at Wed, 08 Mar 2006 13:33:54 GMT in <1141824834.680893.305000
@j33g2000cwa.googlegroups.com>, wrote :

>I paid $2.59 for this, thinking I was going to get something good.
>It was AWFUL!!!
>It was the most bitter, worst tasting chocolate I ever had.
>It was also hard and dry.

Interesting - I wouldn't consider Excellence 70% to be the very best
chocolate in the world but it's perfectly passable. The general opinion
also has pretty much the same take - good, not great. Excellence 85%, OTOH,
I consider great - one of the best chocolates to be had anywhere and at any
price.

If it was hard and dry, however, it's possible that you got a bar that had
bloomed. Did the surface look sort of matte or slightly pale, as though a
very thin veil had been put on it? A thin pale white film like that
indicates blooming. Good chocolate should have a dark, glossy surface
finish. Blooming is generally the result of poor storage - either exposure
to excessive temperature cycling or to excessive moisture cycling.

The temperature-cycling variant is cocoa butter bloom, and what it does is
make the texture very dry and brittle, almost sandy, while killing the
flavour. Such chocolate is often very reminiscent of cardboard - tasteless
and unappealing. It has none of the round flavour of chocolate in good
condition. Some companies incorrectly state that chocolate that has bloomed
is unharmed - this is just plain wrong.

The moisture-cycling variant is sugar bloom. Sugar bloom annihilates the
texture - making it grainy and fudgy. And the taste becomes harsh, often
bitter. Sugar-bloomed chocolate is even more unpalatable than cocoa butter
bloom, and there's no way you can rescue it.

So if your bar had bloom that might explain your adverse reaction and also
merit another try (from a different source). Be wary, for instance, of
stores that stock it in rooms with no air conditioning or which are exposed
to the outside air (sidewalk stalls, for example, are notorious)

It's also worth noting that $2.59 is actually pretty cheap as far as
chocolate goes. For that price you get a 100g bar (pretty big) and most
high-end chocolate is much more than that - typical prices for high-end
chocolate bars go from $5.00/100g up to as much as $20.00/100g. Lindt might
not as a brand be specifically targetted as a "high-end" chocolate as such
but those kinds of prices should indicate to you the amount of money you
can end up paying.

--
Alex Rast

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