August 28th: Hershey's Creamy Milk Chocolate

Kcal 210 Fat 13.0g Fat(sats) 8.0g Carbs 26.0g

Hershey's is America's largest and most iconic chocolate manufacture and was founded way back in 1894 by Milton S. Hershey (ahem wiki!!). Despite its rich heritage and mass appeal its not too irregularly I see the brand criticised for its plain milk chocolate. On several instances I have seen it cited as lacking flavour and having an acrid aftertaste. Surely this couldn't be possible for such an iconic chocolate!? I myself have had very mixed experiences with Hershey's chocolate; I very much enjoyed the 'milk chocolate n cookies', though really had problems with the 'Hershey with almonds'. Today I went about reviewing their famous standard milk chocolate bar.

I sampled todays offering in a 40g bar. The packaging had a pleasant glossy look and tore easily revealing the darkly coloured chocolate. I liked the look of the chocolate itself, it was split into twelve bite sized pieces with the very iconic looking Hershey logo etched into the surface - it didn't look anything fancy but had a nice classic appeal. The bar wasn't the strongest smelling but had a minor chocolaty scent that stirred my anticipation slightly.

The texture of the chocolate made for a nice melt on the tongue. The block pieces were quite thin meaning that the melt wasn't overly long and it formed into a nice thick liquid in the mouth. One thing I did note was a slight roughness to the surface area, at times the chocolate felt powdery and clumped and needed a small amount of chewing in order to break it up. The thinness of the blocks meant that the flavour hit of the chocolate wasn't the strongest. Tastewise it had an initial creamy taste that was more milk rooted than cocoa based. As it melted in the mouth the cocoa had more of a impact on the overall taste though it was still rather mellow. The aftertaste is often referred to as a stumbling block for Hershey's chocolate...well it's certainly unique I will give it that. I found it left a musky yoghurt like tartness in my mouth; I can't say it was the most pleasant, but it didn't bother me to the extent it obviously does others. One thing that did bother me was that the tangy aftertaste wasn't very in keeping with the description of the bar being 'creamy'.

Overall I have come to the conclusion that this really isn't a bad milk chocolate offering...far from it infact - but at the same time neither is it anything special. The bar is presented nicely, possibly too thin in it's thickness but the twelve block split, each with a Hershey logo, looked both nice and practical. The texture was nice enough, it had a nice melt rate, though at times it did cloy and feel partially powdery. The taste wasn't the most impactul but had a nice milky mellowness to it. I found the famous aftertaste to be at slight detriment to the overall flavour - it would have been better off leaving a creaminess in the mouth rather than the slightly soured yoghurty taste.

This is a pretty standard milk chocolate, it doesn't have a distinct taste like Dairy Milk, nor does it have the smooth texture of Galaxy... it's more of a run of the mill offering. This is a bar definitely worth trying, but more so because of its rich heritage and pure iconicness rather than it's chocolate quality.

7.2 out of 10