Located in a historic building on the first street in Las Americas. Kah-Kow Experience Chocolate Museum is an interactive, informative and unique museum.
Kah Kow Experience Interactive Chocolate Museum on Calle las Damas in the Colonial Zone.
If you want to learn about Chocolate from the growing to the finished product this is the place to visit. It is fun for the entire family, kids will love the hands-on experience. This tour comes highly recommended to anyone who is a chocolate lover or likes to learn about growing organic products. The tour is available in many different languages making it easy to understand everything.
Take the tour of Kah-Kow Experience Chocolate Museum. book your tour in advance using –
Start off learning about the origin of chocolate at the Holographic Theather. Then the tour takes you to the Mystical Forest where you can taste the cacao bean that chocolate is made from while learning about the post-harvesting techniques. Then use all your senses in the Sensory Room where you can experience the ingredients of the exquisite chocolate.
Kah Kow Experience Interactive Chocolate Museum display
You get to visit the Chocolate Factory where you can create your own chocolate bar and then make your own uniquely scented soap from cacao butter. There is a bar where you can have many different Chocolate beverages and desserts and also a gift shop where you can purchase chocolate, soaps and other items to take home.
Take the tour of Kah-Kow Experience Chocolate Museum. book your tour in advance using –
Cacao is the cocoa we all know and love. It can be served hot, cold or made into wonderful sweet goodies and even liquors. Almost everyone loves chocolate in some form or another.
A woman proudly showing a Cacao/ Cocoa fruit in Dominican Republic.
Cacao is a tall tropical tree that can reach 4 to 12 meters tall. The cacao tree produces an average of 150 fruits every year. These fruits are long oval pods called cacao pods. The pod color varies from yellow to orange.
Green and ripe yellow cacao pods on a tree in Salcedo, Dominican Republic.
Inside this pod are an average of about thirty cocoa beans. A white glutinous pulp covers each bean. The pulp is quite tasty when you pop it into your mouth and suck on it.
The cacao bean is surrounded by a white pulp that is sweet.
During the first drying, the entire seed with pulp is placed in the sun to dry. When dry the white pulp can easily be removed. The second drying is to dry the seed itself.
You can see these beans drying in many places in the country, even along country streets. The beans are laid out on tarpaulins or in large covered beds. They are constantly being moved to get them to dry. As the beans dry they are being picked over to clear out the inferior beans.
Cacao beans being dried.
The dry beans are then cleaned, roasted and crushed into a powder. When you pass by cacao drying you can get the wonderful sent of the aromatic bean drying in the sun. With each step of the drying process, the smell gets more intense.
Dominican Republic is the perfect place for the cultivation and development of cacao because of the rich, fertile soil and the favorable climate. Individual farmers and large corporations grow cacao trees alike. The best cocoa beans in the country are grown in the Cibao Valley, San Francisco de Macoris, and Santiago. Dominican Republic produces two types of cocoa beans, the Hispaniola (about 4% production) and the Sanchez (about 96% production) varieties.
A cacao tree
Cocoa Nutrition
Cocoa beans/ Cacao is a very nutrient rich and complex food. Cacao is considered by some experts to be the best antioxidant food, having the highest source of magnesium of any food. Chocolate contains A1, B1, C, D, E vitamins and iron. The cacao beans are also used to produce cocoa butter that is used in many cosmetic applications. The Aztecs considered the cacao tree as a paradise tree.
A basket of ripe Dominican cacao in the market
The Dominican Republic is currently one of the chief producers of organic cocoa in the world when they started marketing their product as early as the 1980’s.
Vino de Cacao / Chocolate Wine is an organic chocolate wine produced in Dominican Republic.
There is a Museo de Cacao on Calle el Conde and also on Calle Arz. Meriño in the Colonial Zone. They sell many different products made in Dominican Republic (including the Vino de Cacao pictured above)
