I’ve been helping a friend manage ingredients for a small chocolate business, and recently we started paying more attention to cocoa beans storage after noticing some differences in quality between newer and older batches. The beans seemed fine during inspection, but the final product had slight changes in flavor and aroma that we weren’t expecting. We’re trying to understand whether humidity, ventilation, packaging, or storage duration could be affecting the beans more than we realized. For those who have experience storing cocoa beans, what practices helped maintain quality over time, and were there any lessons you learned the hard way?