Somerville Chocolate - Hawaii 70% Cacao from Papaikou, HI (bar) - Nov. 27, 2020

Chocolate of the Day

Somerville Chocolate
Hawaii 70% Cacao from Papaikou, Hawaii (bar)
Good + - Good ++
Weight: 2.5 oz. (70.75 g.) in total bar
Calories: 378 calories (estimate) in 1 bar
Cost: $13.00 for 1 bar
Purchased from: Missing information

Welcome to Day #6 of Chocolate and Hawaii Theme Week.

Today's Hawaii 70% Cacao from Papaikou, Hawaii (bar) was hand-crafted from bean to bar by Eric Parkes at Somerville Chocolate (Somerville, MA). The company is co-located with a brewery and wraps their bars using papers printed with attractive images of antique maps.

The aroma for this bar had a shape-shifting quality to it. First, I experienced a bold dark chocolate with a roasted (very faint charcoal smoke) note. However, two minutes later, the aroma grew much milder, taking on a green (green forest, green nut) scent with a very faint waxy nut note. A magic trick of sorts.

The flavor of this bar was quite sweet (high-end, dark chocolate frosting). It's likely there were bright fruity notes from the cacao that amped up the cane sugar sweetness; but it was hard to tell. (Think of bright sunshine blasting you on a black sand beach on the Big Island* of Hawaii. Beautiful. But, sometimes too much of a good thing.) 

Some cacao has a naturally bright sweet flavor, and making a 70% cacao version (with 70% cacao and 30% cane sugar), which is generally considered an "optimal" percentage in chocolate-making circles, much sweeter than another 70% bar. Today's bar may be a good example of just that.

I'd be curious to taste a 73% or even 75% version of this bar (i.e. one with less sugar) to see if I could taste more of the chocolate's nuances/fruitiness. However, those with a sweet tooth should be quite happy with this well-made bar.

The finish had a very faint, balanced astringency, and it shifted from a lingering sweet, fruit acidity to something a bit of mellow, green nut flavor at the very end.

Ingredients: Cacao, cane sugar

*The cacao used to make this dark bar was from Papaikou, which is located on the east shore of the Big Island of Hawaii (south of the Tropical Botanical Garden and bioreserve) and about 5 miles (8 km) from Hilo. The area is described as a "tropical paradise on the Hamakua coast." And, happily for us, at a few hundred feet above sea level and at approx. 19 + degrees N. Latitude, it's also well-suited for growing cacao.

Somerville Chocolate - Hops Dark Milk bar - Aug. 17, 2019

Chocolate of the Day: 

Somerville Chocolate
Hops Dark Milk bar - Dark Milk infused with Beer Hops bar
Good ++
Weight: 1.25 oz. (35 g.) / 2.5 oz. (70 g.) in total bar
Calories: 188 calories (estimate) in 1/2 bar
Cost: $12.00 for 1 bar
Purchased from: Chocolate Covered, San Francisco, CA

Welcome to Day #8 of Chocolate and Spirits Theme Week.

Today's Hops Dark Milk bar - Dark Milk infused with Beer Hops bar was crafted by Somerville Chocolate (Somerville, MA).

This dark milk bar had citrus and hoppy earth notes with a slight bitterness in finish. That is, it tasted very much like beer hops. (The maker's description also suggested we might taste pineapple and evergreen notes from the hops.)

The 53 percent cacao (37% cacao nibs + 16% cocoa) chocolate was made with a blend of cacao origins, and infused with Mosaic beer hops.

Somerville Chocolate - Nicaragua 70% Cacao Bisiesto bar - June 16, 2019

Chocolate of the Day: 

Somerville Chocolate
Nicaragua 70% Cacao Bisiesto bar
Good++
Weight: 1.25 oz. (35.375 g.) / 2.5 oz. (70.75 g.) in total bar
Calories: 188 calories (estimate) in 1/2 bar
Cost: $12.00 for 1 bar
Purchased from: Chocolate Covered, San Francisco, CA

Welcome to Day #9 of Chocolate and Nicaragua Theme Week.

Today's Nicaragua 70% Cacao Bisiesto* bar was handcrafted by Somerville Chocolate (Somerville, MA). The company describes itself as a bean-to-bar Community Supported Agriculture (CSA)* operation.

For this bar, swaddled in an outer paper wrapper in the form of an historic map, the makers at Somerville Chocolate partnered with Cacao Bisiesto,** an in-country, cacao company in Nicaragua that plays a valuable role in advising farmers on cacao quality and flavor and connecting these growers with craft chocolate makers.

The aroma of this 70% dark Nicaragua bar had well balanced savory, light earth, dense chocolate aroma, and red/citrus fruit flavor that blossomed with the first bite. It had a lingering, satisfying aftertaste with a very slight astringency.

Nicaragua Flavor Profile?

At this point in a single origin chocolate theme week, it's often easy to draw conclusions about an origin, a terroir-influenced flavor profile that might be found across a series of bars from the same country. This is especially true in countries where chocolate makers are buying cacao beans from just one or two farms or plantations. If so, what does a characteristic Nicaragua cacao taste like?

While there are some similarities, there also have been many differences in flavors this week, in part due to the use of different varieties of cacao being used in Nicaragua. A few of the resulting chocolate bars have been relatively high in fruit acidity, and others have been amazingly complex, hitting on almost every major category on a chocolate tasting wheel. The earthiness found in some of these bars has been very appealing. (Nothing like the mold-tinged dirt bars that can keep people off "earth" notes for the rest of their chocolate-tasting days.) Keep us guessing Nicaragua! All of the bars have been quite good in their own right.

*A CSA often helps support farmers by giving them some renumeration before or during a growing season (in advance of a harvest). And in turn the farmer(s) provide goods/produce to the organization. Community Supported Agriculture also serves as a way to buy local food directly from a farmer.

**Cacao Bisiesto is a small cacao company based in La Dalia, Nicaragua. (The company was founded on leap year (bisiesto) day, February 29.) Founders José Enrique Herrera and Gifford Laube, with backgrounds that include agronomy and agriculture management, have developed respectful relationships with local independent farmers in Central America and have offered assistance to them on fermentation, cacao tree management and other techniques. They help connect these farmers with craft chocolate makers, who in turn are willing to pay farmers a higher price for higher-quality cacao. 

Somerville Chocolate - White Chocolate with Cacao Nibs bar - March 9, 2018

Chocolate of the Day: 

Somerville Chocolate

White Chocolate with Cacao Nibs bar

Good - Good +

Weight: 1.25 oz. (35.375 g.) / 2.5 oz. (70.75 g.) in total bar

Calories: 188 calories (estimate) in 1/2 bar

Cost: $11.00 for 1 bar

Purchased from: Chocolate Covered, San Francisco, CA

Today's White Chocolate with Cacao Nibs bar was made by Somerville Chocolate (Somerville, MA).

Only a small handful of white chocolate items appear on this site, ChocolateBanquet.com. And the few that do usually contain cocoa butter,* and are either blends with dark or milk chocolates. Or they, like today's bar, contain cocoa butter and cocoa nibs (pieces of cocoa bean**).

This attractively packaged and molded bar was a fun ride. It had a sweet, cocoa butter aroma with a hint of vanilla frosting. (There was no vanilla in this bar.***) 

The flavor was predominantly white chocolate with a generous smattering of small dark crunchy bits (nibs) that tilted one's taste buds back over to the dark side every few seconds. And then, at the end of every bite, the sweetness gently but firmly re-asserted itself.

*Many commercial white chocolates replace all or part of the naturally occurring cocoa butter (the fat portion of the cocoa bean) with vegetable oils.

** Cocoa beans are actually seeds, but the term "bean" has become the more widely used term.
***Ingredients list read: cocoa butter, cane sugar, powdered milk, cacao nibs, soy lecithin