritual purposes and alternative healing sessions due to the fact that many people experience its heart opening properties.

    With Evolve Cacao we wish to open this up and spread the wisdom further.

    Cacao in its true form is sacred to us. It is ceremony. But it is also a drink gifted by nature for its many health benefits.

    Cacao is nature’s perfect meal and it is indeed a very healthy alternative to coffee.

    Our ultimate goal is for all people to have better health, less stress, more connectedness, open hearts and a unified consciousness.

    And that time has come.

the misconceptions

  • There are a lot of misconceptions of what cacao and/or chocolate actually is and isn’t, and how it is made.

    As previous bean-to-bar chocolate makers with our own factory in Copenhagen, we have the advantage of really knowing every little detail of the industry and the process. 

    We used to make chocolate and now we make cacao. But the process is almost the same.

    Below are some facts that many people have gotten confused about and mixed up:

    1) ALL cacao beans are fermented. Whether it is for industrial chocolate or ceremonial grade cacao. You could dry the beans without fermentation, but the complex aromas and flavours develop during fermentation so not doing it would degrade the end product to a much less flavourful and bitter experience.

    2) During the fermentation process where natural bacteria go to work from within, the cacao beans often reach over 50 degrees celcius so technically there is no such thing as RAW Cacao. Even though many brands from health food stores claim it! You could probably try to control the process to keep the beans cooler, BUT unless the brands show you pictures of that process, we would never trust that claim. By far the most common method is to dump the fresh beans in large wooden boxes where they are turned and mixed with a shovel once every day or so.

    3) ALL good cacao beans from small farms are sun dried. Only big industry farms and large scale cooperatives dry the beans artificially in warehouses. But it is not the sun drying that makes cacao ceremonial grade. All cacao is dried and most is then roasted to further develop flavour and to kill potential harmful bacteria on the beans (also ceremonial grade cacao).

    4) MOST cacao beans are roasted. You can make cacao or chocolate from unroasted beans but the complex flavours again develop further during roasting. In Central and South America they often tend to overroast or slightly burn the beans (also with most ceremonial grade cacao) because they don’t have the equipment or skills and attention to detail required to do it properly. If you control the process well and roast them lightly and evenly to around 110-125 degrees celcius, then the most amazing aromas occur.

    5) ALL chocolate is made from cacao beans. Not from powder mixed with cacao butter. Cacao beans are made of roughly 50% fat (cacao butter) and 50% fiber (cacao powder) so it wouldn’t make sense to split them in order to mix them again. What really happens to most chocolate is that extra cacao butter is added to the ground cacao beans to make the chocolate more smooth and more liquid. Most large scale chocolate machinery can’t handle the otherwise thick texture of the chocolate.

    6) Cacao powder is in fact a waste product. This includes the “RAW” and organic powders. As described above cacao butter is needed in chocolate production. It is extracted by pressing the roasted beans very hard in a hydraulic press. What is left is the dry fiber from the beans and since it does have some chocolate flavour a wise man once came up with the idea to blend it into a fine powder and sell it as “cocoa powder”. The dark ones you can get in the supermarket are alkalized or “Dutch Processed” (meaning chemically treated). You should stay away from those. The light coloured “RAW” ones from health food stores are better even though they are technically still a waste product - and far from real drinking cacao!

    7) Pure, ceremonial grade cacao does not have to be made from Criollo beans. There are many amazing heirloom varieties that are just as good. As long as it is rainforest grown and not a super hybridized and monocropped variety it is as pure as Criollo.

    8) Most ceremonial grade cacao brands buy their finished product from cooperatives in Central and South America. But we often don’t know how the cooperatives work, who owns them and what they really pay their farmers. So unless the cacao brand knows the cooperative very well it is difficult for the customer to see a fully transparent supply chain. Only by trading directly with the farmers can we secure them a proper payment. At Evolve Cacao we know our farmer personally and pay him 2-3 times the market price on his cacao beans. And better yet WE make the finished product ourselves, so we know what goes into it.

    9) As a side note the Fairtrade label which many people trust and support as a more ethical option is in a similar grey zone. What they don’t show you is that the Fairtrade market price the farmer gets per kilo of cacao is almost exactly the same (and some times even lower!) than the regular market price. So there is no benefit whatsoever for the little farmers with this label.