75
by Fine & Raw
Impact
Raw cacáo generally suffers from what Rev. Ron DMC (for Doctor of Meditational Chocolate™) dubs “Juraissic Godfather Syndrome” (JGS). According to her, JGS results from the very testosterone-driven sitting in front of flatscreens playing only sci-fi & gangster video games & watching the occasional NFL football.
This bar is a little more feminized, demonstrating better calibration, though still afflicted with the usual suspects bedeviling raw ‘chocolate’ (chocolate used advisedly; ditto 'raw') so by the end the song remains the same, to echo Led Zeppelin, or better still, country music: this bar’s nose must be running & it’s blowing it all over us.
This bar is a little more feminized, demonstrating better calibration, though still afflicted with the usual suspects bedeviling raw ‘chocolate’ (chocolate used advisedly; ditto 'raw') so by the end the song remains the same, to echo Led Zeppelin, or better still, country music: this bar’s nose must be running & it’s blowing it all over us.
Appearance 4.7 / 5
| Color: | orange-tinged brown |
| Surface: | soft brush plate |
| Temper: | among tops in the raw world to compete w/ real chocolate heavyweights like Slitti & Hachez; perhaps attributable to glassine properties in agave used in this bar & certainly not any Beta V crystallization as evidenced in the Texture |
| Snap: | tight & light colored (more orange) on the inside wall w/ granulated edge & herein may lie the key to its shiny exterior: possibly coating the mold with cacáo butter to obtain that sheen |
Aroma 7.8 / 10
hardly raw & far different from its predecessor: mid-depth cocoa enclosed in soursop, pineapple, & juneberry
Mouthfeel 9.3 / 15
| Texture: | collapsing powder |
| Melt: | mercifully rapid transit |
Flavor 22.9 / 50
malted cocoa hit -> sweats vanilla -> taps into maple -> yam -> obliterated by simultaneous bittering & puckering (glimpsed in the aromatics’ soursop) & the clash is on... polyphenols win out but acid never entirely dies -> at this point either spit or stay long enough for cacti & agave to rope in the contour w/ sisal leading to, patience partially rewarded, nuts (peanuts, mite cashew) & husks (insufficiently winnowed) -> resolves to simple cocoa bean -> clears out soil ‘n asphalt jungle in the deep throat, then an air-biscuit gassing out of an inner-tube expels baby farts & snot
Quality 9.6 / 20
Promise of the Aroma goes unrealized but vanilla & lúcuma (a dried powdered fruit-sweetener all the rage among raw-foodistas, bearing a maple-tinged flavor) cover up alot of harsh territory in briefly overcoming the obstacles in Fine & Raw’s 78%. And though they ostensibly perish early on, their influence continues to be felt in the behaviorial characteristics of the progression.
For starters, they create a warmer bar, no small consequence for unroasted chocolate. As with any sweetner, lúcuma’s sugars take the prickly edge off agave & quell raw cacáo’s dirty bitter insurrection, with the caveats ‘temporarily' & 'somewhat’, & the interplay accents if not altogether accounts for this bar’s acidity that’s wholly absent in its 78% label-mate. Vanilla proves once more its historical pre-eminence with cacáo, thanks to the intuitive wisdom of Mesoamericans, thru chemical synergy as it supports & sustains the meager baseline chocolate notes which rapidly & unsurprisingly fracture to collapse, absent any Maillard Reactions to fortify it.
But nothing can prevent the inevitable, & that ending calls for Tibetan prayer flags & gongs to cleanse the vibrational ‘disturbia’.
ING: cocoa mass, agave, cacáo butter, lúcuma, vanilla
For starters, they create a warmer bar, no small consequence for unroasted chocolate. As with any sweetner, lúcuma’s sugars take the prickly edge off agave & quell raw cacáo’s dirty bitter insurrection, with the caveats ‘temporarily' & 'somewhat’, & the interplay accents if not altogether accounts for this bar’s acidity that’s wholly absent in its 78% label-mate. Vanilla proves once more its historical pre-eminence with cacáo, thanks to the intuitive wisdom of Mesoamericans, thru chemical synergy as it supports & sustains the meager baseline chocolate notes which rapidly & unsurprisingly fracture to collapse, absent any Maillard Reactions to fortify it.
But nothing can prevent the inevitable, & that ending calls for Tibetan prayer flags & gongs to cleanse the vibrational ‘disturbia’.
ING: cocoa mass, agave, cacáo butter, lúcuma, vanilla