Monday 30 April 2018

Dormouse Peru 80%

Cocoa beans from Piura, Peru of the Gran Nativo Blanco type, are such delicate and fine flavour cocoa beans. The beans, from Cacao Tales, are grown by cooperatives in Northern Peru, and they are the most awarded cacao beans grown in Peru, see here for more details.

Dormouse Chocolates, Manchester's first bean to bar chocolate maker, is a ridiculously skilled chocolate maker. So basically, this bar just suggests a real synergistic experience...

An 80% dark chocolate, made with cocoa beans and muscovado sugar only, meaning no added cocoa butter.
The aroma was caramel, lightly acidic, green apples. The taste had perfect acidity, with notes of lime, wheat, ash, rhubarb, and very caramel-rich from the molasses of the muscovado sugar. The flavour was so smooth, as was the texture, which could be explained by the grind and conche time having been 54 hours, all in a 2l capacity grinder, just some fine details for 'chocolate nerds'

This bar really amazed me. Sometimes 80% can be a little too high for me, but it was such an easy going 80%. So much so that I had the whole bar in just a couple of hours. Each piece literally made me say "wow", which I first noticed I was doing when biking in the sun through London 

NearyNógs Hispaniola 70%

NearyNógs first got my attention in early February, it was with their São Tomé 70%. The chocolate, from what I remember, was very good, and more interestingly so was that it had been made in Northern Ireland! 

Onto their Dominican Republic 70% bar, the ingredients are simple: cacao beans and unrefined cane sugar.
The taste had a great acidity, somewhat rich with red currants. The texture and flavour both felt like a chocolate brownie, the texture because it was quite a thick and uneven melt, the flavour because it's just mad chocolatey. This type of melt, however, works well with a taste like that... The finish had a 'green' earthy note to it.
This bar was enjoyed during the mid April heatwave in London. For me, it's always so good to have great chocolate in hot weather