Cocoa (Theobroma cacao) is one of the commodity crops in different ecological regions from the Mekong Delta to the Central Highlands of Vietnam. By the end of 2013, cocoa was intercropped over 22,000 ha and the production was about 5,000 tons. Cocoa pod is the by-product from cocoa fruits which are abundant at every harvest season. The high content of cellulose present in the pod is strongly considerable for the hydrolysis process by diluting acid into fermentable sugar. The aim of this study was to investigate the hydrolysis ability of cocoa pods and the fermentation capacity from this hydrolysate. The research was carried out with three kinds of inorganic acids (HCl, H₂SO₄ and HNO₃) at six levels of acid concentrations (0.25, 0.5, 0.75, 1.0, 1.25 and 1.5 M). The hydrolysis was conducted at five temperature conditions (70, 80, 90, 100 and 110^°C) for 2, 4, 6, 8 and 10 hours, respectively. The cocoa pod hydrolysate was collected and examined for the ability of bio-ethanol production by four strains of Saccharomyces cerevisiae (YB3K, VVD3, BKD4, 2.1) with the initial inoculation levels at 10², 10⁴, 10⁶, 10⁷ cells/mL. The fermenting medium was tested with the glucose content in a range of 4, 5, 6, and 7% (w/v) and pH value at 4.5, 5.0, 5.5 and 6.0. The fermentation conditions were designed at different temperatures (25, 30, 37^°C) and times (3, 5, 7 and 9 days). The finding results showed that the hydrolyzation process at 90^°C giving the efficiency of 63.79% after 8 hours by using HCl 0.75M, the initial solid/liquid ratio was 1.5/10 (w/v) and yielded glucose concentration was 7.22% (w/v). The suitable yeast strain for ethanol fermentation was Saccharomyces cerevisiae VVD3 with the inoculation level at 10⁶ cells/mL. The ethanol concentration of 5.14% was achieved when fermenting cocoa pod hydrolysate for 7 days at 30^°C and pH at 5.5. The glucose consumption efficiency could be able to reach up 97.6%. These outputs indicated the promising feasibility of ethanol production from such waste material source of cocoa pods.