Chocolate Tasting #2
SB=Scharffen Berger 70% pure "bittersweet"
VS=Villars Swiss 72% pure "dark chocolate"
Choclate Tasting music (A View to A Kill-Duran Duran)
SB:
V-Firm, doesn't melt, strong snap. Orange flavor. Very strong and clean afterwards. I like it, but not my favorite
K-smells like teen spirit (i mean dried leaves) liquor. Doesn't melt. cherries and maple flavor. Mild aftertaste.
VS:
V: Clean snap, melts easier. More bitter. very different flavor. like a grape, with a clean clear first break, follwed by a tart flavor, but a more bitter coffee flavor. Strong aftertaste. You know you've eaten dark chocolate. Smoky long afterwards.
K: Nuttier. chalkier texture. Bitter orange coffee flavor, followed by nuts. 2 very distinct flavors, in stages. Much stronger aftertaste. Epitome of dark choc. feels lonely by itself.
Final:
V: I prefer the VS. It is more classic dark chocolate. Both are interesting, but the VS is probably a more robust. Would like some port...
K: I prefer the SB. Texture is important and the SB has better texture. By istelf the SB has a shorter aftertaste, which is more pleasant without accompaniment (other than Duran Duran...)
Sunday, August 27, 2006
Sunday, August 13, 2006
Chocolate Tasting #1
1st (recorded) tasting-not blind.
2 chocolates:
SB62Nib) Scharffen Berger Nibby bar 62% Note that this bar has a distinct texture difference, due to its inclusion of cacao nibs. It is still a pure chocolate, since cacao nibs are indeed processed into pure chocolate, but these are coarse ground nibs, so the texture and taste are different.
GSS) Ghirardelli "semi-sweet" bar including milk fat. This bar came to us via a circuitous route, and thus we are unsure of its exact composition.
Tasting accompanied by vanilla silk to cleanse palate. Note that this is our idea, not necc. in agreement with others. Others claim that you should snap (listen for the snap for a good choc.) then smell, then let it melt on tongue for a few sec. then press to roof of mouth, then chew 3-5 times. Spitting is not neccessary here....
GSS-
K- May have been in purse too long. Taska tastes plastic. Smell is nice full cherry flavor. No snap. A bit chalky, pwdered sugar. No bitterness at all, very sweet. Not a dark chocolate. What little bitterness it has is in the finish. Semi sweet
V- Slight Coffee flavor. no Snap. Reminds me of dark choc. chips, or chips in really good ice cream. Very clean, perhaps simple. Not unpleasant at all. Just enough bite at the finish to tell you that it is for real, but not enough to make you think twice. All in all a pleasant choc., but nothing out of the ordinary.
SB62N-
K- Grenadine and bananas-with brazilnuts. Higher melting point, long time before flavor comes through. Scent almost floral- perhaps.. gardenias or honeysuckle A good amount of Cacao nibs. Sweet coffee. Flovar arrived on swallowing, perhaps better for small bites and faster chewing.
V- Texture is of course very intriguing- bananas are very clear. Clean, almost tasteless at the beginning, finishing with a crunch of the nibs and the rich bitter flavors coming through. Strong snap. Very pleasureable and interesting, very low sweetness.
Final comments
K- More dark chocolate- the more I appreciate it. Curious to see what I would choose were I given a choice of a whole bar to eat. Still might prefer milk, but not sure. Cartainly would have until last few weeks. Think I would now have a hard time eating candy bard from the checkout line...
V- For pleasure-the nibby bar, but for cooking, the GSS seems good, and it isn't a bad snack at all. Not really a fair comparison, of course, since I think the GSS was meant for cooking.
I agree with K that dark chocolate is far more complex in flavor (like red wine..) and I would prefer a good dark, pure bar to a milk bar, but there are really good examples of both (again like wine). Comples tastes are almost always preferable, but there are times and places for both.
2 chocolates:
SB62Nib) Scharffen Berger Nibby bar 62% Note that this bar has a distinct texture difference, due to its inclusion of cacao nibs. It is still a pure chocolate, since cacao nibs are indeed processed into pure chocolate, but these are coarse ground nibs, so the texture and taste are different.
GSS) Ghirardelli "semi-sweet" bar including milk fat. This bar came to us via a circuitous route, and thus we are unsure of its exact composition.
Tasting accompanied by vanilla silk to cleanse palate. Note that this is our idea, not necc. in agreement with others. Others claim that you should snap (listen for the snap for a good choc.) then smell, then let it melt on tongue for a few sec. then press to roof of mouth, then chew 3-5 times. Spitting is not neccessary here....
GSS-
K- May have been in purse too long. Taska tastes plastic. Smell is nice full cherry flavor. No snap. A bit chalky, pwdered sugar. No bitterness at all, very sweet. Not a dark chocolate. What little bitterness it has is in the finish. Semi sweet
V- Slight Coffee flavor. no Snap. Reminds me of dark choc. chips, or chips in really good ice cream. Very clean, perhaps simple. Not unpleasant at all. Just enough bite at the finish to tell you that it is for real, but not enough to make you think twice. All in all a pleasant choc., but nothing out of the ordinary.
SB62N-
K- Grenadine and bananas-with brazilnuts. Higher melting point, long time before flavor comes through. Scent almost floral- perhaps.. gardenias or honeysuckle A good amount of Cacao nibs. Sweet coffee. Flovar arrived on swallowing, perhaps better for small bites and faster chewing.
V- Texture is of course very intriguing- bananas are very clear. Clean, almost tasteless at the beginning, finishing with a crunch of the nibs and the rich bitter flavors coming through. Strong snap. Very pleasureable and interesting, very low sweetness.
Final comments
K- More dark chocolate- the more I appreciate it. Curious to see what I would choose were I given a choice of a whole bar to eat. Still might prefer milk, but not sure. Cartainly would have until last few weeks. Think I would now have a hard time eating candy bard from the checkout line...
V- For pleasure-the nibby bar, but for cooking, the GSS seems good, and it isn't a bad snack at all. Not really a fair comparison, of course, since I think the GSS was meant for cooking.
I agree with K that dark chocolate is far more complex in flavor (like red wine..) and I would prefer a good dark, pure bar to a milk bar, but there are really good examples of both (again like wine). Comples tastes are almost always preferable, but there are times and places for both.
Chocolate
About 6 months ago Taska decided that she was interested in thinking about Chocolate in the same way that oenophiles think about wine. We've been trying many different chocolates, including some flavored chocolates (a Vosges 41% "Barcelona" bar that includes sea salt was particularly yummy).
We, and my parents, recently took a tour of Scharffen Berger Chocolate factory in Berkeley (highly recommended!) and the tour guides there were quite enthusiastic about our ideas, and mentioned several things about the already extant chocolate tasting/gourmet chocolate community. For one thing, it was claimed that chocolate has more flavor compounds than wine. I'm not sure, but I believe this means that chemically, it has more compounds that tickle our taste buds. Chocolate, or wine, will vary in the proportion of these compounds, giving rise to complex and subtle differences of flavor. Since chocolate has more, the idea is that it is a more fertile ground for taste variation and experimentation. I'm not convinced that this neccessarily follows, but certainly having more things to play with in terms of flavor can't be bad, and chocolate has the addition of texture as well.
Regardless of its comparison to wine, we're pretty psyched about chocolate, since it tastes better than wine, and nothing is particularly impaired after consuming it, except perhaps your waistline. We hope to embark on a tasting journey among the chocolate varieties that currently exist, and perhaps provoke others to join us via tasting parties and other fun forms of chocovangelism. Interested parties might wish to consult with xocoatl.org as a nice resource.
Chocolate of course must be divided into categories, the most obvious being milk vs. dark, which is probably roughly equivalent to white vs red, if one is interested in furthering the wine analogy. However, before that division, one must also make the distinction of pure vs adulterated. Chocolate + sea salt is amazing and interesting, however, it is not pure. To be pure, by our current off the cuff definition, we must have nothing, save cacao, cocoa butter, vanilla, lecithin, sugar in some proportion. The existence of any other ingredient should be considered as an adulteration. Note that milk chocolate would be one common form of adulteration, but not, by any means the only one. Milk chocolate is common enough to warrant its own category, but there must indeed be a third category for other forms of additions to pure chocolate. We will continue to keep records of our tasting here as they occur.
We, and my parents, recently took a tour of Scharffen Berger Chocolate factory in Berkeley (highly recommended!) and the tour guides there were quite enthusiastic about our ideas, and mentioned several things about the already extant chocolate tasting/gourmet chocolate community. For one thing, it was claimed that chocolate has more flavor compounds than wine. I'm not sure, but I believe this means that chemically, it has more compounds that tickle our taste buds. Chocolate, or wine, will vary in the proportion of these compounds, giving rise to complex and subtle differences of flavor. Since chocolate has more, the idea is that it is a more fertile ground for taste variation and experimentation. I'm not convinced that this neccessarily follows, but certainly having more things to play with in terms of flavor can't be bad, and chocolate has the addition of texture as well.
Regardless of its comparison to wine, we're pretty psyched about chocolate, since it tastes better than wine, and nothing is particularly impaired after consuming it, except perhaps your waistline. We hope to embark on a tasting journey among the chocolate varieties that currently exist, and perhaps provoke others to join us via tasting parties and other fun forms of chocovangelism. Interested parties might wish to consult with xocoatl.org as a nice resource.
Chocolate of course must be divided into categories, the most obvious being milk vs. dark, which is probably roughly equivalent to white vs red, if one is interested in furthering the wine analogy. However, before that division, one must also make the distinction of pure vs adulterated. Chocolate + sea salt is amazing and interesting, however, it is not pure. To be pure, by our current off the cuff definition, we must have nothing, save cacao, cocoa butter, vanilla, lecithin, sugar in some proportion. The existence of any other ingredient should be considered as an adulteration. Note that milk chocolate would be one common form of adulteration, but not, by any means the only one. Milk chocolate is common enough to warrant its own category, but there must indeed be a third category for other forms of additions to pure chocolate. We will continue to keep records of our tasting here as they occur.
Subscribe to:
Posts (Atom)