Essential elements for chocolate tasting

The chocolate tasting will involve all your senses.

It is recommended to do it in the morning before having consumed any strong tasting food or beverage.

Sight:

Is the first sense to be applied. You have to observe and appreciate the texture of chocolate, e.g. it must not have bubbles on its surface and its texture should look glossy and uniform even after breaking it.

The lighter the color is means a lower cacao percentage and the darker a higher cacao percentage.

Color has also to be uniform, and if you find white marks on it, it is due to the temperature changes meaning that the chocolate was not well storaged or badly tempered.

Touch:

Use your fingers to press the chocolate and check how fast it melts. It should melt above 32ºC (89ºF). Try to find big particles in between.

When your chocolate gets in contact with your tongue and palate it should be a very fine and uniform texture and shouldn't contain particles bigger than others.

Smell:

While smelling your chocolate you may analyze it two ways.

Directly, when you bring the chocolate close to your nose to sense its flavors. This way you will feel characteristic aromas of cacao beans and also aromas of other ingredients making part of the chocolate.

The indirect way is when you let the chocolate melt in your mouth and making a thin tunnel with your tongue and palate, breathe by your mouth and slowly expel the aroma by your nose. This way you will feel all the magnitude of your chocolate´s aromas and flavors.

Taste:

Let your chocolate melt in your mouth and spread it through your taste buds, check sweetness, acidity and astringency as well as bitterness, creaminess and balance among different ingredients.

Hearing:

When you break your chocolate you should hear a “snap”, characteristic sound. This feature also shows if your chocolate has been well tempered.

Among chocolate lovers, tastings are like ceremonies. For those who are willing to try, we leave some pieces of advice:

You shouldn't taste a recently produced chocolate. Do it at least one day after, so you give it time to stabilize.
The place for the tasting should preferably be a cool place, between 19ºC (66ºF) to 25ºC (77ºF)
When you perform a chocolate tasting, it is necessary to clean your mouth with warm water and wait a moment between the different chocolates.

Tasting chocolate is about learning the different nuances of the chocolate and how to spot these with your senses.

The more you taste and learn, the more you will be able to track the elements described above and assess the quality of chocolate.

Tasting is not so much whether you like the chocolate or not, but merely an objective assessment of chocolate.

If you like it, well that’s just great!

And hopefully you like all the products

of Chocolate Baure and be able to detect its differences.