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Milk Chocolate

by Nahua
Info Details
Country Costa Rica   
Type Milk Chocolate   
Strain Blend   
Source Costa Rica   (Alajuela; Bijagua de Upala)
Flavor Sugar   
Style Rustic      
lo
med
hi
CQ
Sweetness
Acidity
Bitterness
Roast
Intensity
Complexity
Structure
Length
Impact
Adulterants & contaminants have been a tradition in chocolate. When cacáo circulated as a currency among the Mayan world, counterfeiters would pack the seeds with cheaper & more plentiful dirt. Europeans often substituted red-brick dust inside “chocolate” wrappers. Even today a barsmith can receive a sack o’ cocoa studded with nails, nuts ‘n bolts, & more foreign objects.

The milk with the cocoa in this bar likewise smell alien or perhaps just of cows feeding on Home Depot® supplies. Of all of the possible adulterants, that's probably the least harmless so eat up, kiddies, because this chocolate has a wide breach between the odor & the flavor.
Appearance   2.9 / 5
Color: russet brown
Surface: brushed in thick corduroy swales
Temper: fading
Snap: maximal for Milk Chocolate
Aroma   5.1 / 10
another Home Depot® from Nahua
clay, spackling, plaster, & sheet rock
casein-glue
Mouthfeel   11.8 / 15
Texture: gum powder
Melt: surprisingly fluid
Flavor   43.3 / 50
instant caramel, pretty deep & dark & vanilla-stained -> umami hits at the back -- almost salted in their intensity (no surprise here... 'savory' quite intrinsic to this seed lot) -> malt ensues -> a sugar rush surrounds the flavor core -> developing candy corn, underpinned in glucose -> orchid (vanilla again)
Quality   16 / 20
Built with Nahua's own fermented cacáo nuts.

Only 2 other bars utilizing Costa RIcan cacáo have ever been assembled into premium Milk Chocolate -- Fruitiion's lofty Gothic (the top-rated Costa Rica bar in any category to date) & Felchlin's Swiss creamery (fit for a bra). Add this &, apparently, Costa Rica cocoa, a much-challenged cocoa source due to local gene bank CATIE's dissemination of bulk grade seedlings bred for productivity & disease-resistence rather than gastronomics, makes for decent Milk Chocolate. Granted, the sample size of 3 bars is small, but in time it may well join a couple other Milk Chocolate 'naturals' such as Java, Esmeraldas, & Belize. The difference being where those destinations create fine flavors in either Dark or Milk, here's a cacáo type generally humble in its Dark presentations yet somehow compensates for deficiencies when combined with dairy. An intriguing chemistry to say the least.

A hyper sweet piece in which sugar contributes some to the seams showing thru the framework. For all the haphazard construction (exposed mainly in the Texture), flavors integrate incredibly well, in a kind of sleight-of-hand, sitting on a saddle between candy confection & culinary concoction.

A taste superior to its ancillaries which pull on the overall rating. Among the more noble uses of Costa Rican cacáo yet.

INGREDIENTS: sugar, cocoa mass, cocoa butter, milk powder, vanilla

Reviewed October 13, 2014

  

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