I posted the results for week 1 of the chocolate tasting on our wiki. My summary:
One of the “ringers”, the Theo Pure 85% Dark, was the overall winner, with two first-place votes and two second-place votes. Opinions on the Equal Exchange 71% were fairly divided, with some testers rating it highly, but others (and your moderator) finding sour, off flavors. Among the actual on-theme products, the highest ratings went to the Theo Pure 70% Dark. Overall, tasters gave higher marks to the Jelina 72% than I did; I thought it was rather disappointing considering the price (the most expensive in this round at 5.8 cents per gram). Nobody much cared for either Valrhona, at least not in this form, as these bars are designed for baking applications and not for eating out of hand.
We used a simple single-blind tasting format: the participants were given numbered samples of each chocolate and asked for qualitative evaluations for each one, then an overall preference (one participant provided a complete ordering). All participants tasted the chocolates in the same order, which was randomized prior to the tasting. As the host and organizer, I had a complete listing and unblinded the tasters as a group after they had made their evaluations. The whole process (including prep work and cleanup for seven chocolate bars) took about an hour.
For the evaluation form, I used the following simple LaTeX document:
% Evaluation form for CSAIL chocolate tasting, by Garrett Wollman \documentclass[12pt]{article} \usepackage{palatino} \input fullpage.sty \begin{document} \def\myrule{\rule{4in}{0.4pt}{\LARGE\strut}} \begin{tabular}[c]{ll} Your name: & \myrule \\ Chocolate 1 comments: & \myrule \\ & \myrule \\ Chocolate 2 comments: & \myrule \\ & \myrule \\ Chocolate 3 comments: & \myrule \\ & \myrule \\ Chocolate 4 comments: & \myrule \\ & \myrule \\ Chocolate 5 comments: & \myrule \\ & \myrule \\ Chocolate 6 comments: & \myrule \\ & \myrule \\ Chocolate 7 comments: & \myrule \\ & \myrule \\ \\ Overall preference: & \myrule \\ \end{tabular} \end{document} % To the extent possible under law, Garrett Wollman has waived all copyright % and related or neighboring rights to Evaluation form. This work is published % from: United States. % CC0 % This waiver applies only to this document and not to other content on % bimajority.org.