Chof: Scan Chocolate Bars

Chof is a chocolate scanner and tasting journal. Point your camera at a wrapper and Chof identifies the bar, then shows you who made it, where the cacao was grown, the cacao percentage, what went into it and how it tastes.

SCAN A BAR

Scan the front of the wrapper, in the shop or at home. Chof reads the pack and matches it to a bar in its catalogue, whether that is a single-origin dark chocolate from a small bean-to-bar maker or a milk chocolate bar from the supermarket. If the bar is new to Chof, your scan adds it. Every new bar is reviewed before it appears, usually within a day.

WHAT A BAR PAGE SHOWS

Depending on what the label and the maker disclose, each bar page shows:

• The maker, with a page listing their other bars
• Cacao origin and cacao percentage
• Ingredients, allergens and nutrition from the label
• Flavour notes, and how sweet, bitter and astringent the bar is
• How the maker made it: fermentation, roasting, conching, refining and tempering
• Awards the bar has won at chocolate competitions
• The Chof Score
• A community rating, once three people have rated the bar

The Chof Score rates what a maker discloses about a bar: how precisely the origin is named, how clean the ingredient list is, and how much of the fermenting, drying and roasting is documented. It does not rate taste.

RATE BARS AND KEEP A TASTING JOURNAL

Give each bar you taste a star rating, say whether you would buy it again, and pick up to six flavour notes that describe it. You can add a private note as well: a memory, a pairing, or the shop where you found the bar. Everything you rate collects in your library, with tabs for the bars you scanned, the ones you have at home, your wishlist and your favourites.

Once you have rated five bars, the Your taste screen starts to describe what you tend to like, and after ten it shows how you rate. The home screen suggests bars matched to your ratings and flavour notes. Your stars count toward each bar's community rating without your name on them, and private notes stay private.

FIND BARS WORTH TRYING

Chof lists more than 2,500 bars from over 400 makers. It started with craft chocolate and bean-to-bar makers. Search by bar or maker, open a maker's page to see the bars Chof lists for them, and save the ones you want to try to your wishlist.

FREE AND PREMIUM

Chof is free to download. Without an account you get two scans a day, and a free account gets six. Any bar you have scanned shows its full label detail.

Chof Premium is an optional subscription. It adds unlimited scans, full detail on every bar in the catalogue, the origin trail down to the estate where it is known, and bar suggestions on each bar page. You can scan, rate and keep your library without it.