64% Whole Bean Madagascan
by Paul A. Young
Impact
Part II of Paul Young Unwinnowed: The Beast of Cacáo Unleashed.
Good grief.
What a fugly creature.
The staff therapist at the C-spot®, indoctrinated in the school of Deepak Chopra & Marianne Williamson's Course in Miracles, preaches that "there's beauty in everything, everywhere, every time".
That breathless philosophy allows for gratitude.
Grateful to Paul Young, in this instance, for sharing his inspirations. Because this bar lends a deeper appreciation for sunless days, lonely beds, cold showers, & leftovers in the dumpster.
Thank you, Paul, for recalling Edith Wharton's encouragement about the 2 ways to spread light: to be the candle or the mirror that reflects it…. even if it's the flickering freight train at the end of the proverbial tunnel. With every bar sold & consumed, the wreckage fractures & discharges into a million rays.
Yes, we can (thank you Cesar Chavez… Barack will repay the debt with a more lenient immigration policy). Can see, hear, touch & taste the light out of this darkness. Like Invictus. Empowering. A chocolate that engages the kindness of tolerance in the spirit of the least of our brethren (thank you, Matthew 25:40).
Any who feel high & mighty ought to buy this bar as a penitential rite, especially during this holy season, to empathize with how the other half copes. It shall return thee to thy more humbled station in life.
Good grief.
What a fugly creature.
The staff therapist at the C-spot®, indoctrinated in the school of Deepak Chopra & Marianne Williamson's Course in Miracles, preaches that "there's beauty in everything, everywhere, every time".
That breathless philosophy allows for gratitude.
Grateful to Paul Young, in this instance, for sharing his inspirations. Because this bar lends a deeper appreciation for sunless days, lonely beds, cold showers, & leftovers in the dumpster.
Thank you, Paul, for recalling Edith Wharton's encouragement about the 2 ways to spread light: to be the candle or the mirror that reflects it…. even if it's the flickering freight train at the end of the proverbial tunnel. With every bar sold & consumed, the wreckage fractures & discharges into a million rays.
Yes, we can (thank you Cesar Chavez… Barack will repay the debt with a more lenient immigration policy). Can see, hear, touch & taste the light out of this darkness. Like Invictus. Empowering. A chocolate that engages the kindness of tolerance in the spirit of the least of our brethren (thank you, Matthew 25:40).
Any who feel high & mighty ought to buy this bar as a penitential rite, especially during this holy season, to empathize with how the other half copes. It shall return thee to thy more humbled station in life.
Appearance 2.7 / 5
| Color: | damaged / burnt orange |
| Surface: | an eyesore…. pimpled, pocked, blemished, scarred… in need of corrective EMS cosmetic surgery |
| Temper: | retains a glimmer of hope |
| Snap: | knuckler |
Aroma 7.4 / 10
cuts deeper than just the rinds of its 73% sib & into some cheese funk
coconut shell -> trace vetiver grass
very faint cocoa & berry
coconut shell -> trace vetiver grass
very faint cocoa & berry
Mouthfeel 9.8 / 15
| Texture: | crumbly biscuit, then oddly chewy |
| Melt: | suffocating -- an impenetrable viscous wall that blocks the airways |
Flavor 39 / 50
caramel tones spilling all over the joint -> brown sugar backed by unidentifiable scraps -> roots around some, then scrapes of bitter clay -> lemon wash -> turns lightly red ... cherry-fig (nice) -> cough syrup -> pastry flour -> ahem… persistent cough syrup
Quality 12.3 / 20
Oy, what to make of this stuff.
Young may not have discarded the shells but he sure is Shuckin' Sugar to echo Blind Lemon Jefferson.
Lower CQ (or baseline cocoa flavor) attributable to the formulation & so little cocoa mass-to-sugar ratio to catalyze into chocolate.
Winnowing typically results in a approximately 20% loss of matter, not all shell since some Nib fragments are also lost. Giving Young the benefit of the doubt, let's err on the side of caution & calculate that of the 64% total cocoa-content in this assemblage, no more than 10% constitutes husks. Added cocoa butter can range anywhere from usually 5% all the way to 20%+ (Choklat's butter-ball bars). Again, taking the conservative approach, let's use the lower end of the spectrum -- 5% (even though Texture here suggests higher). In sum, the cocoa mass or core compounds contributing to chocolate flavor accounts for maybe half.
Pretty meager (at least it's a Madagascar half; more on that later). The other half: sugar, key to the whole assemblage.
In this case, demerara sugar, a variant of brown sugar, of relatively large grain & pale amber color owing to its less refined nature which imparts a caramel / toffee taste due to inherent molasses. Those crystals are fairly well micronized & integrated here, certainly nowhere near the coarseness of Taza's unconched bars.
It compensates for the otherwise abysmal state of play, masking the horrid features & tricking the tongue into highlighting the upper volatiles (that Madagascar citrus & later sub-acid +, surprise, dried fruit) at the expense of the underlying dirt & detritus.
In galvanizing the vitalizing force of those fruited notes to distract attention from the swamp beneath, it momentarily deflects the twin scourges of the full Flavor & Texture onslaught which, alas, re-assert themselves to display their undying venom. However tolerable the Flavor, the Texture forms a fatal chokehold. Research now substantiates that Texture plays a crucial role in flavor perception & likability. Certain levels of crunch, for example, record high favorability (think Doritos).
This garners the opposite of 'moreish' however: more like 'lessest'.
The net FX: the whole body writhes in sensing something's terribly askew & involuntarily gags because of it.
In the end, given the composition & the proportions, Young should listen to Blind Lemon whose tombstone reads Lord it's one kind favor I'll ask of you / see that my grave is kept clean.
Yep, a bluesman without whom Young -- who rock stars around the chocolate scene -- could never have trucked in the sounds of Tom Jones, The Stones & Clapton to go along with a chocolate blues bar lamenting to either sanitize / pulverize the husks or lose them in a graveyard.
In tandem with the 73% soulmate, these Whole Bean contraptions earn a permanent resting place on the low shelf of life in the bucket.
INGREDIENTS: cocoa mass, demerara sugar, cocoa butter
Reviewed April 16, 2014
Young may not have discarded the shells but he sure is Shuckin' Sugar to echo Blind Lemon Jefferson.
Lower CQ (or baseline cocoa flavor) attributable to the formulation & so little cocoa mass-to-sugar ratio to catalyze into chocolate.
Winnowing typically results in a approximately 20% loss of matter, not all shell since some Nib fragments are also lost. Giving Young the benefit of the doubt, let's err on the side of caution & calculate that of the 64% total cocoa-content in this assemblage, no more than 10% constitutes husks. Added cocoa butter can range anywhere from usually 5% all the way to 20%+ (Choklat's butter-ball bars). Again, taking the conservative approach, let's use the lower end of the spectrum -- 5% (even though Texture here suggests higher). In sum, the cocoa mass or core compounds contributing to chocolate flavor accounts for maybe half.
Pretty meager (at least it's a Madagascar half; more on that later). The other half: sugar, key to the whole assemblage.
In this case, demerara sugar, a variant of brown sugar, of relatively large grain & pale amber color owing to its less refined nature which imparts a caramel / toffee taste due to inherent molasses. Those crystals are fairly well micronized & integrated here, certainly nowhere near the coarseness of Taza's unconched bars.
It compensates for the otherwise abysmal state of play, masking the horrid features & tricking the tongue into highlighting the upper volatiles (that Madagascar citrus & later sub-acid +, surprise, dried fruit) at the expense of the underlying dirt & detritus.
In galvanizing the vitalizing force of those fruited notes to distract attention from the swamp beneath, it momentarily deflects the twin scourges of the full Flavor & Texture onslaught which, alas, re-assert themselves to display their undying venom. However tolerable the Flavor, the Texture forms a fatal chokehold. Research now substantiates that Texture plays a crucial role in flavor perception & likability. Certain levels of crunch, for example, record high favorability (think Doritos).
This garners the opposite of 'moreish' however: more like 'lessest'.
The net FX: the whole body writhes in sensing something's terribly askew & involuntarily gags because of it.
In the end, given the composition & the proportions, Young should listen to Blind Lemon whose tombstone reads Lord it's one kind favor I'll ask of you / see that my grave is kept clean.
Yep, a bluesman without whom Young -- who rock stars around the chocolate scene -- could never have trucked in the sounds of Tom Jones, The Stones & Clapton to go along with a chocolate blues bar lamenting to either sanitize / pulverize the husks or lose them in a graveyard.
In tandem with the 73% soulmate, these Whole Bean contraptions earn a permanent resting place on the low shelf of life in the bucket.
INGREDIENTS: cocoa mass, demerara sugar, cocoa butter
Reviewed April 16, 2014