In Limited Quantities, Archer Farms White Chocolate Peppermint Caramel Corn Clusters Is Worth It!

The Good: Delicious, Affordable for the volume
The Bad: Predictably lacking in nutritional value
The Basics: White Chocolate Peppermint Caramel Corn Clusters from Archer Farms are a pleasant seasonal treat, even if it is so sweet it is hard to eat it up before it expires!


Every now and then, I find something that instantly captivates me, but when it comes time to review, I find that objectively it is not quite as incredible as my first impression might otherwise indicate. Archer Farms White Chocolate Peppermint Caramel Corn Clusters is one such product. My first try of Archer Farms White Chocolate Peppermint Caramel Corn Clusters was so enjoyable that I picked up two additional jars of the snack. And the Archer Farms White Chocolate Peppermint Caramel Corn Clusters is good and original, but the more of it I ate, the more I discovered I could not consume as much. It's almost like I grew an enjoyment tolerance for the sweet treat, which made it impossible (eventually) to binge on.

Basics

White Chocolate Peppermint Caramel Corn Clusters from Archer Farms, is pre-popped and flavored popcorn. Archer Farms has marketed their popcorn as a seasonal treat that is an alternative to their healthy lines of snacks. The White Chocolate Peppermint Caramel Corn Clusters from Archer Farms comes in a 17 oz. plastic jar. Inside the jar, the popcorn is exactly what one might expect of caramel corn; many of the pieces are stuck together. The popcorn is popped, sticky and has a drizzle of white chocolate on it.

Ease Of Preparation

Archer Farms White Chocolate Peppermint Caramel Corn Clusters is simple to enjoy; all one needs to do is open the jar and remove the popcorn from it! There is no trick to eating White Chocolate Peppermint Caramel Corn Clusters; this is a snack that is ready to go from the container to the mouth. When one is done consuming, simply screw the lid back on the jar.

Taste

Archer Farms’s White Chocolate Peppermint Caramel Corn Clusters smells quite a bit like caramel corn and mint. The Archer Farms White Chocolate Peppermint Caramel Corn Clusters has a very mild scent, but the pieces that have more white chocolate on them smell decently of peppermint.

In the mouth, the Archer Farms White Chocolate Peppermint Caramel Corn Clusters tastes exceptionally sweet. The sweet, buttery caramel is enhanced by the creamy, minty chocolate that coats the popcorn. The cool peppermint flavor is strong and satisfying and the white chocolate does not taste at all waxy. The chocolate is delightful for anyone who likes white chocolate and it acts as an excellent medium for the peppermint flavor, which enhances the simple caramel corn well.

The Archer Farms White Chocolate Peppermint Caramel Corn Clusters leave a very sweet aftertaste in the mouth that lasts for several minutes after the last piece is eaten.

Nutrition

The White Chocolate Peppermint Caramel Corn Clusters is a basic popcorn produced without much in the way of preservatives. Given that the ingredients are mostly popcorn, sugar, corn syrup and white chocolate, it is not even attempting to pass itself off as a healthy food.

Each one-half cup (just over one ounce, 32 gram) serving of Archer Farms White Chocolate Peppermint Caramel Corn Clusters has 160 calories, sixty of which come from fat. There is a single gram of dietary fiber. While there are 7 grams of fat and 2 grams of protein, there are almost no other significant nutrients in this popcorn. There are 135 mg of sodium, which represents 6% of one's RDA of sodium, but that is not entirely surprising. There are a smattering of Iron, but no other significant nutrients. There is a dietary note that the White Chocolate Peppermint Caramel Corn contains soy and milk ingredients, which prevents them from being Vegan compliant to die-hard people who make that choice and the equipment this was produced on forces Archer Farms to add an allergy warning about peanut and tree nuts. This snack is not marked as kosher.

Storage/Clean-up

Kept in the jar, Archer Farms White Chocolate Peppermint Caramel Corn Clusters will remain fresh for a short amount of time, about six months. Our jar, bought back in December of 2015, had a July 2, 2016 expiration date, though we finished it well before then! Because this snack has minimal
preservatives, it is not a good one to stock up on.

Cleanup is fairly simple. The White Chocolate Peppermint Caramel Corn Clusters from Archer Farms is a dry food and thus leaves little mess behind. However, if this snack gets warm, it can get very sticky. As well, the white chocolate drizzled on the caramel corn may melt, making this a little messier than most popcorn treats. Eating the Archer Farms White Chocolate Peppermint Caramel Corn Clusters pretty much necessitates one washes their hands afterward.

Overall

Archer Farms White Chocolate Peppermint Caramel Corn Clusters is delicious and fun, living up to its promised flavors, but is so sweet that it is hard to eat more than a little bit at any given time!

For popcorn-related reviews, check out my reviews of:
Kettle Brand Maple Bacon Popcorn
CK Snacks Yummmy Butter Popcorn
Popcorn, Indiana Aged White Cheddar Popcorn

6/10

For other food and drink reviews, please visit my Food Review Index Page!

© 2016 W.L. Swarts. May not be reprinted without permission.
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Archer Farms Chocolateberry Earl Grey Tea Is A Great Twist On An Amazing Tea!

The Good: Excellent flavor, Nothing detrimental in the nutrition department, Good aroma, Caffeinated
The Bad: Superfluous papers, plastic and strings.
The Basics: A wonderful twist on the standard Earl Grey tea, Archer Farms Chocolateberry Earl Grey makes it worth braving the snow to get some tea!


For those who might not have read my many, many, many other tea reviews, I love tea. I love Earl Grey tea and my wife has a habit of picking me up various Earl Greys to try and compare. I appreciate that because I love the Bergamot flavor of Earl Grey tea so much. One of the most intriguing recent finds when it comes to Earl Grey teas that she has found for me is the Chocolateberry Earl Grey tea from Archer Farms.

I do not know anywhere off-line that sells Archer Farms teas like this, outside Target. But this tea is all the excuse one might need to go to Target!

Basics

Chocolateberry Earl Grey Tea is a black tea from Archer Farms of Canada. Black tea is made from mature tea leaves that are dried on the tea plant. Archer Farms has its Chocolateberry Earl Grey tea available year round and it is surprisingly good. Chocolateberry Earl Grey is what I call and adjective tea; the flavor is its own, the name does not hold it to any standard other than to represent what is generally accepted as that flavor.

Chocolateberry Earl Grey comes in Archer Farms' standard tea bags, which are pyramid-shaped tea nets. Each pyramid teabag is attached to an unfortunately short - 2 1/2” string. The string is attached to a paper tab and each teabag is sealed in a plastic pouch for freshness. A box of Chocolateberry Earl Grey tea comes with 15 individual plastic-wrapped tea bags. After years of drinking only Celestial Seasonings' tea, this seems remarkably wasteful now to have so much waste, especially with the plastic.

Ease Of Preparation

As a black tea, Chocolateberry Earl Grey is ridiculously easy to prepare. A single tea bag will make the standard 8 oz. coffee mug worth of tea and could be reused and make a second cup of Chocolateberry Earl Grey with little loss of flavor. Indeed, this is one of the best teas for those who like to reuse tea bags. The second cup often comes out about as strong as the first, provided the first steeping was not over the recommended time. I tend to make my tea using a 32 oz. steeping tea pot and that works well, though in this method, the second brewing is - at best - about 7/8 strength.

To prepare Chocolateberry Earl Grey tea, bring a pot of water to a boil and pour it over the tea bags. For Chocolateberry Earl Grey, roaring boil is just fine! This tea takes only four to five minutes to steep according to the directions. In my experience, it gets no stronger after five minutes and as a rather strong tea, it does not truly need to be stronger than it naturally is.

Taste

Chocolateberry Earl Grey tea is instantly inviting with its aroma. Whatever gimmick I might have suspected Archer Farms had in their name, they had me with the scent of this tea. Archer Farms Chocolateberry Earl Grey tea smells just like milk chocolate and Bergamot. Both scents are distinctive and this tea has them both, effervescing from the mug in the most incredible way.

Chocolateberry Earl Grey tea is a very strong tea and it carries the Earl Grey portion of its name expertly. This tea has a potent Bergamot flavor that drowns out the flavor from the black tea leaves in the mug. While there is a decent chocolate aroma to the tea, the taste does not have a noticeably chocolatey flavor. What the Chocolateberry Earl Grey tea does have is a lack of the cripplingly dry aftertaste that most Earl Grey teas possess. As the tea cools, it does take on a slightly dry aftertaste, but for the most part, this is a slightly sweet, very bold Bergamot flavored tea without the dry undertaste usually associated with Earl Grey.

With a teaspoon of sugar, the Chocolateberry Earl Grey becomes quite a bit sweeter, as if it had been infused with milk chocolate. It loses any sense of dry aftertaste with sugar without losing any of the strength of the tea. If ever there were a thirst-quenching Earl Grey, it is Chocolateberry Earl Grey with a teaspoon of sugar!

Nutrition

The ingredients to this tea are a bit more complex than some Earl Greys. Because it is infused with some chocolate flavors, the Cocoaberry Earl Grey includes several ingredients past the black tea, rooibos leaves and carob that top the ingredients list. Fortunately, there is nothing unpronounceable in this beverage.

In terms of nutrition, this tea is devoid of it. One 8 oz. mug of this tea provides nothing of nutritional value to the drinker. There are no calories (save what one adds from sugar), no fat, sodium, or protein. There is caffeine, but how it relates to other beverages remains a mystery; Archer Farms does not put a scale on their boxes of tea. This tea is rather caffeinated, though and it will wake the drinker up.

Storage/Clean-up

Chocolateberry Earl Grey tea is very easy to clean up after, provided one does not get it on fabric. The tea bags may be disposed in the garbage, or composted if you have a good garden and/or compost pile. If composting, though, one must remove the paper tag, staple and string, which is just a tedious extra step. The tea itself will stain a mug a faint brown if it is left there for days on end, but otherwise may be cleaned up easily by rinsing out the vessel.

Chocolateberry Earl Grey is a rather dark tea and as a result, it will stain any light fabrics it comes in contact with. As a result, it is highly recommended that one not let it linger on anything they wish to protect and not have stained. It may be cleaned off if the spill is caught quickly, but if it lingers, it is not at all easy to wash out of clothes, linens or other fabrics. Because of all of the extra packaging surrounding each teabag, Chocolateberry Earl Grey tea lasts quite a while. The box we purchased in early summer has a January 2013 expiration date and it is hard to imagine the tea going bad even then!

Overall

Archer Farms Chocolateberry Earl Grey tea is one of the better Earl Grey teas on the market. It is a nice change from standard Earl Greys in both its primary flavor and its lack of a dry aftertaste. That makes it a “must try” for anyone who considers themselves an Earl Grey afficianado!

For other Earl Grey tea reviews, please check out:
Celestial Seasonings Victorian Earl Grey
Twinings Earl Grey
Stash Double Bergamot Earl Grey
Republic Of Tea Earl Greyer
Bigelow Earl Grey

9/10

For other food or drink reviews, please visit my index page by clicking here!

© 2011, 2008 W.L. Swarts. May not be reprinted without permission.
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