Lpo9qwE2mk2x Many chocolate experts and connoisseurs think that Lindt chocolate is very bad. Their plain 70% and 85% bars are extremely bitter, caused by the use of low quality cacao beans with high content of alkaloids, and in addition the bitterness is increased even more and combined with a burnt flavour as the beans are roasted very hard to ensure consistency in the bars as well as to hide any potentially bad flavours that might be caused by mould or other problems with the cacao beans they use, which again is a result of using low quality beans that might not have been sorted or graded properly.
This means that Lindt chocolate tastes horribly bitter and burnt to experts, and if it weren’t for the bitterness it would probably still taste horrible due to their use of low quality and contaminated cacao beans.
On the other hand, the Lindt brand is manufactured by a very professional large scale chocolate factory operation, so the technical quality of their grinding, blending, conching and tempering processes appear to be very very good, which means that Lindt chocolates have a very high technical quality with a very smooth consistency and a relatively nice melt and mouthfeel. If they would use higher quality ingredients there is a good chance that their chocolates would be very good indeed.
That the people making Lindt chocolates really know their stuff can easily be seen in some of the specialty bars that Lindt makes, such as the Lindt 70% Madagascar bar, which is made by using higher quality cacao beans from Madagascar unlike most of the other Lindt products. This bar doesn’t even have a hint of bitterness, but instead has a very light and creamy flavour which makes it a quite good chocolate. The only problem with this bar is that the processing Lindt put it through still removes most of the flavours from the beans, meaning that it is left with a pale and bland flavour profile compared to the fruitiness and acidity that many other chocolate makers are able to get from similar cacao beans from Madagascar. This is probably done to ensure consistency and to give the bar mass market appeal, but unfortunately it also means that even their very good Madagascar chocolate ends up having what a chocolate expert would consider a boring flavour profile.
