Everything about Ruby Chocolate

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RUBY CHOCOLATE

You only have heard about dark, milk, and white chocolate, but I’m sure ruby chocolate is new terminology for you. We have been enjoying these three chocolates for ages, but we still need to figure out how our palate will take the ruby chocolate.

So, let’s discuss this in detail ruby chocolate here. What is ruby? What does it taste like? What makes it different from the rest of the chocolates? How has ruby been created, and by whom?

Ruby chocolate taste between milk and white chocolate. Ruby is the 4th chocolate next to dark, milk, and white, created by Belgian-Swiss chocolate manufacturer Barry Callebaut in 2017 and patented by Arnaud Dumarche. New chocolate was introduced worldwide after a long span of 80 years. Before that, white chocolate was invented by Nestle in 1930.

THE TASTE OF RUBY

Although the company claims the chocolate to be extraordinary in taste and made naturally because they have not used any colorants or fruit flavoring, the texture is creamy and smooth. Ruby offers a new intense taste and experience that is neither milky, bitter, or sweet but imparts fresh berry flavors. The ingredients used to make ruby chocolate are cocoa liquor, milk powder, cocoa butter, sugar, soy lecithin, vanilla, and citric acid.

Now the question arises where does the color come from?

The recipe has been kept secret with Barry Callebaut. Still, as per the company, there is a unique component found naturally in Brazil, Ecuador, and the Ivory coast cacao beans that gives a natural red-pink hue with a fruity taste.

The ‘pink cacao beans’ are not new; all beans are the same, but the processes make them different. Say dark chocolate is made up of cocoa liquor and sugar; in milk chocolate, just milk powder is introduced, whereas in white chocolate, there is no cocoa liquor. But the process of treating the beans is the same; the rest of the ingredients are introduced later. Though the process behind pink beans remains undisclosed, experts from the chocolate industry have started digging deeper to know the mystery.

Once the cacao pods are harvested, the beans are naturally purple or pink and left for fermentation for about 5-7 days, giving beans a brown or chocolaty color. This is called the post-harvesting process. But in the case of pink beans, Barry Callebaut has not genetically modified them; how did they preserve the pink color? If you have seen the ingredients list, you have noticed citric acid. As per the chocolate experts, unfermented beans are associated with a pink hue, and the long fermentation changes the color of the bean to chocolaty. Since every chocolate maker wants to achieve a chocolaty flavor; therefore, fermentation cannot be ignored. In the case of ruby beans, the fermentation might shrink and be compromised, and beans might be treated with an acidic solution to retain the pink color.

In 2009 Barry Callebaut registered a patent ‘for the invention to acidified cocoa beans’

You should limit your expectations if you want to experience a cacao taste in ruby chocolate. Ruby chocolate is nothing but less fermented beans treated with acid. Because it lacks cocoa percentage, and the less fermented beans cannot impart the complex cacao flavor.

RUBY CHOCOLATE = LESS FERMENTED BEANS (pink color) + TREATED WITH ACID (berry flavor)

Have you tried Ruby chocolate yet? What do you think about it?