Do you notice that cold/chilled chocolate tastes less sweet than room temperature/melted chocolate? (freezer, coffee)

[Trimac20]

Is it just me, or does it seem when you put chocolate in the fridge and it's hard, it just tastes less overpoweringly sweet? I'm eating some chocolate which is quite soft at the moment, and it's cloyingly sweet for me. I'm a sweet-tooth, but sometimes I find chocolate (this is white chocolate too I should mention but same thing with milk chocolate) that is warm/soft sweeter than if it is chilled and hard. Maybe it's something to do with the texture, less contact with the tastebuds or something like that?

[Dirt Grinder]

The warm chocolate melts and covers your tongue and tastebuds. Chilled chocolate tends to crumble and you end-up swallowing it in crumbled form. That's why I dislike chilled chocolate. BTW - have you ever heated wrapped Hershey kisses in a frying pan on the stove (not too hot)? The bottom gets all crispy and caramelized and the rest of it is warm and smooth.

[Trimac20]

Originally Posted by Dirt Grinder

The warm chocolate melts and covers your tongue and tastebuds. Chilled chocolate tends to crumble and you end-up swallowing it in crumbled form. That's why I dislike chilled chocolate. BTW - have you ever heated wrapped Hershey kisses in a frying pan on the stove (not too hot)? The bottom gets all crispy and caramelized and the rest of it is warm and smooth.

Caramelised chocolate? Sounds interesting. I used to like Hershey kisses, they're still ok, but Hershey's has a weird taste to it.

Here they sometimes store some chocolate bars in the fridge because some people that way. As a kid I often used to prefer cold chocolate for some reason. I just liked how it snapped.

[TabulaRasa]

My ex vastly preferred chocolate to be refrigerated. I'm not big on chocolate to begin with, but I ESPECIALLY don't like it cold. Warm chocolate chip cookies with still-melty chips represent the perfect form of chocolate to me...good temperature and richness, but just in little bits, and with other flavors to temper it.

[PinkBunny]

I actually put dark chocolate in the freezer, so that when I eat it, it tastes less sugary.

[Blinx]

I keep emergency rations of chocolate in the freezer. Anywhere else and they wouldn't exist for too long!

I like to put Rolos in there -- melt the chocolate part with your mouth, but the carmel is still hard.

[oregonwoodsmoke]

All the flavors of chocolate are muted when it is cold.

American candy makers seem to be adding more sugar and more wax as cocoa gets more and more expensive, so if you love chocolate you need to be more careful what you buy.

I usually prefer semi-sweet to the milk chocolate, because it is more chocolate and less sugar. I do have a brand of milk chocolate that I like, and often when I make dipped chocolates, milk is better than semisweet.

[DawnMTL]

Yup. It's the same with cheese -- much more intense flavor when at room temperature.

[cloven]

Originally Posted by Trimac20

Is it just me, or does it seem when you put chocolate in the fridge and it's hard, it just tastes less overpoweringly sweet? I'm eating some chocolate which is quite soft at the moment, and it's cloyingly sweet for me. I'm a sweet-tooth, but sometimes I find chocolate (this is white chocolate too I should mention but same thing with milk chocolate) that is warm/soft sweeter than if it is chilled and hard. Maybe it's something to do with the texture, less contact with the tastebuds or something like that?

Here's somewhere to start: the press release for a student's research project "Scale-sensitive Fractal Analysis of Chocolate"-
Chocolate Tastes Better When Warmer, Says WPI Student Research Project - WPI

The article below uses coffee as example of drink that tastes good when either hot or cold, but tastes bad at temps. in between.
I don't drink coffee, but I feel this same way when it comes to tea (I like cold Snapple "tea drink", or a piping hot cup of tea, but there's no middle ground).
Why room-temperature coffee tastes so bad - The Body Odd

I prefer many consumables either very hot or very cold, bc. I dislike their flavor as they near room temp.
I don't want to have to taste them (particular food/drink) more than I do, if the flavor is already stronger/more intense than I'd like-so heating or chilling helps take the edge off the experience, for me.
Thermoreception (temp.) in itself is competing stimuli to chemoreception (taste/olfaction), either increasing or decreasing the perception of flavor or flavors within a given compound.
It's like my "circuits" (nerve endings) are busied by dealing with the numbing coolness of refrigerated item or by sensing a hot beverage being a little too hot-which makes the flavor recede into background (seem more bland-in a good way-than how it tastes at room temperature), and allows me to be able to stand to consume the material.

[Trimac20]

Originally Posted by DandJ

Yup. It's the same with cheese -- much more intense flavor when at room temperature.

Actually melted cheese tends to taste less intense than just a cold block of cheese or grated cheese, at least for cheddar.