Effect of storage on sensory quality of chocolate

The consumers are increasingly interested in high-quality chocolate products. This study focuses on the evaluation of the sensory quality of chocolate and changes it undergoes during storage. For the analysis, three types of dark chocolate were selected from the market network in the Czech Republic. For the evaluation, both quantitative descriptive analysis and hedonic evaluation were used. After the two-month period, the evaluators were able to detect differences in the sensory quality of chocolate stored in various ways. To preserve the organoleptic properties of chocolate, the most suitable storage appeared to be storage at the temperature of 16°C with a relative humidity of 60%. Our results did not find significant deterioration in quality during storage at the temperature of 8°C with a relative humidity of 70%, since during the two-month storage period, the chocolate samples showed neither sugar bloom nor odour absorption, nor any other statistically significant sensory quality deterioration (p < 0.05), even at a higher relative humidity. Storage at room temperature with a relative humidity of 55% proved to be the least suitable storage method for chocolate, as it resulted in statistically significant deterioration (p < 0.05) in sensory descriptors.