Our chocolate doesn’t always taste the same. The first factor is you, the consumer. It really depends on how you’re feeling, what you combine the chocolate with, or what you had to eat or drink before eating chocolate. All of this affects your subjective perception of chocolate. The second factor is the fact that we produce our bars by hand. Each batch, while exhibiting the typical flavor characteristics of the particular variety, is unique each time – which is how it should be. In order to conclusively answer the question of why our chocolate doesn’t always taste the same, we have to consider one more factor: time. Let’s take a closer look at this factor here.
Generally, our chocolate can be stored and consumed for a long time. Since chocolate contains almost no water (<1%), microorganisms cannot grow in it. Dried cacao contains less than 8% water, during roasting and “conching” water evaporates and what remains is less than 1% in the chocolate, as mentioned. This means that chocolate cannot really go “bad” in the sense of being unhealthy. And yet, we recommend eating our chocolate as fresh as possible. There are over 600 flavor components in a single bar of chocolate. During roasting and conching, we change the complex interplay of these components until we obtain the flavor that is just right for us. Over time, however, this relation inevitably changes again. How and how much the chocolate changes in taste is difficult to predict. With milk chocolate, the changes are faster and more obvious than with dark chocolate. Often, the flavor intensity decreases, or certain flavors predominate in what was originally a smooth ratio. It is possible, however, that a new, exciting flavor will emerge over time. Regardless of what time does to our bars, we’re happy to have you share your impressions with us. (:
It’s best to eat the chocolate fresh, after all, you didn’t buy it just to leave it for later. If you still want to store the chocolate, make sure you do it right. Find out more about this here: Click here to read the article.