July 8th: Lily O'Briens Milk Chocolate / Organic

Milk Chocolate - Kcal 533 Fat 31.5g Fat(sats) 19.0g Carbs 55.2g
Organic Milk Chocolate - Kcal 537 Fat 34.1g Fat(sats) 20.4g Carbs 56.1g

Last week the Irish folks at Lily O'Briens sent me a selection of bars from their range - included in this selection were both an original and organic version of their milk chocolate bar. For those that arent aware Lily O'Brien are an Irish based brand - their products can be found in over nine countries worldwide and they are most famed for their 'Sticky Toffee' chocolates which I reviewed last week.

I thought best to review these bars at the same time...based on the reasoning I thought surely they couldnt be that different...im not gonna lie they wern't. The only difference in the ingredients list were that the ingredients used in the organic bar had a star (*) next to them highlighting that they were made from 'organic ingredients'...what was a little confusing was that the original milk chocolate bar comprised of 30% cocoa whislt the organic contained 32%...who knows eh!? The ingredients themselves were pretty fair...usual suspects..'Sugar, Cocoa Mass, Cocoa Butter' etc etc.

These came in 80g bars both of which I ate over the course of two days (four servings). Each 40g occasion was adequete...no more..no less. Both bars came packaged in a paper outer covering with an inside foil layer. The outside wrappings were fair enough - they didnt shout out 'premiuim' chocolate but they hardly looked tacky either...theres definite room for improvement though. The bars themselves could not have looked more boring...look at the pictures above - no patterns, no branding..to be honest no effort. The only slight defence I can give the pedestrian appearances were that the bars were sectioned quite nicely and split up with relative ease. Aromawise the bars smelt pleasant, it reminded me more of a dark chocolate offering than a milk chocolate one - their scent was very cocoa heavy and lacked the usual sweet smell of milk chocolate...both smelt nice.

I tasted these bars side by side and im not going to lie I would have been stretched to guess which was which in a blind test. Both were very similar to that of Thorntons milk chocolate - a very smooth textured chocolate with a stronger cocoa flavour than milky one. The only slight discrepency I could make bar from bar was the organic variant had a slightly longer aftertaste than the original...in truth it really wasnt that noticeable. Both the bars had a fairly rich taste and their texture once melted in the mouth remained reltively thick which meant for a long flavour...the taste wasnt very complex and didnt develop much, if at all over the course of its time in my mouth, though pretty one dimensional their flavour was pleasant.

Overall these are a pretty standard milk chocolate offering. They both offer a nice tasting experience and have a generally nice smooth texture....at the end of the day though their flavours wernt quite as distinctive as other bars - including some mass confection bars like Dairy Milk and Galaxy. The presentation of these bars really let them down...they are simply just boring and indistinctive - theres work to be done there. These are pretty standard milk chocolate bars and in all honestly I couldnt recommend one over the other apart from giving a nudge in the direction of the prices (the organic bar costs more!!!). Nice enough milk chocolate but theres better out their! See Hotel Chocolat 40% ;)

7.7 out of 10