Mānoa Chocolate

Today I'm looking at a new-to-me company inspired by a trip home to Hawaii: Mānoa Chocolate. While picking up a few groceries I found several Mānoa bars, and more or less went all-in on this pricey chocolate, selecting three to take back home with me. 

Corporate Info: Mānoa Chocolate is new new new. Though the "history and mission" link on the site only brings up a brief "about" page, the oldest blog post on the site is from April 2012, when they were still building the factory in Kailua, Oahu and sourcing beans from Hawaii and abroad. Here you'll find a great video interviewing Mānoa's young founder, Dylan Butterbaugh, and taking you on a tour of the very small operation. The company has a great mission--among other things, to expand Hawaii's locally-grown cacao industry; thus, Mānoa makes its chocolate bean-to-bar, though as I said, only some of the cacao is from Hawaii. It also uses other Hawaiian ingredients like sea salt and coffee beans, and while the focus here is not crazy flavors, Mānoa makes some bars with goat milk, which I don't think I've seen elsewhere. An intriguing start for a young company! Oh, and in case you're wondering why Mānoa comes out of Kailua and not, well, Mānoa, supposedly it's not about the location.
 
Today's Bars: 

• 72% Bolivia Goat Milk: Cacao nibs (presumably Bolivian), cane sugar, goat milk powder, cocoa butter. 
• 66% Goat Milk Hamakua Hawaiian Crown: Cacao nibs (presumably from Hamakua, on the Big Island), cane sugar, goat milk powder, cocoa butter. 
• 60% Dark Milk Breakfast Bar: Cacao nibs, cane sugar, whole milk powder, cocoa butter, coffee beans (Hawaiian).

Note: Mānoa Chocolate's product line changes continuously. It routinely uses Hamakua cocoa beans, for example, though based on the website, as of this writing it's only in a 72%, non-milk bar. The Bolivian bar seems to be the current incarnation of the 72% single-origin bar, though I think it always includes goat milk. And the listed goat milk option is still 66%, but with (at least in the photo on the site) Peruvian beans. Either way, you get a fun blend of different milks and non-milks, Hawaiian and non-Hawaiian cacao, and so on.

Appearance: All three are shiny and smooth, in a rich red-brown, and the reverse of the Breakfast Bar is densely sprinkled with nibs and whole coffee beans.

Smell: 

• 72% Bolivia Goat Milk: Wow that's good, full and rich and beany and fruity, with some rawness, a little sourness, and no bitter or "off" odors.
• 66% Goat Milk Hamakua Hawaiian Crown: Not unlike the above in terms of the description, but slightly muted and with a higher, nutty note.
• 60% Dark Milk Breakfast Bar: Even more muted, less raw, with something thin and bitter underneath, though still rich and full. No clear coffee scent.

  
Taste:

• 72% Bolivia Goat Milk: Texture is a little chalky, then melty. Flavor is bright and rounded and a little sour, not goaty at all, but with a little of milk chocolate's smooth, easy-to-eat character and plenty of dark chocolate's punch. 
• 66% Goat Milk Hamakua Hawaiian Crown: Texture is only slightly chalky and thicker. Flavor is not nearly as strong, with some freshness in the back of the throat and a smooth, sour cream vibe, not as interesting as the 72% Bolivian by my taste but pleasant and still somewhat raw.
• 60% Dark Milk Breakfast Bar: The texture of the chocolate is, again, chalky and thick, with the soft crunch of the nibs and brittle crunch of the coffee. Flavor is nice, dark but not strong, nutty, without the sourness of the other bars, and just a little coffee from the beans (roughly one bean per rectangle). Not bad, but not my favorite.

Conclusion: To focus on one standout feature: Goat milk complements dark chocolate with the mellowness of dairy but also meshes its sour flavor profile with cacao's raw, sour, beany notes. For that and other reasons, Mānoa Chocolate is a neat addition to the Hawaii chocolate scene.

Cachet Cocoa Nibs

3.5oz (100g) bar
Ingredients: Cocoa mass, sugar, cocoa nibs, cocoa powder, soy lecithin 
10g sugar/38g serving (26.3% by wt.)

Corporate Info: Cachet is a subsidiary of Kim's Chocolates, a Belgian company founded in 1987 that makes bars and confections under the Cachet name as well as a line called KC Chocolatier. I'm not sure what the difference is in terms of branding, other than that Cachet is "available in supermarkets and at many confectioners," while KC Chocolatier is in "specialist chocolate shops, delicatessens, Duty Free shops and on board aeroplanes." Cachet offers a fairly large assortment (click through to see groupings), including a few sugar-free varieties, though I notice that no ingredients are listed on the site. 

Today's Bar: Cocoa nibs in 70% cacao, apparently part of the "signature" line of tablets (i.e. bars). I found it (and two other bars) in a German deli for about $4. 

Appearance: Nondescript orangey brown in a wide, flat mold. 

Smell: Tart, beany, red-fruity.

Taste: For a relatively uninteresting-looking bar with a generic European corporate pedigree, this is actually pretty good. It's reasonably sweet but with a high density of nibs, whose hearty crunch and tame but raw flavor (they very much blend in) add a break and interest to a perfectly adequate base. The chocolate itself has a syrupy dried-fruit flavor with a little sourness for balance and a slightly chalky, thick texture that isn't my favorite but works okay if I don't think too much about it. This could be a decent go-to snacking chocolate, especially because the nibs' crunch make it somewhere between plain chocolate and a nut-studded (and not too sweet) candy bar in terms of munching satisfaction.

Conclusion: Cachet Cocoa Nibs feels generically European, but the decent chocolate and high nib concentration make it a satisfying snack.

Trader Joe's Takes Flight: A Dark Chocolate Tasting Odyssey, Part I

Corporate Info: (Copied from 1/12/13) Quirky-gourmet grocery store Trader Joe's tends to be hit or miss, with some products being regular purchases for years, some becoming favorites and then disappearing from shelves, and some straight up disappointing. I've had similarly mixed results with their chocolate, but there's constant turnover, they contract with a whole assortment of manufacturers, and they aim for reasonable price points, so it's worth it to keep trying. There isn't much else to say aside from a fun fact: The US's beloved Trader Joe's is owned by Germany's ALDI, which operates discount supermarkets all over Europe—and that explains why we saw packages of dried fruit and nuts labeled Trader Joe's in an ALDI in Osnabrück.

Today's Bar: An assortment! This “Dark Chocolate Tasting Odyssey” is in the same line as the bar with toffee, walnuts, and pecans and the caramel-filled bar with black sea salt, but it includes seven separate and interesting bars! Two are 2oz versions of full-sized products, the salted caramel bar I've already reviewed and a coconut caramel one I still intend to review, so I won't cover them here. Further, you can buy each of those separately, and I've seen both in stores off-and-on for the last year, so you can probably find them if you want them. In contrast, I've only seen this assortment once, so I'm going to cover it in a two-part mega review rather than stretching it out over five posts.

So what, then, are today's bars? Every bar in the assortment is in 70% cacao, and aside from the two caramel-filled ones discussed above, all are regular chocolate with inclusions. Today I'm looking at Coffee & Cocoa Nib and Chili & Cinnamon.

Trader Joe's Dark Chocolate Chocolate Bar 70% Coffee & Cocoa Nib

2oz (57g) bar

Ingredients: Chocolate liquor, sugar, cocoa butter, soy lecithin, vanilla, cocoa nibs, coffee beans

17g sugar/57g serving (29.8% by wt.)

Appearance: Straight brown, i.e. not reddish or orangey, and mostly matte. The back shows a few small, raised pieces of what I'm guessing is cocoa nib.

Smell: Sweet and nutty, with barely a hint of coffee.

Taste: That's pretty good! The texture is more chalky than waxy, but with the intriguing grit of coffee grounds and crushed cocoa nibs. Flavor is sweet (note: I haven't been eating much sugar lately) and nutty, not especially complex, with the fatty flavor of cocoa butter and and a light, lingering coffee taste. More latte than espresso.

Conclusion: Trader Joe's Dark Chocolate Chocolate Bar 70% Coffee & Cocoa Nib offers some grit for texture and a light, creamy coffee flavor.

Trader Joe's Dark Chocolate Chocolate Bar 70% Chili & Cinnamon

2oz (57g) bar

Ingredients: Chocolate liquor, sugar, cocoa butter, soy lecithin, vanilla, ancho chili powder, cinnamon, guajillo chili powder, cayenne pepper

18g sugar/57g serving (31.6% by wt.)

Appearance: As with the coffee bar, the base used for this chocolate is a deeper, more purply brown than the also-common reddish or orangey, and has little gloss. The back surface is mottled with very small raised bumps.

Smell: Ooh, I totally get both chili and cinnamon! Not strongly, but still. Again, the chocolate is light and nutty.

Taste: Again, a little chalky, with chew. Then I get the prickle of the cayenne, a low level of the other chilis (I'm not sure I could tease out the flavors), and finally a surprising amount of cinnamon compared with other, similar bars I've tried. I don't know if they used ground cinnamon or if it's just the chalkiness of the chocolate itself, but overall it's a little too powdery for my taste. On the other hand, it's still pretty neat to taste serious cinnamon flavor in my chocolate, and along with the lasting heat of chili in the back of my throat.

Conclusion: Trader Joe's Dark Chocolate Chocolate Bar 70% Chili & Cinnamon has prickly, lingering heat, significant cinnamon flavor, and a texture that's a bit too powdery for me.

The Tea Room Chocolate Fusion Maté & Cacao Nibs

1.8oz (51g) bar

Ingredients: Organic cacao, o. cane sugar, o. cacao fat, o. yerba maté tea, o. star anise, o. cacao nibs, soy lecithin

7g sugar/25.5g serving (27.5% by wt.)

Corporate Info: The Tea Room is a small, California-based company started by a Swiss chef and later hotel manager. I can't find much more information about the company itself, including in the press, but it seems pretty small and focused on tea, imported macarons, and tea-infused chocolate treats. All of the cacao is organic and non-GMO, and it's sourced with farmers' quality of life in mind while consciously avoiding the Fair Trade label. The Tea Room's bars and some other items are sold nationwide, mostly at gourmet and health-food-type markets; I found mine at an upscale, local chain pharmacy.

Today's Bar: I selected two bars based on how dark they were, and today's is 72% cacao infused with yerba maté and also including cacao nibs. For those who've never tasted yerba maté, it's a South American plant whose leaves can be used like tea, imparting a grassy flavor as well as a hit of caffeine.

Appearance: The Tea Room's bars are not especially exciting to look at, just sharply molded into a rectangular grid. The color of this one is quite dark, more black-brown than I'd expect for 72%, with a slight gloss.

Smell: Deep, but not fruity, more of a dried, “brown” vibe.

Taste: Wow, that's deep. The flavor stands out, punchy and dried-fruity, and the texture is super rich and creamy. Not a lot of sourness, no edges, but lots of lingering, dark dried fruit and a sort of dried grassiness, which I presume is the maté. Nibs seem to be few and far between, detectable mostly only in a slightly less smooth texture, which actually provides some interesting variation, if not a stark contrast.

Conclusion: The Tea Room Chocolate Fusion Maté & Cacao Nibs is deep and dark, but not bitter.

Pacari Chocolate Covered Cacao Beans

90g (3.17oz) box; mine contained 31 chocolate covered beans

Ingredients: Organic cacao beans, o. cane sugar, o. cocoa powder, o. sunflower lecithin

Corporate Info: Pacari Chocolate is single-origin (Ecuador), organic, and according to them, fair trade minus the certification. Most of what I'm seeing about the company is from commercial sites, so I'll just say that they sound good, in an upscale, rainforesty sort of way: Pacari offers local-origin bars from different plantations, flavored bars, chocolate covered tropical things (fruits, coffee beans, etc), and a few other earthy-crunchy-super-local items, including today's chocolate covered cacao beans dusted with cocoa powder.

Appearance: Dusty, oblong, irregular. Appealingly rugged.

Smell: Intense, sharp, with warm notes—ginger, cardamom, that kind of vibe.

Taste: In layers, what you've got is: First, a fine dusting of powder that has almost no taste; its only real effect is allowing the chocolate underneath to remain both protected and creamy, which is to my mind preferable to to the shiny, shellacked texture of some other chocolate-covered treats. Second, a medium-thin layer of creamy, tart chocolate. If you sit and savor that layer it's actually raw-tasting compared to other chocolate, but if you mostly chomp down like I am, the contrast with the cacao bean makes it seem very smooth and sweet. Finally, a large cacao bean with a papery outside and nut-textured, crunchy-crumbly inside. The bean is almost deceptively neutral flavored in its unrefined, unsweetened, low-bitterness, nutty non-intensity. I've eaten nibs that had a more distinctive, banana-tropical flavor that these beans don't, and I like these here. Very good.

Conclusion: Pacari Chocolate Covered Cacao Beans are rustic, have nice texture and flavor contrast, and are easy to keep eating. Warning: Too many can make you (me) hyperactive!

El Ceibo Bolivia 77% Dark Chocolate Cocoa Nibs & Uyuni Salt

2.8oz (80g) bar

Ingredients: Organic cocoa mass, sugar, o. cocoa nibs, cocoa butter, salt, soy lecithin

Corporate Info: I'd never heard of El Ceibo before, but it turns out the Bolivian cooperative is pretty great, bringing together various indigenous groups and becoming a model for South American farming cooperatives in general. In collaboration with a European chocolatier (site is in French), El Ceibo makes only a few products for the international market. Today's choice, their 77% bar with nibs and salt, includes salt from a the world's largest salt flats, which are, not coincidentally, in Bolivia.

Appearance: Not very glossy, European-style thin and flat, greyish-reddish.

Smell: Raw and beany, with cacao's buttermilky tang.

Taste: Super smooth chocolate punctuated by nut-textured, more intense nibs. Chocolate is indeed tangy but not sour. Sugar is well-incorporated: I would say it's not at all sweet, but obviously that's not true, it's just that the sugar balances the chocolate's bite and no more. Salt is supposedly in crunchy crystals, but I'm only rarely picking them up; it's more like when cooks add enough salt to a dish to enhance the flavor without making it taste “salty.” Overall, this is pure, bright, smooth-textured, slightly tannic beaniness, with nibs for flavor and texture contrast. Good stuff.

Conclusion: El Ceibo Bolivia 77% Dark Chocolate Cocoa Nibs & Uyuni Salt doesn't taste gimmicky, it's just good, pure, bright, chocolatey flavor with a little extra something.

Askinosie: Three Dark Chocolates

70% San Jose Del Tambo Ingredients: Cocoa beans, sugar, cocoa butter

8g sugar/42.5g serving (in full-size bar; 18.8% by wt.)

75% Soconusco bar not currently available

77% Davao Ingredients: Cocoa beans, organic cane sugar, cocoa butter

7g sugar/42.5g serving (in full-size bar; 16.5% by wt.)

I'd never heard of Askinosie until I found these single origin mini packs at my local chocolate specialty shop. As high-end chocolate isn't cheap, I thought it might be fun to do a sort of tasting flight with these little bars, and I picked three of them more or less at random. I ended up with the following “Itty Bars”: 70% San Jose Del Tambo (Ecuador) Nibble Bar; 75% Soconusco (Mexico) Bar; and 77% Davao (Philippines) Bar. I've since looked up the various bars on Askinosie's website, though the Soconusco chocolate isn't currently available except as white chocolate.

Before I try the chocolate, who are these Askinosie people? The complex website is a bit of a pain (just try perusing the news section) and could use a copy editor, but basically the company was founded in Springfield, Missouri by ex-lawyer Shawn Askinosie, his wife, and a business partner. They try to work with the cocoa farmers in person, pay them fair wages, and share a percentage of the profits with them to encourage high quality. Aside from specialty items their chocolate is just beans and sugar—no vanilla or soy lecithin—and they try to be as organic as possible short of going through the certification process. (See the FAQ for more.) They sound like lovely people.

Back to the Itty Bars. Each gives you two wafers of plain chocolate, with the Nibble Bar having nibs on the back. Let's take them one at a time...

70% San Jose Del Tambo with nibs has an underlying tropical scent, like bananas. The texture is dense and thick, coating the mouth with cacao, and the flavor is dark with minimal sweetness, but not harsh...like bitter chocolate with some of the bitterness removed. Nibs add texture and more of that tropical banana vibe, something I've tasted in other nibs too. Aftertaste is light, tropical, and short-lived.

75% Soconusco has a minimal smell, quiet and banana-free. It's dense but not so mouth-coating, more bitter, almost like chocolate distilled to its essence: just enough sugar to get past the wince factor and on to the cacao, not especially fruity or tropical or rich, just chocolate. The aftertaste is a bit sour, but it's more like intense chocolate than free-floating acid. Overall a neat experience.

77% Davao also doesn't smell like much to me, so perhaps I'm not especially creative today. It tastes sweeter than the Soconusco, probably because it has that red wine quality, tannic but also fruity in a way that speciously reminds me of sugar. It's not berries or cherries or raisins; my co-taster says fresh currants, which I've never eaten myself, but perhaps that'll be helpful to you. Either way it's not overwhelming or off-putting, though there is a long, lingering bitter finish that isn't the most pleasant.

All in all, this was a fun way to compare three subtly varying bars. My favorite was the 75% Soconusco, though I didn't love it enough to pay for this premium chocolate. If you feel like spending a little cash, you could do worse (and support worse companies) than to pick up some of Askinosie's chocolate.

Conclusion: Askinosie's 70% San Jose Del Tambo with nibs is tropical and thick; 75% Soconusco is the essence of dark chocolate; and 77% Davao is winey and somewhat bitter.

Madécasse Chocolate Sea Salt & Nibs

2.64oz (75g) bar

Ingredients: Cocoa beans, sugar, cocoa butter, soy lecithin, sea salt

14g sugar/37.5g serving (37.3% by wt.)

I've seen Madécasse bars for a while, elegantly rustic in their raffia-tied paper envelope, but they're a high-midpriced option and I've generally had something cheaper or more novel to try, so I've passed them by. Not long ago I saw Madécasse on sale and went for it, picking up this sea salt and nibs bar and accidentally overlooking its slightly high sugar content. I haven't eaten many sea salt bars, because while I enjoy the salty-sweet combo, I haven't seen much of it in super-dark chocolate. This isn't super dark, either, but there are certainly worse things than to be stuck with a slightly-too-sweet chocolate bar.

So how is it? The front looks clean and sharp, the back is laid with jagged waves of nibs, and the scent is sweet in that fragrant-tropical-fruit sort of way. The flavor is a bit tart, with the crunchy nut-like texture of nibs, and then a sudden punch of salt. It sounds overwhelming, but after a piece or two the saltiness becomes much mellower, a background counterpoint to the sweet/bright/nutty chocolate. Taken together it's enjoyably complex, more interesting than most plain chocolate while just containing the usual ingredients and salt. Personally I shy away from tart chocolate—my palate just tires of it quickly, so I won't go out of my way to buy this again, but in my opinion this is still very good stuff.

Bonus: According to Madécasse, not only the cacao but also the finished product come from Madagascar, and they pay their farmers “above fair trade prices.” Assuming that's true, then good on them. Good chocolate, too.

Conclusion: Madécasse Chocolate Sea Salt & Nibs uses basic chocolate and salt to create a complex, interesting bar.