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this post was submitted on 08 Feb 2026
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Hershey's chocolate has a vomit aftertaste. Lindt chocolate is so much better.
Does Hershey's have a regional taste shift like coke does, based on where it was made? Atlanta coke vs Toronto coke is night and day. Hershey used to be made from Canadian milk shipped down in trucks.
Hershey has always had a sort of vomit aftertaste. The presence of butyric acid is the culprit. This compound is created when milk undergoes a process called lipolysis, which breaks down fatty acids to extend the chocolate's shelf life. Butyric acid is also found in human vomit, Parmesan cheese, and rancid butter. This is a direct result of Hershey engineering the chocolate to have a long shelf life. During the early 20th century, when refrigeration wasn’t reliable, the chocolate brand Hershey’s adopted a milk-stabilization process involving controlled lipolysis. The method kept milk usable for large-scale chocolate production as it traveled across country, but it also created butyric acid as a by-product. Butyric acid is perfectly safe to consume.
I always wondered if part of the problem is the long shelf life. I swear I’ve tasted some hersheys that was good. Perhaps it ages safely but rancid?
The aftertaste is very subtle, one might describe it as tangy. If you are an American and have never had foreign chocolate, you've probably only ever had chocolate with with milk that has undergone lipolysis; and you'd likely never notice it. For the first 5 years of my life I was raised in foster care by naturalized Europeans, so my formative years involved Swiss chocolate whenever I had it. Swiss chocolate uses milk that has not undergone lipolysis, and their chocolate is very smooth due to a process called conching. Conching is a mixing process with lots of heating and aeration which allows organic acids to evaporate creating a very uniform and smooth textured chocolate without bitter or tangy afternotes.
Not at all. While I am American and thought hersheys was chocolate when I was a kid, I left that behind. I actually stopped eating chocolate for many years because it was just so bad. Then a Lindt Chocolatier opened in the lobby where I was working at the time, and it was good. Entirely different.
These days I eat chocolate again bit am quite picky and am willing to spend more for something that actually tastes good.
Except Ghirardelli. People claim that’s good and I agree relative to Hershey, but it really isnt.
It’s probably mostly cost. Hershey is dirt cheap and sold everywhere. Chocolate that tastes good might be several times the cost and you have to goto special stores