Is Hershey's chocolate supposed to taste like that?

Is it a new bag? If it’s not a new bag, it could have gone bad. Have someone try it and see what they think.

Many of the chocolates that Hershey’s makes is now made with vegetable oil in place of cocoa butter. They started doing this a few months ago. Were these Krackels or Mr. Goodbars? The regular Hershey bars (with and without almonds), Kisses, and Reese’s are still made with cocoa butter and shouldn’t taste any different.
You can tell which are the ones with the oil as they will say “made with Hershey’s chocolate” instead of just “chocolate.”

@KrystaElyse It was at work. Everybody tried them and we all thought they we’re strange.

@AstroChuck They just said Hersheys on them. If they didn’t have cocoa butter in that might explain the funny taste.

Hershey’s opened a new plant in Monterrey, Mexico within the last couple of years and I wonder if the poor taste of the chocolate you are eating, if manufactured there, was a consequence of that.

In Mexico, they used to say (and probably still do), ‘don’t drink the water’ and now it might have to include ‘don’t eat the chocolate either’.

Waxy? Cheap chocolate tastes like WAX! Phooey!

I had a resident in one of my apartments who was a quality control manager for Nestle. He left his apartment nastier than any other apartment I have ever seen. I won’t eat Nestle anymore.
we’re talking butt prints in the pile of poop because the chain fell off his flusher and he didn’t want to tell us so we could fix it because his apartment was so trashed. 4 foot high piles of beer cans!

@AstroChuck – I understand that if the label says “milk chocolate” it is made with cocoa butter. If it says “chocolate candy” it is made with vegetable oil. The FDA took exception to the change because it w no longer met their definition of milk chocolate.

@judi now I don’t want to eat Nestle any more either. It’s just a shame they own everything.

Depending on where you are from and what chocolate you normally eat you may find all Hershey chocolate to taste “weird.”

Hershey chocolate in comparison to European chocolate has a slightly sour or spoiled milk taste. This has to do with the recipe that Hershey uses. To make milk chocolate one can use fresh, sweetened condensed, or powdered whole milk. This will change the flavor of the final product. Hershey uses a form of sweetened condensed milk that is used by other companies to make caramels.

According to hersheys.com,

“Tanker trucks bring the fresh milk to the factory every day where it is tested, pasteurized, and then mixed with sugar. The whole milk-sugar mixture is slowly dried until it turns into a thick, taffy-like material.”

This drying process sours the milk and gives Hershey chocolate a slightly “spoiled” taste as compared to European chocolate. You need to realize that when Hershey was experimenting with producing chocolate the recipes were closely guarded secrets. He had to experiment on his own to discover a way to combine milk and the other ingredients in a way that would keep the result creamy and not curdled. Since he didn’t know how the Swiss did it he came up with another way based on his experience in adding milk to caramels, which was his first business before he went to the 1893 Columbian Exposition and became enamored of chocolate-making equipment. It took him about 10 years to come up with his recipe.

There are other specific differences between Hershey chocolate and other chocolates. For example Hershey uses cacao beans from 12 different sources to get that specific Hershey flavor. Chocolate also has to be “conched” for varying lengths of time to make it smooth, and it has to be “tempered” in order to end up with the right texture and “snap” (the way it breaks).

So if you normally eat Hershey’s chocolate and these tasted strange it could be you were eating the vegetable oil version. However, if you normally eat European chocolate then Hershey’s should taste slightly sour to you.

@Lightlyseared I can’t believe you’ve asked this. I’ve said this for months & months about Hershey’s candy bars. We love the Hershey’s with almonds & buy them by the box at Sam’s. But they’ve had an ‘off’ taste to me, too. Not really bad, but just not as…I dunno…chocolatey, if that makes sense. Thank you. Now I know I’m not nuts. (said the squirrel)

almond joy has nuts. Mounds don’t.

Sometimes you feel like a nut, sometimes you don’t. Almond Joys got nuts, Mounds don’t.

Sorry Judi, I felt unnaturally compelled to write the whole thing out. :-)

Was there a lot of pale or whitish chocolate edges? If so, it went funky. That’s all. Otherwise, it’s the oil/butter argument all the way.

i hope it’s not poop. that would be a mean april fool’s joke. it’s not even april yet.

If it tastes kind of like vomit, it’s just how Hershey’s tastes. (No, really, that is how Hershey’s registers in my mouth… I just can’t eat it because it tastes a bit like vomit.)

@EmpressPixie I must agree. Except for me it’s CRAP
not saying I’m a connoisseur of poo, either
Real chocolate should melt in your mouth like butter.

@EmpressPixie: I’m the same way with squash. It tastes just like my brand of stomach contents. No thanks.

I haven’t liked Hershey’s for a long time, it tastes like wax and has for years! I used to like the Nestle’s Crunch ‘big thick’ bars but those seem to be hard to find now, or they stopped making them.

How can Hershey’s chocolate even thing to compare themselves against the best European chocolates? It cannot! European brands are far superior.
The only reason Hershey’s is still in business as the cheap chocolate reminds people of their youth.

Actually I talked to a friend that works for a company that collects spoiled milk from Supermarkets etc, they processed the expired milk and turn it into powder milk, Hershey’s buys it to mix with their chocolate. We are eating spoiled milk, so Hershey’s can save some money..