Impact
Tcho looks & phonetically sounds like some Japanese manga character whose name spits out of the mouth kind’a the way Bowie sang “ch-ch-ch-changes”... then hooks up with the Keebler cookie elves to make this chtonic chocolate of a bar, plainly packaged in a sort of kewl ration-pack for the Jetson’s set.
The flagship release from a Silicon Valley start-up; yep, the same terroir that brought us Apple iPods & Oracle systems. Guess that’s just the way the cookie crumbled after the tech bust of the boom 90s & early 00s.
The flagship release from a Silicon Valley start-up; yep, the same terroir that brought us Apple iPods & Oracle systems. Guess that’s just the way the cookie crumbled after the tech bust of the boom 90s & early 00s.
Appearance 4.8 / 5
| Color: | burnt electric brown |
| Surface: | |
| Temper: | refracted by an optical illusion created from the geometric grid of the mold; flashy |
| Snap: | low thud; sanded wall |
Aroma 7.9 / 10
cigar tobacco leaf & acacia wood
Mouthfeel 10.3 / 15
| Texture: | gum |
| Melt: | slow |
Flavor 44.7 / 50
quik taser-shots of brown sugar -> cinnamon -> honey -> baseline chocolate -> coconut cream ‘n wheat (soy lecithin offshoots) -> progression slows to vanilla-fudge crawl -> red apparition gradually grows from the snarl & moves into the cocoa base as cherry chocolate -> light acacia... peach & shea at the close; tobacco after-length
Quality 16.8 / 20
Tcho stands for TechCHOcolate. Hard to specify just what, if any, technological breakthroughs exist in Tcho’s applications & methods. Possibly none. This nonetheless has the digitized precision & deep flavor compression of DSAs (Data Sensor Arrays) & mobile weather stations wired to fermentation centers then matched against a database containing a catalog of physical / sensory traits from cocoa samples as well as computer models monitoring exact levels of the aldehyde compunds responsible for a “chocolatey” profile, gauging the Maillard Reactions between them, namely: a) 2-methylpropanal (isobutyraldehyde); b) 3-methyl butanal (isovaleraldehyde); & c) 2-methyl butanal amino acids. But the technicians overlooked the excessive emulsifier feedback & have yet to fully investigate properties related to Texture (perhaps still programming the conche back in the lab).
Chocolatey has all the feel of The Wired Magazine version of Callebaut’s NJ test center where it conducts focus groups on what the guinea cogs want, then inputs the data into a Excel spreadsheet & spits out whatever represents the mean average. As such it misses that personal touch; the same difference between a late-model Toyota vs. a big-block 60s Chevy. Nonetheless, just as Toyota eventually took down GM, Tcho is on to something & this unit for the most part accomplishes what it sets out to do: establish undifferentiated baseline cocoa flavor, termed chocolarity & measured as CQ (for 'Chocolate Quotient') by the C-spot™. If Tcho applies this approach, generalized as hi-tech meets lo-hanging fruit, to the entire sequencing chain from Bud-to-Bud™ (cacáo flower bud to human taste bud - including seed genetics / husbandry, soil conservation / terra characteristics, post-harvesting / processing) it may very well patent the new chocolate of the 21st century on route to engineering the inevitable: GMO cacáo.
ING: cacáo beans, sugar, cacáo butter, soy lecithin, vanilla
Chocolatey has all the feel of The Wired Magazine version of Callebaut’s NJ test center where it conducts focus groups on what the guinea cogs want, then inputs the data into a Excel spreadsheet & spits out whatever represents the mean average. As such it misses that personal touch; the same difference between a late-model Toyota vs. a big-block 60s Chevy. Nonetheless, just as Toyota eventually took down GM, Tcho is on to something & this unit for the most part accomplishes what it sets out to do: establish undifferentiated baseline cocoa flavor, termed chocolarity & measured as CQ (for 'Chocolate Quotient') by the C-spot™. If Tcho applies this approach, generalized as hi-tech meets lo-hanging fruit, to the entire sequencing chain from Bud-to-Bud™ (cacáo flower bud to human taste bud - including seed genetics / husbandry, soil conservation / terra characteristics, post-harvesting / processing) it may very well patent the new chocolate of the 21st century on route to engineering the inevitable: GMO cacáo.
ING: cacáo beans, sugar, cacáo butter, soy lecithin, vanilla