Impact
Night-lightning captured in a bar
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Appearance 4 / 5
| Color: | firebrick red ground into medium brown |
| Surface: | scuffed front; backside shattered in divots, welts, & grease splatter |
| Temper: | semi-gloss |
| Snap: | plunks off at lower frequency; craggy edge |
Aroma 7.2 / 10
anti-Churchillin’ radicals spilling sticky milk toffee all over dried tobaccocoa & nuts in the leather library chairs at UC Berekely -> onto granite & bluestone flooring
Mouthfeel 11.9 / 15
| Texture: | dry, micro-crunch |
| Melt: | soft frailty |
Flavor 38.3 / 50
dessicated cocoa + dairy generate blackstrap licorice-toffee brittle, the electrical surge to split into... -> chickory -> vanilla mocha -> wattleseed -> caramelized charred almonds -> latent & late malted Milk Choc apparition w/ suppressed bitters -> oak bark
Quality 13.7 / 20
Pegged at 68%, S-B returns to familiar hiking grounds (Kumasi-Sambirano and Tomé-Açu weigh in at the exact same percentage, plus a raft of its other bars in the semisweet range). But this in some way mimics the 41% Milk Nibby – on steroids.
Nowhere are Nibs mentioned on the labeling but they seem redundant except to act as an exfoliant in the Texture to further scrub the profile down to suffocating jungle density (as opposed to the Mast Bros’ superior version of a Dark-Milk with Nibs).
A misguided, blown-up formulation employing, it seems, poorly processed bulk beans scraped from the bottom of a sack tossed in the warehouse corner.
S-B overshot the roast, a rarity for the company, then relies on ample milk solids to hold off & modulate a rather flat & bitter bean blend.
Given what has always been a player with Milk Chocolate (witness the Extra Rich), this should be a walk in the park for the company rather than a treacherous hike. Either Dark-Milk is out of S-B’s range or, more likely, this represents signs of onset deterioration with the label.
Either way, this bar is in a world of hurt.
ING: cocoa mass, sugar, milk, cacáo butter, nonfat milk, milk fat, soy lecithin, vanilla beans
Reviewed Summer 2010
Nowhere are Nibs mentioned on the labeling but they seem redundant except to act as an exfoliant in the Texture to further scrub the profile down to suffocating jungle density (as opposed to the Mast Bros’ superior version of a Dark-Milk with Nibs).
A misguided, blown-up formulation employing, it seems, poorly processed bulk beans scraped from the bottom of a sack tossed in the warehouse corner.
S-B overshot the roast, a rarity for the company, then relies on ample milk solids to hold off & modulate a rather flat & bitter bean blend.
Given what has always been a player with Milk Chocolate (witness the Extra Rich), this should be a walk in the park for the company rather than a treacherous hike. Either Dark-Milk is out of S-B’s range or, more likely, this represents signs of onset deterioration with the label.
Either way, this bar is in a world of hurt.
ING: cocoa mass, sugar, milk, cacáo butter, nonfat milk, milk fat, soy lecithin, vanilla beans
Reviewed Summer 2010