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The Best Hot Chocolate in India

The Chocoholic
9 min readDec 5, 2021

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So, I did something crazy. I just bought all the hot chocolate in India.

I first went to Amazon and bought all the hot chocolate there. ALL. There weren’t as many to choose from in the beginning as you may imagine. But, the deeper I searched, the more I found buried deep within Amazon.

I did the same on Flipkart and found some more brands not on Amazon!

I was invested in this now. I then went to my local supermarket. Two different supermarkets actually. And, searched for hot chocolate there. Slim pickings, unfortunately. I did manage to rope in a 1+1 offer on the B.yond brand of hot chocolate that I had never heard of before though!

My goal — to find the best hot chocolate in India! I am not a chocolate connoisseur (that’s too pretentious a term). I am a chocolate lover, and I’ve had the good fortune of tasting hot chocolate (and chocolates in general) across multiple chocolatiers and cafés from 30+ countries. Oh, and I lived in the chocolate-capital of the world (Switzerland) for nearly 5 years. Some form of hot chocolate has been my staple morning drink since I was a kid (we called it Bournvita back then!). As of writing this article, I’ve also tried out every hot chocolate available in India. So, while it’s important to keep in mind that anything related to the taste-buds are extremely subjective and personal, I feel fairly equipped to be making and passing judgement on the best hot chocolate in the country.

My final stop was good ol’ Google. I searched for “hot chocolate” and Google helped me find some things on Amazon (that Amazon couldn’t). It also surfaced some niche, local, “luxurious”, and upcoming brands of chocolate, and some local bakeries. One by one, I went to each of their websites and ordered the richest and darkest hot chocolate they had on offer.

Within a day, I had bought all the hot chocolate available in India. ALL.

My goal is to find the best hot chocolate in the country. I had some pre-decided criteria though:

  • The hot chocolate should be manufactured in India or widely available. I didn’t buy hot chocolate that was straight-up imported, because at that point I’ll most likely end up searching for the best hot chocolate in the world (which in hindsight doesn’t sound too bad). Besides, some of these end up being obscenely expensive thanks to the high customs/shipping duties and low sales volumes.
  • I only considered instant hot chocolate mixes that require adding hot milk (or water in some cases). There are multiple brands that market hot chocolate powder that is actually just 100% cocoa powder (I unfortunately got tricked by a few of these…). These generally require you to add (a lot of ) sugar on top. While, I appreciate the flexibility — that’s not what I was looking for (I am quite lazy in the kitchen :P). Additionally, I observed that hot chocolate made from 100% cocoa powder tended to be lighter and thinner, and just not the same really.
  • I ordered pure and dark hot chocolate. There are plenty of hot chocolate mixes with additional flavourings such as mint, turmeric, caramel, coffee and even Mexican spices! While, I am sure these are all extremely delicious — they are just not my cup of chocolate. I like rich, dark and decadent hot chocolate.

Taste is extremely subjective, and personal. However, in order be as objective in this process as possible I came up with the following rating criteria for each hot chocolate — each of these factors appeal to our different senses and end up adding to the overall experience of enjoying a cup of hot chocolate.

  • Aroma: Does the smell take you to chocolate heaven? Are you reminded of your innocent childhood, or perhaps a cozy chocolatier in the heart of Paris? The fragrance of hot chocolate is one of the first senses that gets activated as we start preparing this magical concoction.
  • Colour: The next sense to get activated and what I believe is extremely important. The colour often tells me what to expect, as the taste-buds patiently wait in anticipation for the treat in front of them. A beautiful, deep and chocolatey brown is what I am looking for here!
  • Texture: Is the hot chocolate too thin or watery? Or is it thick and heavy like an Italian hot chocolate? How does the hot chocolate roll and feel in your mouth?
  • Chocolatey-ness: Is it too sweet? Too milky? Do you taste the chocolate enough? I love rich and dark hot chocolate — so these drinks get bonus points.
  • Taste: The overall verdict, the deciding factor and the final score. Was this an overall delicious treat? I’ve used a 10-point grading scale for this one.

The list below has all the hot chocolate I ordered and there’s a more detailed review behind each link (some are work in progress). The most important criteria and factor for me is the taste of course and you’ll see that prominently highlighted below.

This is easily the most in-depth review and analysis of hot chocolate that has been done in India (and, perhaps anywhere in the world!).

* Is there a brand of hot chocolate that I may have missed in the table above? That’s highly likely — please add a comment and I’ll be delighted to to order it and try it out!

**A note on “Price per cup”: This was actually more challenging to calculate than you might first expect. Different hot chocolates have different strengths or potencies and recommend adding different amounts of hot chocolate powder to a similar quantity of milk — that’s expected. Some even advertise how many cups of hot chocolate you can make with the packet.

A cup is a standard cooking measure that varies from country-to-country. India uses the metric cup which is 250ml. However, hidden somewhere deep in the fine-print of these bold advertisements (and sometimes hidden completely) — you realize that different companies end up using completely different measurements. For instance: Tiggle defines a cup as 130ml, Hersheys defines it as 215 ml, Bulgano as 354ml (12 fl. oz.), Swiss Miss as 177ml (6 fl. oz.), Entisi as 150ml, and Choko La as 100ml ! As you can see, these are all over the place.

Then, there are some brands that don’t even define a cup and use vague terms such as Didier & Frank, and Cocoa Planter’s use of “mug”; Country Bean and The Wandering Bean’s usage of “medium sized cup”.

A similar conundrum arises when you’re trying to decide how much hot chocolate powder to add to a cup of milk. A teaspoon and tablespoon are once again standard cooking measures (defined as 5ml and 15ml respectively in India). Tiggle recommends to “Add 3 spoons of chocolate mix” — however they don’t define whether this is a teaspoon or tablespoon (that’s a big difference)! Amazer also falls culprit to the same ambiguity. Didier & Frank uses the term “large spoons”. Cocoa Planter and Bulgano use the word “scoop” — however fortunately just as I was reaching out to get my ice-cream scoop they also define the amount in grams (they are obviously both different though — Cocoa Planter’s “heaping scoop” is 10gms, while Bulgano’s “scoop” is 28gms!). Entisi & The Wandering Bean use the terms “heaping tablespoon” (which is borderline acceptable so I can probably brush that under the carpet).

To further add to the confusion, there were also some rather negligent and lax inconsistencies. Cocoacraft and Choko La specify both the number of tablespoons and gms in their recommendations — “2 tbsp (60gms)” by Cocoacraft, and “4 Tsp (25gms)” by Choko La. Of course, upon measuring and weighing — 2 tbsp of Cocoa craft powder actually weighs 17 gms; and 4 tsp of Choko La weighs 11.3 gms. Go figure! :). Bolmay goes in the other direction claiming that 3tbsp is 15gm. Upon measuring, Bolmay’s 3tbsp actually weighs 24gm. Happy Belly gets this right though!

And, then there are brands like the Nutty Yogi and Bolmay that provide absolutely no guidance on both the size of the cup or the recommended amount of hot chocolate mix to add 🤷 🤷‍♀️

This is a bit of a rant, but you did choose to read the section under the double asterisks :) Whenever there was any ambiguity in deciding the amount of hot chocolate powder to add per cup (and, hence the price-per-cup), I used common sense or reasonable amounts of hot chocolate to produce what I felt was the best tasting hot chocolate. In a couple of cases, this did take multiple attempts. In cases when the instructions were clear, I followed the recommendations in preparing the hot chocolate, and calculating the price-per-cup.

You can also follow my chocolate journey on Instagram: https://www.instagram.com/thechocoholiclife/

Hot Chocolate
Hot Cocoa
Chocolate
India
Cocoa

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The Chocoholic

Written by The Chocoholic

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A geek that loves chocolate.

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