Monday 22 August 2016

Original Beans Esmeraldas Milk 42%

Arriba cocoa beans from the Esmeraldas rainforests in Ecuador, more specifically the Pacific Cloudforest
The flavour was cocoa rich, milky, fudge, delicious. It had a berry brightness to it, and later online I read "red summer fruit", so that was real

The ingredients are good, and always good with Original Beans: direct-trade cacao beans*, cacao butter*, raw cane sugar*, milk*, fleur de sel - *organic

This 42% milk chocolate is a really good, a really, really, really good milk chocolate. I have had 2 bars of it in a week

Wednesday 17 August 2016

Damson Angel 65%

Not too long ago Damson's kitchen and production space became victim of a fire, resulting in a lot of damage to the already-made chocolate, stock and machinery. Much of it now cannot be sold nor used. There is an online campaign set up by Damson to help raise money to get back on track to making award-winning and the best chocolate they can! Here is the link to find out more: indiegogo Damson Chocolate

The aim is for Damson to come back bigger and better. I hugely admire this mentality, and hope to help and support as much as I can! 

Blends. Something I only discovered recently that I liked, a lot. It makes sense that great beans make great chocolate, but chocolate is personal. And personally, I had always loved the idea of single-origin/estate etc. over blends ... but now, blends have really interested me. And essentially there is skill to getting a good blend
Damson's Angel 65% is a blend. Named Angel after the area of Angel, London, the closest station to Damson. Blends could taste completely different from batch to batch if the ratios of different cacaos vary ... This particular blend I had, incredible
The aroma was perfumed, plums, spiced. This carried onto the taste, with lime, smoothing to an overall chocolatey flavour. It was honey sweet. The melt was smooth, and slow