Q & A

Your roasting questions answered

Question

Dear Roast magazine,

At our coffeehouse, we cup coffee with customers who want to practice identifying aromas and flavors. Recently, one of our customers asked us whether coffee and chocolate have similar flavors. Can you help explain the distinct flavors of chocolate?

The Expert Answers

EVERYBODY LOVES the taste, smell and flavor of chocolate. Each time I give a presentation, I begin by asking how many people like chocolate. Of course, most hands immediately shoot toward the sky. Despite this love affair that people have with chocolate, people know very little about it, from where it is grown to how it is processed, to how to best identify and enjoy its unique characteristics. As a food, chocolate is remarkably complex, with a myriad of flavors and aromas. Similar to coffee in many ways, chocolate takes its flavor from the many geographic regions where it is grown. Each region, or terroir, produces a distinctive flavor that is imparted to the finished cacao bean. The best chocolates bring out that unique flavor.
      When asked to describe the flavor of chocolate, the response is usually something along the lines of: “It is very, um, chocolatey.” Not exactly the most insightful description, but a start. Being able to communicate what aromas and tastes are present when working with products like coffee and chocolate is important when trying to duplicate or match certain taste profiles or create new ones. And once those flavors are created, it is equally important to be able to consistently reproduce them. So to keep everyone on the same tasting wavelength, so to speak, it was time to design a flavor wheel for chocolate.
      Working in my colleagues in our research and development lab and using the Specialty Coffee Association of America coffee tasting wheel as a model, we defined broad categories that we felt could be further subdivided into subcategories and ultimately into individual aromas. The inside of the wheel contains the broadest categories applicable to most flavors. Then, working toward the outside flavors, the aromas become more and more specific until one can describe a flavor quite precisely. The wheel needed to be inclusive so that people tasting dark chocolate, milk chocolate, and even white chocolate (which isn’t actually chocolate, and a discussion all on its own) would find it valuable. Since most of the syrups, sauces and flavors that we create tend to include dark chocolate, it made sense to focus on those aromas and flavors.
      Starting with different single-origin chocolates from around the world to get the widest sample of flavors, we sampled dark chocolate from Madagascar, Venezuela, Ghana, Ecuador, Sao Tome, Papua New Guinea and the Dominican Republic. “Tasting” is a combination of taste and smell. To begin tasting chocolate, take a piece and place it on your tongue. Hold it to the roof of your mouth. As it melts, different flavors emerge that can then be pinpointed and described more accurately.
      The first step was identifying the broadest categories present in all of the different bars. Most people don’t think of chocolate as a fruit, but it is important to remember that it comes from a bean that is grown in a pod in tropical climates. When the pods are picked, the fruit has citrus overtones. As it dries, it develops more characteristic flavors that we associate with chocolate. Raspberry, red fruits and cassis are fairly easy to identify. A vanilla note can be found as a flavor in some chocolate, even when it isn’t added as an ingredient, because vanilla is often grown near cacao trees. Licorice can be discerned in some dark chocolate. And because cocoa beans are roasted, spicy notes can also be identified. We ended up with the following broad categories: Fruit, floral, vegetable, earthy, dairy, caramel, acidic, sweet, alcohol and “other.”
      Within each broad category, we then tried to create two subdivided categories where applicable. The most easily identified second-tier categories were dairy, earthy, vegetable, fruit and acidic. Subdividing those further, “earthy” had the most divisions. Within that group, we identified the following aroma groups: Roasted nut, ash, burnt, dirty/musty, mineral and wood. Fruit had three categories: Dried fruit, ripe fruit and unripe fruit. Dairy had two: Fresh dairy and ripened/fermented.
      Once these subgroups were identified, the task was to get as specific as possible when naming individual aromas. These became the outer ring of the wheel and contained the most flavors. The dried fruit subsection now included raisins and figs, ripe fruit included plums and grapes, and unripe fruit included cherry and apple. Following the ring from the inside out, the vegetable category leads to a spicy subsection that then identifies licorice. And so it went until we felt that we had identified every possible aroma one could encounter with any type of chocolate, whether dark, milk or white.
      For our first attempt, it turned out well. But our enthusiasm also got the better of us, and we made it too complicated and created too many categories. We probably also have too many individualized aromas (does anyone really need to differentiate between chemical and artificial, for example, or sour milk vs. rancid butter?). The idea was to create a training tool to help people first understand that there are myriad aromas in chocolate, and then to help create a common vocabulary to help them articulate what they tasted, making the testing process more consistent and equitable. Version two will streamline the flavors and aromas and simplify the wheel. Working with a common vocabulary has made product development easier and helped streamline the time and effort it takes to create new flavors and products and to make sure that production is always consistent. And isn’t that the point of doing all of the tasting in the first place?

—Michael Szyliowicz

MICHAEL SZYLIOWICZ is CEO and chocolatier for Mont Blanc Gourmet in Denver. He has been in the specialty coffee industry for 20 years as a cafe owner and manufacturer. Relying on innovation to create new products and supply customers, his company has made the Inc. 500 list three times. Visit his blog at http://montblancgourmet.com/blog.