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Mast Brothers obscure the fact that they originally used remelted chocolate
- brudgers 11y agoThe original four part expose', What lies behind the beards from the world of choclate: 1. http://dallasfood.org/2015/12/mast-brothers-what-lies-behind-the-beards-part-1-tastetexture/ http://dallasfood.org/2015/12/mast-brothers-what-lies-behind... 2. http://dallasfood.org/2015/12/mast-brothers-what-lies-behind-the-beards-part-2-equipment/ http://dallasfood.org/2015/12/mast-brothers-what-lies-behind... 3. http://dallasfood.org/2015/12/mast-brothers-what-lies-behind-the-beards-part-3-ingredients/ http://dallasfood.org/2015/12/mast-brothers-what-lies-behind... 4. http://dallasfood.org/2015/12/mast-brothers-what-lies-behind-the-beards-confessions/ http://dallasfood.org/2015/12/mast-brothers-what-lies-behind...
- bdcravens 11y agoThey refute the claim here: http://mastbrothers.com/pages/press http://mastbrothers.com/pages/press Missing, however, is the typical comments about defending themselves against what would be libelous claims.
- bjterry 11y agoThey actually aren't refuting the claim. Even in the article I noticed that they are very careful in their phrasing. They never say, "We have never sold another companies chocolate" or anything like that. All they say is that from they beginning, they have been a bean-to-bar chocolate maker. That only requires that some of their bars have always been bean-to-bar, not that all the bars they've sold have been so.
- gkop 11y agoI was turned on to small batch chocolate by Dandelion in SF. Their bars are $8 and the Madagascar and Tanzania really taste incredible. Will somebody neutral but in the know confirm Dandelion is the real deal? Side note: Have we at a meta level concluded that self-identified "small batch" and "artisanal" products sold at farmers markets in hipsterish packaging are very highly correlated with "young people that don't really know what they are doing (are relatively inexperienced), but are good at marketing and charging a high price"?
- ajessup 11y agoI can't claim any depth in chocolate appreciation, but can vouch for the integrity of the founders of Dandelion. More than one of them had been saving to start the business for well over a decade, and started it out of the love of craftsmanship rather than any particular desire to sell at scale. And I agree, their bars are spectacular.
- dogma1138 11y agoI would go to bet that most "hipster" brands whether it's beer, coffee, or w/e are pretty much 99% marketing this is how business works. You can see this in wine tasting allot of the big name wines expensive wines do not score well in blind wine tastings however in non blind tastings when people are sold on the story they score remarkably well. When you spend 200$ on a bottle of wine, 15$ on a bar of chocolate and 20$ on 8 oz. of coffee beans you'll be damn sure to like them even if they are nothing but average at best. There is a reason why every "artisan" product comes with a nifty far fetched story tied to it as that's what you are buying at the end.
- userbinator 11y agoAudiophile equipment also follows the same trend. The reluctance to double-blind testing is a common sign that it isn't actually better, just more expensive.
- Turing_Machine 11y agoYes. Witness the "audiophiles" who claim that wooden knobs somehow cause the sound to be better. One outfit was selling these magical knobs for five hundred bucks or so.
- codeka 11y agoI always thought those websites were jokes, right? Right...?
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- ablation 11y agoBizarre preoccupation with their beards in that QZ piece.
- brandonmenc 11y agoMast brothers are selling an image, and the beards are a big part of that. They sound like genius trolls.
- wavefunction 11y agoTrolls are people who point out the hypocrisy or emptiness of the positions of other people by adopting affected personas or positions. These dudes are just lying to get rich. Yeah, I know this is the original definition of a troll but it's the only one as far as I am concerned.
- brandonmenc 11y agoWhile that's certainly a kind of troll, it's neither the original nor a complete definition of the term.
- spilk 11y agoThis is an extremely common practice in the new booming "artisanal" whiskey business. Many of them come from a factory distillery in Indiana (MGP) and the profits from selling the factory stuff are used to build up a more "authentic" distillery operation.
- dnr 11y agoWhile your comment is technically correct, I think you're discounting the huge amount of value added by barrel selection and blending. I agree companies should probably be more transparent about it (maybe call it "independent bottling", like in the Scotch world). But I would (and do) pay a lot more for someone to go pick out a handful of barrels of various ages from MGP's stocks to target a particular flavor profile, then to get a blend of everything someone's dinky still produced after three years (because that's all they've got, so they have to sell it all).
- tptacek 11y agoFor the most part, resellers selling MGP whiskey aren't blending. MGP has a whole menu of different whiskey recipes. Moreover, the people best known for manipulating MGP products are a worst-case: Templeton, for instance, "adds value" by adding flavorants to their MGP juice. Aging makes a much bigger different in Scotch than it does in Bourbon and Rye, neither of which are usually aged that long. Also: the reason most artisanal vendors use MGP in the first place is that they can't wait 5-10 years to start selling product. Distillation isn't the hard part of selling whiskey; waiting for maturation is. There's also the small-barrel effect that the "artisanal" supplies run into: you have business incentives to use small barrels to be more nimble in the market, but it turns out that small barrels also harm the maturation of the whiskey.
- kasey_junk 11y ago"Small barrels also harm the maturation..." Just to be clear, I agree that I prefer whiskey aged in traditional sized barrels, but it's just a preference. The whiskey isn't "harmed". I know several people with well trained palates that like or even prefer small barrel whiskey. Same for heat aged, press aged etc.
- cheez 11y agoThe article alleges that they used remelted chocolate in 2007. This is startup land. You hustle and cut corners to prove your MVP. You know who is mad? The hipsters who couldn't tell the difference.
- dylz 11y agoThe problem here isn't that they remelted. The problem is that they actively lied about their ingredient lists and told people they were strictly making it from the bean.
- TheOtherHobbes 11y agoWhich is true. But that seems to be more important to buyers than the taste/experience of the product. I'm not a fan of dishonest advertising. But that conclusion seems a bizarre place to end up in.
- biot 11y agoSo a startup that sells artisanal crafted bottled water, produced from recombining pure hydrogen and pure oxygen gas, and sold for $15/litre... you wouldn't see any problem if they actually used filtered sewer water? Caveat emptor, yes. But there's a responsibility to be truthful in your advertising as well.
- ridiculous_fish 11y agoThe 5-part investigation on Noka (linked to from the article) is a really fun read. You'll learn a bit about how the chocolate industry works, in sort of the style of a police procedural. Scott is a rad dude for his investigation and writeup. http://dallasfood.org/2006/12/noka-chocolate-part-1/ http://dallasfood.org/2006/12/noka-chocolate-part-1/
- cfcef 11y ago(Noka isn't the Mast Brothers, in case anyone is confused, but an earlier boutique chocolate seller who was employing the same basic scam.) That is an impressively thorough and readable set of posts by Scott. I don't care that much about chocolate, but it's still a fascinating takedown.
- keithpeter 11y agoThat is an impressive piece of writing - the link in the grandparent post about Noka chocolates leads to an article spread over 10 pages of 500 or more words each, so fairly long form, and I learned a lot about chocolate and the way good quality bulk chocolate is sold to people who make chocolates. I'm not into chocolate that much myself, but I might get some single origin bars for the choco-holics around me. I suspect they might find the lower sugar / milk content off-putting...
- oldmanjay 11y agoI get the feeling from the tone that I'm supposed to be taken aback that overpriced artisanal brands are mostly marketing, but I've known that for decades now. Perhaps this is another thing that millennials feel they've invented.
- MDCore 11y agoThose darn millennials even think they invented being jaded hipsters.
- eyeJam 11y agoAs someone who is fairly obsessed with cooking and eating good food I've probably gone deeper into this area than the average consumer. There are plenty of authentic, "artisanal" (??? I don't even know what the fuck that means) small-batch food suppliers out there who provide a vastly superior product. I'm friends with some of these people in my area and they are obsessed with their craft and obsessed with putting out the best product. It borderlines on OCD and often leads to a deeply technical knowledge to go along with their sensory skills. I also know a couple frauds who've adopted the trappings of an expert and bluff their way to success. Same as any industry. At the end of the day, most people aren't capable of tasting the difference anyways. It takes a while to develop the palate required to discern great from good. Most people eat their daily food quickly and don't really pay attention to the flavours of the ingredients. They just want something salty, sweet, crispy and fatty. That sounds condescending but its true and I don't think there's anything wrong with it. Lots of people let the radio or pitchfork tell them what music to listen to and don't care enough to expend the time refining their tastes. Their enjoyment of music is no less valid or real than anyone else's.
- HeyLaughingBoy 11y agoWhat really bugs me about this (and yes, I realize I probably shouldn't care) is that the level of skill required to get to within 10% of the really good stuff is within reach of pretty much anyone. We're all so used to crappy store bought stuff that anything better gets labelled "artisanal" and sells for 5-10x the price. Yes, I understand that there are many artists that are masters of their craft and deserve the respect and their prices. But there is also lots of crap that people pay good money for that tastes awful by any reasonable standard. A place near me makes these giant cookies that look awesome, but at first bite you can tell they're made with shortening, not butter. Sorry, but not worth the $3 price. But any idiot with $10 can go to the store, buy the ingredients and make a couple dozen infinitely better tasting cookies by following the recipe on a bag of Toll House chocolate chips. I think at the heart of it, what really bothers me is that because so few people grow up cooking anymore, we've lost touch with how easy it is to make good tasting food. Rant off.
- JasonCEC 11y agoMy company[0] has been considering a verification service to check on origin and sourcing claims using flavor signatures in "craft" products. Currently, all of our tools are used by beverage producers (beer, coffee, spirits) internally for quality and process optimization - it would be great to apply our models and create a subscription reporting and claim verification. [0] www.Gastrograph.com Edit: clarity and repetition. Also, Any ideas? What would you like to see in a service like this?
- lobster_johnson 11y agoWould definitely love to have a web site where I can go and look up a no-nonsense report on the quality and truthfulness of "artisanal" brands.
- evanlivingston 11y agoI'm curious how another entity could establish quality of something better than you could yourself?
- dv_says 11y agoIndependent verification. For example, this could have helped in [1][2][3] where toxic food products were very mislabeled. [1] https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/2008_Chinese_milk_scandal https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/2008_Chinese_milk_scandal [2] https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Gutter_oil https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Gutter_oil [3] https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/2014_Taiwan_food_scandal https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/2014_Taiwan_food_scandal
- evanlivingston 11y agoI guess I was interested in distinguishing between quality and safety.
- JasonCEC 11y agoQuality is a tricky word, but in terms of the appreciation of craft goods, your ability to identify the subtleties that make more higher quality products _better_ is a learned trait. If your references are wrong, or you miss out on the identification of a nuance, you haven't learned from the experience. For example, individuals who say "I can't taste the difference between a $30 and $300 bottle of wine" are not _wrong_ - they just lack the formative experiences and education to appreciate the attributes that the more expensive product has. Thus, if you decide that wine or beer or chocolate was of interest to you, it may be worthwhile to validate and trust your reference products.
- akamaka 11y agoIt doesn't bother me if they used remelted chocolate, because it's possible to produce fantastic chocolate bars using ingredients from some of the European suppliers. If the bars are labeled in a fairly ambiguous way, (for example simply saying "Madagascar") one shouldn't assume too much about the ingredients. That being said, the PR coming out of Mast Brothers is unbelievably arrogant and off-putting. As a chocolate lover, I was excited to read their cookbook when I saw it at the bookstore, but I closed it after reading a few pages. The self-promotion and self-centered attitude was absolutely disgusting, considering that their product is only average among their peers. Producing the best chocolate requires deep respect for the bean as well as for the tastes of the consumer, and my impression is that the quality of their product will continue to be limited by their attitude. In the big picture, Mast Brothers is still better than 99% of the chocolate out there, so I'll still buy it and enjoy from time to time.
- wavefunction 11y agoShouldn't you compare their chocolate against "their peers?" From what I've read of people more educated and passionate about chocolate their stuff isn't very good when compared against other "bean to bar" producers. If you know this and know that they have a well-established history of lying (I don't beat around the bush) then why support these lying fakers if you can buy better chocolate from legit operations?
- akamaka 11y agoI've had very good bars from Mast Brothers, but I'm in full agreement that they're not the best. I think it's important to point out that they are still much better than most, though. It's common to see people attack the worst of the premium brands while forgetting that they are still a lot better than most of the cheap alternatives, like when lovers of organic food complain about Whole Foods. In the big picture, Mast Brothers is still the good guys when compared to, say, Nestle.
- briandear 11y agoAs I live in France, Mast Brothers chocolate isn't all that compared to the stuff we get in normal grocery stores here for 3 euros a bar. I'd love to see how well Mast would do in blind tests against the Swiss, Belgians, Germans and French. My thinking is they'd get squashed like a grape. Mast is "good" if your benchmark is Dove or Hershey's. It's absolutely not $10 good. However, to each his or her own. Eat what you like! However, that being said, the Mast bros seem like such pretentious pr__ks that I'd rather just not eat chocolate than give them the money.
- acomjean 11y agoWe have a local chocolate company where I live (Boston area). Its mexican chocolate. They give tours. Chocolate is a odd thing to make. The machinery was strange. They roast/stone grind beans there. The chocolate while tasty is remarkably gritty. The bars are decent, but where they do best is the chocolate covered nuts. They're doing well and their chocolate is everywhere. I thought it was pricey, but not so much anymore. They have a video showing some production (including fitting a stone grinder to modern equipment which is a decent hack) https://player.vimeo.com/video/33380451 https://player.vimeo.com/video/33380451 http://www.tazachocolate.com/pages/about-taza http://www.tazachocolate.com/pages/about-taza
- rspeer 11y agoGod, I hate that stuff. I don't understand why everyone is nuts about it. It tastes to me like spoiled milk mixed into dirt (and I know there's no milk in it). The comments surrounding Mast Brothers are making me feel less like my tastes are wrong. Maybe bean-to-bar small-batch artisanal chocolate just isn't that good of an idea.
- briandear 11y agoMexican chocolate is a mystery to me as well. I've had it as hot chocolate, but even then it tastes like chocolatey sand. Mexican Cokes on the other hand..
- acomjean 11y agoThe little disks are hard to take (gritty texture doesn't help). The bars are better. Its not my favorite chocolate. I find the nuts for some reason it works well with. And they at least do make it.
- MrFoof 11y agoTaking a look, they don't produce milk chocolate hence the vast difference in texture, and their chocolate appears to be a minimum of 50% cacao (50% dark) and goes up to 87%. Simply put, if you're primarily used to chocolate bars based on European techniques, you're in for a big surprise. My guess is there's a very distinct fruity aftertaste to anything past 65% or so. It's unavoidable when the percentage of cacao is that high. Moreover, it looks as if they source beans from different geographic areas for certain bars, so they should all have a distinct taste even someone whose only ever eaten Hershey's bars can point out.
- briandear 11y agoThis is just a little story related to this topic that you might find interesting. The TLDR is that the olive oil business is equally pretentious and deceptive as other "artisanal" foods. My wife an I attempted to start an olive oil company last year selling French extra virgin oil we make at our friend's olive farm in Provence.. If you think the artisanal chocolate industry is full of deception and lies.. allow me to introduce to you the wonderful world of olive oil. Our production cost for 1 liter was almost double the retail cost of so-called high-end "Italian" extra virgin olive oil you'd buy at Whole Foods -- which basically means it is nearly impossible to source actual, 100% extra virgin olive oil at the prices they're being sold for at the stores, there are some exceptions -- a few oils out there are actually the real deal. But a high percentage of grocery store oils aren't what they claim to be (even at Whole Foods-type stores.) Through a quirk of Italian law, oil that is bottled in Italy can be labeled "100% Italian" -- so there is a huge amount of inferior oils being passed off as both Italian and Extra Virgin and being priced accordingly, despite it being nearly impossible to wholesale Italian-grown, Italian made extra virgins at the price they're selling it for. That's even accounting for economies of scale. My favorite label-scam is when I see "First Cold Pressed." Absolutely zero oil you buy at grocery stores is ever cold pressed. Pressing actually creates inferior oils. Olive oils are extracted in large centrifuges. They haven't been "pressed" in probably a generation, but "First Cold Centrifuging" doesn't sound as "artisanal." Producers know good and well they aren't pressing anything, yet they (correctly) figure that that particular wording is going to attract a customer who imagines images of an old dude dumping fresh olives still moist with dew into a large, wooden handled press to squeeze out oil just for them. Basically your stereotypical hipster-type that wants to opine about the importance of "hand" crafting. I know probably a dozen olive oil producers here in Provence and every single one of them hand-craft their oils using state of the art, stainless steel equipment in spotless production facilities. Some of this facilities are located in a converted barn, but that idyllic image of the "craftsman" using "traditional" methods is just a myth. Though, playing off of those ignorant imaginings means that companies, using the right wording, can charge champagne prices for malt liquor. I suppose if we just took Tunisia or Turkish oils, bottled them as French oils, put a ultra-premium price on it -- and grew some beards and distributed out of Brooklyn, we might have been more successful. My point is that the artisanal and premium food business is rife with deception. If anyone is interested in the olive oil industry this book is exceptionally good: http://www.truthinoliveoil.com/extra-virginity http://www.truthinoliveoil.com/extra-virginity
- drivingmenuts 11y agoMy takeaway on this was that no laws were broken and a few hipsters got their noses bent out of joint. I'm just not seeing any legal wrongdoing here.
- JVMsOfGor 11y agoI never even heard of Mast Brothers until last week, and I am living a block away from their factory. Now I fully appreciate this parody from a few months ago: https://vimeo.com/131422396 https://vimeo.com/131422396
- Dowwie 11y agoHas a second source, one with credibility, confirmed this claim or is the world satisfied with a blog post on some obscure dallas web site?
- ZeroGravitas 11y agoThis story (and the older Noka tale) seem to have parallels to Theranos and their very media friendly tech that it turns out they weren't actually using.
- chasing 11y agoCan the FDA get involved in this? What happens when a food manufacturer lies about the ingredients of their products? Even if this was a few years ago, seems like something the government would get on their case about (and rightfully so).
- frogpelt 11y agoI don't see why this is such a huge deal. First, they no longer used remelted chocolate. Second, Mast Brothers are obviously tapping into the startup/hipster culture and selling chocolate to people who want to seem crafty and artisanal but don't care enough to find out the origins. Third, if you're paying $10 for chocolate and you aren't sure of it's origin (like when they didn't include ingredients) you deserve what you get. Lots of companies don't tell you the whole story. While I personally think honesty and integrity are hugely important the startup culture doesn't seem to value it more than hockey stick growth charts.
- nadezhda18 11y agoAccording to the DallasFood article, it looks like these guys have been saying so many lies and this can be classified as a false advertisement - which is punishable by law, no? What if all who's unhappy with Mast Bros simply go and sue them? or complain to the authorities at least