FoodBanter.com - View Single Post - NY Times: "Love of Chocolate May Have Begun With Cacao Beer"

Mark Thorson

wrote:
>
> MY question is, do any people brew it the ancient way today in Mexico?
> Or elsewhere?

A. W. Knapp in COCOA AND CHOCOLATE (Chapman and Hall, 1920)
mentions that the liquid which runs off the cacao beans
during fermentation tastes good and suggests that
it could be marketed as a beverage. That sounds like
substantially the same thing as the "beer" the ancient
Mexicans are believed to have brewed.

Fermentation is necessary to develop the flavors we
associate with chocolate. THe inside of an unfermented
cacao bean is almost white like a cashew and not very
flavorful. A fermented cacao bean is the color of dark
chocolate and tastes like chocolate.