All hot chocolate needs to have caramel in it. Period.
Amount of grounds:
2 tablespoons per 10 oz of water
Brewing time:
8.5 minutes
Additions:
None
Reusing grounds:
Not tested
Using grounds in food:
Not recommended. Contains husk.
General Thoughts:
Of all the flavored roasts from Crio Bru, I prefer this one the most.
After some of the differences that have cropped up due to new batches for the Ecuador French and Uber Dark roasts, I wanted to see if similar differences exist for the lighter roasts. This one, though, is exactly the same for both old and new. Hooray!
My last flavored side-by-side! It's pretty much what I expected. The double chocolate has a slightly more bitter flavor to it, I think because it's "just chocolate", but they're both good, and the caramel is the definite winner.
The chocolatey flavor comes out a bit more in the hazelnut, and it has less sweetness to it while the caramel has more. It's mostly aroma driven, although there's a little bit to it in the taste, too, and I strongly prefer the caramel in spite of it being less chocolatey.
Back when I was comparing a bunch of flavored roasts against one another, Caramel was my favorite for a long time. Eventually it wound up losing out to a Maple and Hazelnut blend that I stumbled across by accident when I was comparing those two. These days, only have those 3 flavors left because I got big bags of them before they stopped selling them. With the introduction of Highlander Grogg and it's amazing aroma and flavor, I'm bringing these back out for another round to find the ultimate winner.
Starting with the Caramel, it has the normal warm caramel flavor with maybe a hint of chocolate, and it all has a little bit of tartness. I pick that up sometimes in these light roasts, especially the Caramel for some reason. I don't get that tartness as much in the others, and I think that's part of the reason why it dropped out of the top spot. The Highlander Grogg has a more complex flavor going on. I'm not tasting the butterscotch as much as I did the first time I tried it, but the hazelnut and Irish cream are both pretty strong in it. There's also a little more bitterness to it, but not in a bad way. It's just something that goes well with the flavors in it. This is actually a super close race. Part of me prefers the Caramel for it's more simple and slightly sweeter flavor, but part of me prefers the Highlander Grogg for its novelty and newness. As I go back and forth, the Caramel keeps bringing up that little bit of tartness that I'm not really getting from the Highlander Grogg, and I think that is just enough to push the Highlander Grogg to the winning spot. But to be clear, there are no losers here. Yum!
Taking a sniff while they're cooling, I am getting the impression that the caramel will work well with the chocolate. In fact it smells a lot like I really good hot chocolate. The maple, on the other hand, smells like it may be working against the chocolate flavor a little like the pumpkin spice did. I hope I'm wrong, because I absolutely love maple flavored stuff.
The maple is actually pretty good! It's a little strange to taste the maple without the added extra sweetness, but the maple flavor stands out and actually doesn't feel like it's clashing with the chocolate of the cocoa very much.
The caramel is excellent. It's lightly sweet, and the caramel flavor works so well with the chocolate flavor of the cocoa. It is the closest thing I've tasted to a good cup of regular hot chocolate. Adding some sweetener and some creamer to it I think would make for an amazing hot chocolate replacement. In fact, it's made me realize regular hot chocolate needs caramel in it more often. Yum. It's definitely the winner between the two.
When I was comparing hazelnut to maple, I stumbled on the fact that the maple "clash" with the chocolate was solved by combining it with hazelnut. The chocolate, hazelnut, and maple all worked very harmoniously and I thought that it may give caramel a run for its money. So that's what I'm doing today: comparing "hazelmaple" to caramel.
It turns out, it almost depends on which one I drink first. If I drink the caramel first, the hazlemaple comes across as strongly maple and has a little bit of bitterness to it. If I drink the hazelmaple first, then the caramel tastes lighter, but also has a tiny bit of bitterness, or even tartness to it. The farther I get into both, the more it seems to even out to a certain degree, but that tartness stays in the caramel. These are both excellent flavors, but the hazelnut pretty much goes missing in the flavor altogether.
As for which one I like more, it's a really tough call. I'm not a fan of the tartness of the caramel, but I also prefer the caramel flavor to the maple. I think with the hazelmaple not having that tart flavor, I'm going to have to say that it's the winner!
There isn't really a lot to say here. The caramel is my favorite of the flavored roasts, and the side-by-side didn't change that.
This was the last pumpkin spice side-by-side I did just to use up the last serving. I already knew what the outcome would be, and there were no new discoveries that came out of this. Caramel wins. Fatality!
These two are really similar. It took a bit of going back and forth before I finally started tasting the real differences between the two. The vanilla tastes a little flatter and just a hair more bitter. The flavor and aroma of the caramel is warmer and slightly sweeter and fuller. They're both really good, but I do like the caramel more.