If you're a home baker you're probably super familiar with these right out the gate they both look pretty similar not too much of a colour difference. They both have nice little tails which is what we call the tip of the baking chip so this one has a little bit of a white note toit. It's called bloom it looks kind of like a white powder some people might think it's mild if the chocolate is in a hot environment and then it cools down in a not proper temperature. It'll get bloom so since these looks so similar let's move into tasting so first, I'm going to try this guy over here so this is a little bit sweeter the grind itself is a little bit course the first thing. I'm tasting is not chocolate.

It's sugar so when you're making chocolate first you take your beans and you roast them after roasting you grind them up and make cocoa liquor or unsweetened chocolate much the same way that one would make peanut butter from peanuts you grind your peanuts to make your peanut butter you grind your cocoa nibs to get your unsweetened chocolate. If you're refining on a shorter period of time your grain or your particle sizes going to be larger which means that the fat that's being released in the mass itself is going to have larger globules for it to cover so when it's on your tongue it's not going to melt as fluidly as if it were smaller particle sizes with more cocoa butter covering them so in the case of this particular chocolate I'm tasting more sugar which means that not only is the mass have a higher content of sugar but I'm guessing that maybe in the refining stage.

They didn’t refine it as finely as another brand might sugar is probably the cheapest ingredient that you'd be adding so if a company is making a ton of chocolate chips and just pumping them out the door they might be using more of the cheaper ingredient and trying to cutdown. Their production time which would be in the refining stage for instance which is where you're going to have something that's a little bit more sugar and a little bit larger particle size so now. I'm going to go ahead and taste B so this chocolate when I first taste it. It’s a really nice rich chocolate note. It lingers a little bit longer on my tongue. I'm tasting sugar much like I tasted this but it's certainly not the first thing. I'm tasting and also as I eat this chocolate it melts really evenly on my tongue. I'm not tasting a lot of particle size in it this is a nice standard rounded beautifully flavoured cookie drop I can't go away.

I think B probably has been refined a little bit more I'm thinking it probably has less sugar in it than a and I'm thinking the origins that they're using are a little bit different than a as well so I'm going to go ahead and guess that I think B is probably the more expensive one but let's do that make me feel oh it is but just by a little bit huh the shape is the same this has white on it but I don't think that it's due to bloom it might be due to just scuffing and transportation this particular chocolate is very sugar forward and the grains in the chocolate as it melts on my tongue are really prominent so for your bang for your buck you're getting a whole lot more flavour for just $1 more in these guys than you are for these guys so it looks like we've got some milk chocolate here and I can figure that out just by the colour and just off the bat taking a look at them the colorize pretty similar this is a little bit lighter brown this is a little bit of a darker brown but what I'm noticing more other than the colour is just the texture that you have in the chocolate itself in the case of this one you can tell that the particle size is a little bit larger and so when you break it and you've got that rough edge that to me is a clear sign that there might be a lesser quality milk chocolate happening here typically with a milk chocolate you can have dark milk so you can have lighter milk so just in looking at these one might think that just because it’s darker it might have more cocoa in it but the only way to find out is to taste it so let's start with aim going to do chocolate you have to let it melt on your mouth so what I’m tasting with this it's a really bright fresh berry note with milk chocolate you’re not necessarily looking for chocolate flavour you're really looking for milk flavour that complements chocolate so in this case it's a really upfront fresh dairy note the chocolate flavour is there it's a nice clean palate it lingers quite nicely on my tongues I let it melt and this is a really nice even melt as well now let's try beep gosh this is so soft so this is usurper almost like metallic II I don’t really get chocolate.

I don't really get milk I get a really sort of burned in the back of my throat flavour so my guess here is that the dairy that's being used in this might be coming from a higher quality dairy farm versus the dairy that’s being used in this this could very well be grass-fed dairy versus this although sometimes that really affects the flavour sometimes it doesn't this might be a happier cow than this guy so I’m guessing that with be the processing has probably been shortened a little bit maybe the refining process wasn't as laborious or thoughtful as it was in abut let's do the big reveals suspected a definitely is the more expensive with be the particle sizes again are quite large which makes it a little bit difficult to melt evenly on my tongue and it's also impacting the total fat that's in the product and how it melts on my tongue which is giving again that waxy note which is all a product of how it's being manufactured or produced in factory my biggest hunch about this significant price differences not only the quality of dairy that’s being used but also the time that’s going into manufacture this something with this level of graininess and sort of lack of depth just in the general delivery of milk and chocolate leads me to believe that it's probably more of a commodity that they're just pumping out large volumes of this particular chocolate as opposed to this this is really an art and a science.

It’s being delivered here in the case that maybe you're doing a lot of volumes say with smokes I would maybe consider going with the cheaper version but in most cases you're really going to be able to tell the difference from a really high quality milk chocolate versus a lower quality cheaper milk chocolate so if you can handle the price difference I would always say with try and go it to go with the more expensive one okay so we've got white chocolate the elusive white chocolate well first of all you can't call white chocolate white chocolate with the word chocolate in it unless it has 20 percent minimum cocoa butter what does someone maybe replace the cocoa butter with something that’s probably cheaper which is oftentimes like a vegetable fat these are both white products whether they're both white chocolate we'll soon find out thesis an even white colour this is more of a yellowish colour which leads me to believe that it might be more natural so when you think chocolate you think Brown and that Brown is coming from the solids that are in the unsweetened chocolate with white chocolate it's white because it doesn't have any of the cocoa solids in it it's just made up of cocoa butter which without the solids is clear this particular product over here is so bright white that it might have an additive added to it to even out theolog and drop out any off colours that one might not want in their end product so now it’s time to taste I'm going to actually start with this one over here just because I think it looks tastier um why not so as suspected it is melting quite evenly on my tongue fun fact cocoa butter melts at your body’s temperature so this particular product is melting quite quickly.

I can taste some sugar but for the most part it's a really fresh dare you know it has a little bit of citrus to it and it's a really creamy mouthfeel it's really clean moving on to B let me taste this one now I'm a little scared because it looks a little bright wait it's always scary when it comes to food mmm this is not melting as easily and fluidly as this one which makes me think that this probably is not a white chocolate I’m thinking this is probably has a fair amount of vegetable fat in it alternatively to the cocoa butter so I’m thinking this is probably a compound I also think that this is a fair amount of vanilla added into it it's that's pretty much all I'm tasting is vanilla and sugar when I taste this guy and again the most important sort of cue to me when I'm tasting this is that it's not melting evenly it's really sticky and waxy on my mouth and the roof of my mouth so I'm going to go ahead.

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This is probably a compound this is probably a white chocolate and I'm gonadal that this is probably significantly more expensive than this one okay grevilia so this as suspected is a bit more pricey than this one you don't have twenty percent minimum cocoa butter in your final product you can't call it chocolate and most of the time if something is a pure chocolate it's got a little bit of a yellower hue to it you add vegetable fat in your replacing the cocoa butter with something that is more stable might not require tempering as I thought this probably has a significant amount of sugar in it compared to this which it has some cocoa butter in it some sugar and just a really beautifully made white chocolate okay so it looks like we've got some cocoa powders here.

I guess first things that I notice about these guys is that they look like they're natural cocoa powders I say that because most of them are a little bit they're both a little bit on the lighter side if something’s Dutch twitch means adding sodium bicarbonate it's a ditching agent which makes the cocoa powder turn a little bit darker I'm also noticing that this once over here is slightly darker than this one here if they're already natural cocoa powders they tend to have more moisture in them the moisture tends to make the cocoa powder a little bit darker cocoa powder is made by taking unsweetened chocolate and putting it in hydraulic press and pressing it with so much pressure that you're separating your cocoa powder from your cocoa butters you're basically you have your solids and your fats they're both sort of light and fluffy they've got some grain to them but I guess the next step for me to figure out which one is better is if I taste them hey Justine thought it a little bit jerky so the first thing.

I noticed when I taste this one is that it’s really quite burned so that means that they were probably roasting the liqueur quite high before they made the cocoa powder and the other thing that I noticed is that the flavour profile on my tongue doesn't linger it sort of sort of hits my tongue and then the chocolate flavour stops okay now I'm going to try this other one I don't know why I can't do this without my own when I taste this one the first thing I'm tasting it's an ice rounded deep chocolate note it’s not burned it's a really sort of light fresh it's still chocolatey and you can still taste it’s been roasted but it's definitely not a high roasted liquor that’s probably being used in this I'm also noticing that the flavour once it hits my tongue lasts a little bit longer it lingers a little bit more and that's assign of some of a higher quality cocoa powder as well when you're trying to select which cocoa powder to use you want to have make sure that it's got full flavour full chocolate flavour as well as a nice long lingering fluoroproline I'm going to go ahead and say that is probably the more expensive of the two yep B. This one ‘definitely obviously more expensive.

I didn’t think that it was going to be that much more expensive but I think some of the things that might be happening here is it could very well be an organic cocoa powder it might have some certifications on it as well like a Fairtrade or rain forest Alliance certified the really important part is that it’s delivering a really strong chocolate flavour with Dutch cocoa powders you’re oftentimes getting more of a calcofluor cooked salty flavoured in a theaflavin profile of the chocolate isn’t super chocolaty it's more burned than chocolate but there's definitely some uniqueness going on here that ‘slacking in this one which is probably where the price difference is coming from okay so it looks like we have a super dark chocolate here a chocolate bar the other thing that I'm noticing with this as well is this one over hereon it B has a fair amount of air bubbles in tithe air bubbles don't necessarily affect the quality of the chocolate but it definitely impacts my perception of the quality of the chocolate so in this case with the air bubbles there it makes me think that maybe there was something that was lacking in the way that it was processed or the attention to detail that went into making this chocolate Solet me go ahead and taste this one so I’m guessing it's probably in the 80%range I knew it was a dark chocolate byte by the colour of it but it’s definitely a really deep rich dark chocolate there's not a lot going on in terms of complexity there's a little astringency at the end of it but theaflavin the deep chocolate flavour notes is really coming up upfront and then it lingers throughout as I'm finishing eating it so this definitely tastes like something that I could eat a lot of we call that Moorish where you just want more of it and if it's not something that you can eat a lot of it might be a single origin we call that sipping chocolate where you might just want a little bit and you're satisfied you can’t have too much of it now I'm going to go ahead and try this one B so thesis very different from this one it's a little bit more extreme it's not a really rounded flavour profile it I think it’s probably a single origin Indefinitely wouldn't be able to have a lot of this so when I taste both of these they both melt rather evenly on my tongue there's not a significant difference in terms of particle size like we are commenting on earlier the main difference is just flavour development on my palate when I eat them my guess is that B is probably more expensive but I really have no idea so I guess let's take a look and see what the difference is oh my goodness why is that say five hundred and fifty dollar the bar I thought there would be difference but I didn't think it would be this much this is surprising I didn't even know there was a bar that was five hundred and fifty dollars maybe they have a direct relationship with the farm and there might be a component like an heirloom cacao component to this I'm not entirely sure I don't think the air bubbles necessarily affect the quality but it definitely gives an appearance of lower quality chocolate bar.

I might just want a really delicious chocolate bar that I can eat in one or two or ten bites I might want this for a special occasion where I'm pairing it with something at a dinner party I don't know if I would pay that much personally don’t forget this is still a seven dollar chocolate bar which isn't a cheap chocolate bar from the grocery store it’s still a really high-quality chocolate but you know the big takeaway here is that you know you don't have to spend an arm and a leg to buy a really good bar of chocolate there's a time Anda place for when you would want to buy an expensive chocolate bar whether it’s seven dollars or in some cases what is it 550so I'm hoping the big takeaway from today is that prices and everything that it’s really important to taste the chocolate that you are choosing between if you want to go with an 89 cent chocolate bar great if that satisfies your craving if you want to spend five hundred and fifty dollars on a single origin chocolate perfect hopefully you learned something here that will make it easier when you're at the store trying to make some decisions around what chocolate to buy.