As you have read by now, there has been much controversy over the most recent Mast Brothers chocolate revelations where they may have remelted chocolate in the starting of their business. Many journalists have covered many angles from the psychology of perception of more expensive goods, misrepresentations of authenticity, to general negative coverage.

However the article that struck the biggest chord with me was The Guardian’s Taste Testing Article of Chocolate (spoiler alert: Hershey’s was #1). Really, it wasn’t just The Guardian’s article, but the sentiment that a $10 bar of chocolate is ridiculous, and Hershey’s is better. The Guardian isn’t alone as this resonates strongly through the comments-o-sphere on the Internet. But with all this chatter, what is really good chocolate? To answer this question, we need to take a windy road.

Sourcing Cacao Beans

The first start of any conversation is to ask yourself, what is chocolate? I am going to keep it really simple and say for the time being, it comes from Cacao pods grown around the world in the ‘chocolate band’

This chocolate band is a temperature range across the equator where Cacao pods can grow. So for example, you never will be able to get Cacao from Canada because the weather is not amendable to this ‘chocolate band’ temperature. A fun fact I have heard from ChocoMuseo in Peru is that the chocolate band may be changing due to climate changes so new ranges may be able to grow chocolate soon.

Bean-to-bar primer

Now we know where Cacao pods come from, what does bean-to-bar mean? It means that you as a company or person claim that you purchase the beans from somewhere along the chocolate band and make the chocolate from those beans. Below is a friendly chart from Dandelion Chocolate.

This is different than someone who calls themselves a chocolatier. A chocolatier is someone who buys chocolate, melts them, and makes fancy combinations of truffle shaped chocolate, etc.

Single origin definition

If you look at the fancy bars out there, you will see a percentage and an origin

Madgascar — this is the origin of the bar where the Cacao was grown

75 — this means it is 75% cacao, and 25% sugar

Why bean-to-bar makers care about single origins is because sourcing the Cacao from one location usually gives one type of flavor profile. For example Cacao from Madgascar has a pleasant fruitiness to it. If bean-to-bar blended all types of cacao from the chocolate blend, they would get a more muddled taste.

Subject: Hershey’s Bar

Your standard bar at any market — About $2

If you look at the Hershey’s bar, there is no indicator of origin or percentage. Let’s take a look at the back

Back of the package

Same thing here. All we have is a nutrition label, and an ingredient statement of

Milk Chocolate (Sugar, Milk, Cocoa Butter)

Chocolate

Soy Lecithin

What defines good? Take 1

What we usually define as good is what we are used to. And lo and behold, what we are used to are Hershey and Lindt type bars. Generally speaking, these are the characteristics of these bars.

Buttery mouth feel

One character chocolate profile.

The buttery mouth feel is really due to Cocoa Butter and Soy Lecithin added to the chocolate making process. To me, what it does is disguises the true taste of the chocolate.

An analogy is take some really fresh raw tomatoes and make a marinara sauce. Heat up some olive oil, and then toss in the raw tomatoes and simmer them for about an hour. When you taste it, you can really taste the true profile of the tomato. It might be bitter, sweet, or complex, but you know the taste of the tomato because you pretty much only have the tomato and the olive oil.

But now add half a stick of butter. The raw tastes and unique characteristics of the tomato are there, but it is overwhelmed by the buttery taste. It may taste good, but whether you have good or bad tomatoes is masked.

Redefining what tastes good. Take out cocoa butter and soy lecithin

A bar of chocolate from ChocoVivo, Venice Beach, CA

If you talk to a lot of bean-to-bar vendors, you will notice their ingredient list is much simpler

Cacao Nibs

Unrefined Cane Sugar

A lot of chocolate makers will argue that it is impossible to make chocolate without the use of cocoa butter and soy lecithin. But in the market these vendors have been able to do it usually through techniques of slow stone grinding or specialty techniques.

What tastes good? Take 2

If we remove cocoa butter and soy lecithin from the chocolate, you actually taste the uniqueness of the chocolate from its single origin. If you tried Madagascar, you usually get fruity and floral notes. If you try something from Venezuela, you might get coffee type notes.

Note that when we talk about fruity or floral, this is talking about the actual taste of the cacao. Just like a tomato will taste different in the US to Europe, cacao has different properties all over the chocolate band.

Going down the dark road

In summary, if you want to discover really good chocolate, ask these questions:

Are you bean-to-bar?

Do you add cocoa butter or soy lecithin?

If the answers are ‘yes’, then ‘no’, then you have already filtered about 90% of the chocolate out there, and are already in the 10% of the good chocolate category.

The question for many of us is this a worthwhile journey. Some people are perfectly content with their $2 Hershey bar which is no problem. If you want to start moving into discovering what true chocolate tastes like without adulteration, you unfortunately do need to pay higher prices per bar ranging from $6 — $12. But if you do choose to pay more for the higher bars, at the very least it is good to know why you are paying more for it and the thinking behind the bean-to-bar movement.

Lastly, if you’d like to learn more about this whole bean-to-bar in glory details, feel free to listen with my podcast with ChocoVivo.

Happy eatings!