Mast Brothers Coffee

60% cacao, cane sugar, cocoa butter, buttermilk, coffee beans. The Mast Brothers' website tells me the cacao origin - Tanzania - when the packaging fails to. There is no mention of the coffee, in terms of what coffee it is. Although I don't think it would be Stumptown's coffee, because that would surely get a mention

I picked up this small 28g bar at Mast Brothers in Shoreditch, London. It had actually been made in the Mast Brooklyn factory, "surprise!" What would the locavores do?

The standard 70g Coffee bar would have been made in London, but not the 28g miniatures; the same applies to all within the Mast range

Really great chocolate. Fine flavour cacao with coffee will always get me. The texture was really smooth, the flavour was open, deep. Just really sound chocolate

I would love to do a side by side comparison of this coffee chocolate. Few pieces Shoreditch-made, few Brooklyn-made and LA too

Naive Honey

Naive tell a wonderful story upon this bar, here. Lots of pretty words, a story behind chocolate invites me, always. This chocolate is Tanzanian cocoa beans, sugar, 5% wild forest honey, pure cocoa butter - pressed by Naive - and sunflower lecithin; all organic

A beautiful aroma. Earthiness, honey, Venezuelan chocolate, tobacco, pure cocoa butter (Willies Cacao El Blanco), caramel

The taste was cocoa, honey, bitterness, flowers, coconut blossom sugar, so floral, Willies Cacao Milk of the Gods. In essence, it was a smooth flavoured chocolate

The mouth texture was smooth-ish. The finish was long lasting cocoa. Overall a great chocolate. Admittedly at times it reminded me of advent calendar chocolate, but then I was reminded of the quality of ingredients, and my perception went beyond what I could taste. I think that happens a lot with craft chocolate 

Askinosie 72% Tenende, Tanzania

This chocolate was handcrafted with 69% cocoa liquor and 3% cocoa butter (pressed in the Askinosie factory) from Trinitario beans directly sourced from farmers in Tenende, plus 28% organic cane sugar

This Tenende bar had won 2011 Academy of Chocolate silver award 'Best Bean to Bar' and gold 'Best Packaging'

The 'Choc-o-Lot #' was 060315, which lead me to find the beans' log. For example, these beans were roasted on the 6th of March; the liquor, sugar, and butter were mixed on 7th of April; and this chocolate was packaged by hand on the 3rd of June!

The aroma was luscious. The chocolate had a fruitiness (strawberry, raspberry) over a leathery body. There was a marshmallow (that suggested African Forestaro), earth, acidity ('raw' nibs), rubber, and it was lightly floral. The raspberry made me dig out my Original Beans Porcelana to compare and I came to the conclusion that overall they smelt exceedingly similar, but the Porcelana was more chocolatey

The taste was very tannic and rubber. Then came blueberry, and then raspberry! The raspberry, like with the Porcelana, came in very soft hits. It was quite sour and acidic, somewhat bitter, and the finish lingered a tobacco. The texture was reasonably smooth, more dusty than expected 

It was acidic with the desirable fruitiness but the metallic taste suggested maybe overly acidic cacao. Apart from the metal, I really liked this chocolate. The sudden touches of raspberry, strawberry and blueberry were so "BEAUTIFUL" (as I wrote in my chocolate journal)