Watery Gnat's Piddle! (Sainsbury's Basics Instant Chocolate)

Member Name: Darkstar101

Product:	Sainsbury's Basics Instant Chocolate
Date:	31/07/09 (94 review reads)
Rating:

Advantages: Makes you appreciate other brands

Disadvantages: Watery, tasteless, odourless, unsatisfying rubbish.

I don't often buy supermarket "value" or "basic" branded products because rightly or wrongly, I feel that the product will be somehow inferior to the better known more expensive brands. However, in a bid to cut down on my shopping bill, I recently bought a tub of Sainsbury's Instant Hot Chocolate Drink from their basics range.

Priced at just 50p for a generously sized 400g jar, this hot chocolate drink was the cheapest on the shelf by a vast margin and seemed excellent value for money. The alarm bells should have started ringing at this point, but focussed on my quest to drive down my shopping bill my judgement was somewhat clouded and I bought a jar to try.

The tub is manufactured from recyclable white HDPE with a brown easy to open screw top lid. Wrapped around the outside of the tub is a white non-recyclable PVC sleeve with the product brand and title in orange lettering, and the ingredients and nutritional information in black. This means before popping the container in your recycling bin, the label will need to be removed. The information on the label states that the hot chocolate is suitable for vegetarians and coeliacs, and the prominently displayed nutritional pie chart informs you that each 34g serving provides 123 calories, 0.7g of fat and 26.6g total sugars.


Beneath the screw cap lid is a gold coloured foil seal which comes off quite easily to reveal the hot chocolate powder underneath. The powder itself is very pale brown in colour with the appearance of fine, dusty sand. But here comes the bit I found odd - it didn't smell of chocolate. In fact it didn't really smell of anything - at a stretch I would say it smelt a bit like milk powder. The powder itself tastes synthetically sweet, but definitely not chocolaty - and yes, I am sad enough to have tasted this.

To make the hot chocolate drink, the directions say to add 4 heaped teaspoons (34g) of the mix to 180ml of hot water and stir well. This produced an unappetising brown, watery solution which resembled dirty dishwater. The foul looking liquid in the mug did have a vague aroma of chocolate, but there was no creaminess or taste of chocolate whatsoever. In a bid to produce a drink resembling hot chocolate, I have experimented using different volumes of water and have even doubled the amount of powder, but the end result is always the same watery tasteless rubbish. If you can imagine the sort of nasty instant hot chocolate you get from vending machines and dilute it twofold, then you will come close to visualising Sainsbury's Instant Hot Chocolate Drink.

To conclude, I would say that Sainsbury's basics instant hot chocolate drink is a disappointing cheap and nasty waste of money. In fact if I could give it a zero star rating, I would. All this product has done is reinforce my scepticism and reluctance to buy supermarket value brands in the future.

Summary: Doesn't look, taste or smell like chocolate. Avoid.