<![CDATA[Chocolate tasting: week 1]]>As I mentioned a few posts ago, I wanted to organize a chocolate tasting. We have a small group of chocolate-lovers in CSAIL, and next Tuesday will be our first of at least six weekly tasting sessions. During this time, we’ll be concentrating on extra-dark (70% cacao and up) chocolate bars made for eating — but there will be a few other things mixed in to give some reference points for the tasters. I took some pictures of the bars today:
These bars were acquired for round 1 of the chocolate tasting. All are at least 70% cacao. Not shown: Valrhona Guanaja.
This subset of the extra-dark chocolate bars are all single-origin chocolates. We’re putting off tasting them until later in the summer when more people will be able to participate.
And this subset of the extra-dark bars is the mixed-origin (or in some cases, origin unstated) group. We’re starting with these.
Finally, these bars are the ones we’ll be trying in the first week. I deliberately chose products that are relatively inexpensive and available in supermarkets. In addition to these bars, we will also have Valrhona Guanaja 70% and Caraïbe 66%. The Theo 85% and Valrhona 66% are included as reference points to help tasters calibrate their taste buds.

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