Mast Brothers Crown Maple

This is a bar that’s been around for a while, but seems to have new packaging. I’m not sure if that means the recipe has been updated, or if the changes are purely aesthetic though. In fact, it’s annoyingly difficult to find out any information about this chocolate at all.

It appears to be made with maple sugar produced by New York state’s Crown Maple, but the packaging offers little detail about the chocolate itself. All I know is that it’s a 73% dark chocolate with just two ingredients. There’s no origin listed, so I assume the beans are either not from a noteworthy origin or it’s a blend. But with no information on the wrapper or the Mast Brothers website, all I can do is guess.

For a bean to bar chocolate, I find this a little frustrating. It’s a world apart from Hotel Chocolat’s packaging which lists everything from the name of the estate where the beans were grown, right down to roast time and temperature.

That aside, I do like the Mast Brothers packaging. It feels like a quality product, and it’s a joy to unwrap.

The bar itself has a slightly lacklustre appearance. The moulding is just “Ok” and the tempering is “fine”, but it’s certainly looks a little less impressive than the paper it came in.

The chocolate has a nice snap, but it’s slightly softer than I would expect and has a noticeably grainy texture. This appears to be from the maple sugar itself, but it’s not easy to tell.

The flavour of the bar is both intense and sweet, and actually very pleasant. It’s not particularly complex, but the maple sugar adds a little flavour of its own that comes through toward the end. Despite my issues with this bar, it’s one that I found very easy to eat without noticing how quickly it was disappearing.

Overall though, given the cost of Mast Brothers chocolate – particularly outside the US – and the lack of information on the wrapper, it’s not a bar I would recommend.

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