Cool Beans - November 18
Here are the latest exciting bars we’ve tracked down. Let us know if there are cool new bars we should know about, especially if you made them!
Mellow Nordic Collection—This Danish maker has three new bars celebrating the regional ingredients and flavors: Wild Blueberry & Walnut (70% dark chocolate with Tanzanian cacao), Sea Buckthorn & Sea Salt (almond butter white chocolate), and Dandelion & Elderflower (58% oat milk chocolate
Sisters A spirits bars—This is “new to me” rather than new to the maker, but the ladies behind Sisters A Chocolate in Ukraine recently sent me these three delightful bars made with various spirits—Single Malt Scotch Whisky, Gin, and Jamaican Spiced Rum. Expect to be hearing a lot more about these from me shortly.
Map Yule Nog—Map announced the holiday collection last week, and several of these bars sound amazing. Yule Nog uses cashew white chocolate, grated nutmeg, and buttercrunch toffee to recreate the classic holiday sipper. You can pair with your preferred nog liquor if you want a more “spirited” version.
Holiday Ham also looks intriguing, with maple sweet potato chocolate, smoky spiced apples, and maple custard drizzle.
Solkiki Salted Lavender Esmereldas—This UK maker has a couple exciting new bars out currently. The first is a 64% dark milk bar made with Costa Esmereldas Ecuadorian cacao seasoned with lavender and celtic salt. I’m a big fan of dark milk lavenders, so I’m excited for this one. The second is an 80% dark bar using a new Belize origin called Akte’il Ha (Waterfall Hill), and emulating a traditional Belizean spiced chocolate by using allspice, cinnamon, white ginger, and vanilla.
Sirene Winter Warmer—I had a moment of hoping this was made with Winter Warmer, a family of often spiced holiday ales from the UK, but the reality still sounds delicious on its own. A base of Kokoa Kamili cacao from Tanzania is accented by nutmeg and clove for a subtle blend of cold weather comfort and warm weather escapism.
Goodnow Farms Winter Maple with Spiced Brown Butter—This year’s winter bar from the Massachusetts maker brings comforting North American flavors together with bright flavors from warmer climes. The bar utilizes Severance Farm maple sugar, Highland Farm brown butter, Burlap & Brown Cloud Forest cardamom, and Colombian Boyaca cacao. Goodnow’s rare Yasica Especial bar is also back in stock, made from a single sack of cacao beans of a native Nicaragua Criollo variety.
Zotter Labooko 72% Opus 5 2024—To borrow a word from the hard beverage world, this annual special release from Zotter is a cuvée—a blend—of 5 different origins. For the first time, this year’s edition contains entirely African origins: Madagascar, Tanzania, Uganda, Togo, and Ghana. Blends sometimes flatten out the distinctive flavors of each thread, but Zotter pledges fruity, spicy profile with a smooth presentation.
Intrigue Chocolate Fernet Branca Truffle Bar—This unique bar uses the unique botanical flavors of Fernet Branca, a storied Italian bitter to accent dark chocolate ganache.