Are Chocolate Covered Coffee Beans really chocolate covered coffee beans?
Asked by
LuckyGuy (
43867
)
April 2nd, 2016
I think they are delicious! I like the flavor, and texture. I like the crunch they make when you bite into them. They are so good that, naturally, I tried eating a couple of dry roasted unground coffee beans.
They were… terrible!!! One bite and I was left with an incredibly bitter, brown yuck that got all inside my mouth. I’m sure the residue was strong enough to stain my kitchen cabinets.
So, what are the “beans”? Are they really coffee? Do they lack caffeine? Are they some kind of unusable coffee bean? What is the trick?
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40 Answers
The one I’ve had were real coffee beans. If this (broad) link is any indication, they all are.
Have you had a little nibble of Bakers Unsweetened Chocolate lately? Adding fat and sugar makes a hell of a difference!
Good question. I wondered a bit about that myself when I first had the chocolate covered ones in the Netherlands years ago, but I didn’t make the same next step that you did. I only decided that since roasted coffee beans have a much stronger aroma, there must be something different.
So I decided – because I didn’t have the same “need to know” that you obviously do – that perhaps the chocolate covered beans were maybe just dried (or raw) beans, and not roasted coffee beans. And I didn’t want to bite into one of those, either, to verify whether that was true or not.
I know the taste and texture differences between, for example, wasabi on dried peas and cooked sweet peas and raw peas in a pod (all delicious in their own ways), so I simply assumed that it was something like that and dropped it as an avenue of investigation.
But I certainly do admire your dedication to science in this way.
As you know I don’t believe in doing anything to excess. While the CCCB were delicious I only ate about 10–12 in one sitting. If they were truly full blown coffee beans wouldn’t I get big dose of caffeine? After all, I am eating the whole bean.
My neighbor roasts and grinds his own coffee beans. I will ask him for some beans and make some measurements.
I’ll get to the bottom of this mystery.
Actually, @LuckyGuy, there is one thing you can be said to do to excess, but I love it. That is, analyzing any and all of the most bizarre things with an engineer’s eye (mayonnaise jars, anyone??)
Please keep doing it, after all, Anything Worth Doing is Worth Doing To Excess! :-D
And to answer your Q, yes, mine are, but I have no idea why the baked beans (yuck) become so yummy when chocolatized. Maybe there is some sort of fantastic catalyst in the chocolate that chemically transforms the beans.
The chocolate covered beans from Peet’s in Berkeley are definitely real beans. And yes. eat enough of them and you will get a caffeine buzz.
OK. Here’s the approach I took to get an answer. It might not be perfect to 3 decimal places but it is a good first order approximation. I can’t be too far off. Hopefully someone knowledgeable will answer.
—I used a Mettler balance with 0.01gram resolution and have all readings to 4 significant digits. I am rounding numbers for readability.—
Results:
A “K” cup of Folgers Classic Roast contains 10 grams of ground coffee.
20 roasted coffee beans weigh 2.5 grams. Therefore it would take about 80 beans to make a cup of coffee.
20 CCCBs (a more than reasonable serving) weigh 35 grams. Assuming te beans are similar size, that means they are 32.5 g of chocolate to only 2.5 g of coffee bean!. 93% chocolate! No wonder they are so delicious!
To get all the caffeine as a full cup of coffee we’d have to eat 80 CCCBs or 140 grams (5 oz) of the yummy treats costing about $2.00 (at $5.66 per pound at Miller’s’ Bulk Food in Medina NY.). That would be a lot!
10 CCCB, a “reasonable” serving is equivalent to 1/8 of a cup of coffee and costs about $0.25.
Everything in moderation.
@canidmajor Can you tell I have a work proposal due in a few days?
I am procrastinating to excess.
Well, don’t forget the chocolate contains caffeine as well.
@Seek Good point. I’ll still stick with 10 to 20 CCCBs as a serving.
Maybe someone else here will take it the next step and figure the calories and caffeine for the combined treat. .
I’m still trying to get a solid answer on whether my aloe plants absorb the caffeine from the used coffee grounds I pour on them every morning.
I got my co-workers hooked on those chocolate covered coffee beans. Does that make me a pusher?
I used to be able to drink coffee at 10:00 and go to sleep until I OD’d on Chocolate Covered Espresso Beans when I was 16 or 17. Now I can’t have caffeine past noon.
Edit: I googled recipes and there are lots and they all use real coffee beans
As one who loves my coffee and my chocolate, I have noticed anecdotally (no actual science involved) that the chocolate covered coffee beans are indeed much more chocolate than coffee. The chocolate tastes to me like milk chocolate, which,as you probably know, contains a relatively large amount of sugar. This seems to balance the natural bitterness of the coffee. So I would describe this delicacy as coffee-flavored chocolate, rather than the other way around.
I have eaten both CCCBs and coffee beans au natural. I like both! The crunchy gritty texture is great but the chocolate does make the CCCBs win
@Judi @Kardamom Do you remember how many CCCB’s you considered a reasonable serving back then? Since they are (according to my measurements) over 90% chocolate I assume we can figure the calories are similar to pure chocolate. They are a “deadly” combination.
@Stinley. You can eat te beans straight?! Bleeech!!! The few I tried, (note the word “few”) filled my mouth with grit and got all over my tongue. I actually gagged trying to wash it off my tongue.
One at a time, mate. One at a time
They’ve gotten waaay more chocolatey in recent years. 25–30 years ago I’d get them from Stewart Brothers Coffee and the they were more beaney. I’ve noticed the adding on of chocolate. I haven’t objected, I like them this way, but sometimes I miss the extra strong aspect of those earlier ones.
@LuckyGuy The ones I get at Trader Joe’s seem to be more coffee bean than chocolate, and they’re covered with dark chocolate, not milk chocolate. I can eat no more than 5 at a time, say within 3 or 4 hours of the next dose, otherwise I’d be flying from the rafters.
I always tell newbies not to eat more than 3 at a time, they never listen. Most take 10 or 12 and then suffer the consequences, or rather everyone around them suffers the consequences. One of my co-workers is already very high energy, he did not heed my warning and we practically had to peel him off the ceiling.
So my advice is never eat more than 3 or 4 at a time, and then wait 3 or 4 hours in between.
@LuckyGuy , there was nothing reasonable about me back then. All I know is that I ate to may and I kind of have an idea of what meth must be like because of it.
OK… I see that I need to do a serious evaluation of other brands. The ones I got were very heavy on the chocolate. Clearly the Amish selling them at Millers Bulk Food and Bakery in Medina simply can’t be trusted. ;-)
Do you think I could make them myself? I have beans and chocolate
I don’t eat them but @Stinley, I am guessing if you could either find a way to adhere a bean to a stick and then dip it into molten chocolate, or put the beans into a bark (spread them on a sheet and pour chocolate over them and let it harden), those might be two things to try.
There are recipes in my first link at the very top of this question, @Stinley.
The common theme, as near as I could tell, was “tedious”.
Let us know if you try it. The first recipe with the pastry bag would be my choice.
In the interest of science. Please Weigh Everything!!!
Ok. I’ll give it a go. Will rope in my daughter as I will need to borrow her chocolatiere. Of course owning a chocolatiere means she will be interested in helping!
@LuckyGuy I want me one of those!
It will be Wed or Thursday before I get round to it. I will try different strength chocolate too. I am excited as I have wanted to try this for years. Ever since I ate CCCBs for the first time 25 years ago
I want chocolate covered coffee beans.
I wonder how a chocolatiere is different than a small crock pot?
It’s electric @jca? I have no idea I had to look the word up!
It is like a tiny crock pot or slow cooker @jca. That’s a good way to describe it. Runs on electricity, yes. It melts the chocolate nicely and is easy to clean. We picked it up in a second hand shop for a few £s. Fun for all the family!
@Earthbound_Misfit I’ll post you some!
@Stinley My Mettler in the kitchen is actually an older model but has the same specs. I use is so often! I can answer questions like: How many shots are left in this inhaler? How many BBs are in the kid BB gun? Does it really hold 600 or is it more? Is this pellet gun cocked or uncocked. (A cocked gun has a slug of pressurized air in the piston and the Mettler can detect the increased mass.) How long does a roll of toilet paper last? How much liquid does paper towel hold? Is it worth spending more for good stuff or just use 2 of the cheaper. Years ago, after my prostate surgery, I needed to wear pee pads for a while until I recovered. I used the Mettler to determine the best value pee pad for the money. You don’t want to go too big because you’d be wasting capacity and money. You don’t want to go too small or you leak. I studied how much each brand of pad held before leaking. Then measured my progress each day to find the perfect match.
Every home should have one.
And there will never be an argument about which piece of pie is bigger.
@canidmajor remembers my study of how much mayo we leave in the jar when we casually throw out the “empty”.
@canidmajor – Seriously. Three of my favourite things: Coffee, chocolate, and science. This is the perfect conversation
I knpw @jca. I had a brain fart. For some weird and unexplainable reason my brain read “small pot”. Perhaps I need some chocolate coated coffee beans!
I just checked the ingredients on the back of a bag of Chocolate Covered Espresso Beans from Peet’s Coffee:
Dark Chocolate (sugar, cocoa mass [processed with alkali], cocoa butter, butter oil, soy lecithin, vanilla) Whole Bean Coffee, Sugar, Tapioca Syrup, Tapioca Dextrin, Confectioner’s Glaze
So, more chocolate than bean.
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