How to buy craft chocolate without wasting money

A craft bar typically costs several times a supermarket one. The premium goes to bean cost — often multiples of the commodity price — small batch inefficiency, and low volume.

Whether that is worth it depends entirely on what you want. For eating attentively, yes. For a brownie, no, and it is money spent on something the recipe will erase.

Craft, artisan, small-batch and premium are unregulated and cost nothing to print. What costs something is specificity: a named farm or region, a harvest year, a variety, an ingredient list of two or three items.

A maker who prints all four is demonstrating supply chain knowledge. A maker who prints only adjectives may still be excellent and has given you nothing to go on.

Buy three bars from one well-regarded maker at the same percentage from different origins, rather than three bars from three makers. You will learn more, because you have controlled a variable.

Start around 70%. It is where most makers do their best work, and it is a fairer test of the beans than 85% or 60%.

You will dislike some expensive bars, and that is normal rather than a failure of palate. High-acid Madagascan bars in particular divide people sharply.

Buy small, buy several, and keep notes. The point of the first ten bars is discovering what you like, and a bar you disliked is as informative as one you loved — provided you wrote down why.