ZOMG, Candy!

I really enjoy receiving free samples from Jelly Belly. Everyone else contacts me first to ask; Jelly Belly just sends stuff, so I’m always pleasantly surprised to get a package from them.

Case in point, my free sample of these Jelly Belly Chocolate Dips. The press release calls them, “the much anticipated marriage of America’s favorite jelly bean with refined chocolate.” Five flavors of Dips, Very Cherry, Orange, Raspberry, Coconut, and Starwberry, are being released right around now.

I have to admit, I’ve never thought, “Gee, if only this were covered in chocolate,” while eating Jelly Bellies. I was a bit dubious as to how well the pairing of chocolate and bean would work. Turns out, surprisingly well!

To start, these aren’t exactly the same as chocolate-dipped jelly beans. The beans lack their usual hard sugar shell. Instead, it’s a shiny panned chocolate shell with a squishy gooey sticky jelly bean center.

The dark chocolate tasted like dark cocoa powder. While it was possible for me to let the chocolate layer melt away, leaving a naked jelly center, I preferred to chomp them and mix the chocolate flavor into that of the bean.

Very cherry started out lightly sweet and fruity under the chocolate. As the chocolate flavor dissipated, the slightly artificial maraschino cherry flavor came through more strongly.

Orange presented an immediate hit of strong zest/citrus oil flavor. It didn’t taste like orange jelly beans. Instead, it tasted like candied orange rind, which paired splendidly with the chocolate. This was one of my favorites.

Raspberry was also a winner with the chocolate. It let the chocolate come through first. Then its fruitiness kicked in, mostly notes of raisin. I wouldn’t have guessed that it was raspberry.

Coconut was another one that let the chocolate take precedence. It came through as a fragrant, airy, deliciousness nuttiness after the chocolate disappeared.

Finally, strawberry had a bright sweetness with a lovely floralness and a great finish.

These surprised me with their tastiness and addictiveness. An OMG!

I think Jelly Belly‘s new Cocktail Classics have an awesome tagline: “It’s five o’clock somewhere.” Their press release had another great line, “All the flavors and none of the hangover.”

I’m a cocktail person (I’m too wimpy for beer’s bitterness), so I was excited to see what Jelly Belly’s jelly bean mixologists out together.

There are three new cocktail flavors – Mojito, Pomegranate Cosmo, and Peach Bellini – to add to their three current ones that have been around for two decades – Margarita, Pina Colada, and Strawberry Daiquiri.

The mini sample packs I got had all 6 cocktail flavors. For some reason, the boxed set was missing margarita.

We’ll start with the newbies. Mojito was light green with darker green speckles. Real mojitos are mint, rum, and lime.

Jelly Belly Mojito beans start off brightly tart and zesty with fresh lime flavor. Suddenly, a strong mintiness comes through.

For me, that mintiness was too much, too reminiscent of toothpaste, and I missed any notes of rum. I didn’t like the flavor mix, but I also don’t particularly care for mojitos.

Pomegranate Cosmo was a prettily translucent pink. Its initial bite of red fruitiness that gave way to a darker sweetness reminded me of regular pomegranate Jelly Bellies. I’m not sure I could differentiate the two in a blind taste test. Still, it was quite tasty!

Peach Bellini was another prettily translucent bean, more light orange than peach colored. Bellinis are peach puree with sparkling wine, and I think Jelly Belly nailed it here.

The bean version tasted fresh and fragant, with a lovely floral peachiness. There’s a champagne undertone that dances around the edge of bitterness in the finish.

And now, the old hats:

Margarita, a solid, translucent green, has always been one of my favorite Jelly Bellies. It tastes of tart citrus and lime, with a boozy undertone.

Pina Colada, yellow, starts with the tartness of pineapple, then gives way to a round coconut flavor and a sugary sweetness after the shell is gone. I like the pineapple component, but for some reason, I don’t like the mix of jelly bean texture with coconut flavor.

Strawberry Daiquiri is a solid, faintly mottled pink. It starts with an initial strong flash of genuine strawberry flavor with a hint of lime and a seedy raspberry undertone.

I enjoyed Pomegranate Cosmo, Peach Bellini, and Margarita enough to want to scoop them out of a Jelly Belly bulk bin in the future, so they get OMs. While I was less enamored of the other three, I did enjoy tasting them, so Os.

Kudos to Jelly Belly for a fun flavor mix. And kudos to Cybele for finding a fun way to photograph them (I wish I’d thought of that!)

Jelly Belly just debuted their 92nd flavor of jelly bean – a honey bean, infused with real wildflower honey. They’ve got a descriptive PR team working for them. Check out the press release:

“A comforting and soothing flavor, Honey Bean Jelly Belly bean is golden yellow and drenched in the taste of honey from the chewy center to the tender shell of the jelly bean… Savor it for the straight-from-the-hive flavor along with a cup of tea.”

The beans themselves are beautiful – shiny beads of amber that almost look translucent. I want to string them together and turn them into jewelry. They would make great drop earrings!

As usual, Jelly Belly has managed to be pretty spot on in their flavor capture. They taste just like little drops of honey – sweet and floral – but they have the gelatinous and slightly grainy texture of jelly beans.

As Cybele noted in her review, these aren’t a mindlessly-chomp-through-a-whole-bag candy. The inevitably saccharine nature of their flavor means that they get to be too much after a while. But they are nice in small doses, and they seem like they’d play well with other beans. An O.

We used to have a Cold Stone creamery by campus, but it recently went out of business. Fortunately, Jelly Belly has a new-ish line of Cold Stone creamery flavored jelly beans, dubbed their ice cream parlor mix. Unfortunately, the bag came with a coupon for ice cream that I can’t use because there’s no longer a Cold Stone within walking distance.

These come in five flavors named after Cold Stone ice creams:

Chocolate Devotion – chocolate ice cream, chocolate chips, brownie and fudge. This bean has a dark cocoa edge to it that’s quite reminiscent of brownies. It’s super chocolate-y, which I appreciate, but I’m not a big fan of the chocolate with the jelly bean texture.

Our Strawberry Blonde: strawberry ice cream, graham cracker pie crust, strawberries, caramel and whipped topping. The strawberry flavor is quite bright. You can almost taste the seeds. In fact, the seedy finish makes me think more raspberry than strawberry. I don’t get the caramel and graham cracker, though.

Birthday Cake Remix – cake batter ice cream, rainbow sprinkles, brownie and fudge. The bean is festive looking – pale cream with rainbow speckles. It tastes like vanilla cake, like the kind that comes out of a box of mix, with a slight hint of chocolate to the finish. That hint is so slight that I wonder if I’m imagining it because of the flavor description.

Mint Mint Chocolate Chocolate Chip – mint ice cream, chocolate chips, brownie and fudge. It tastes like mint chocolate chip ice cream with a refreshing finish. Like the chocolate, however, it’s just not a flavor I enjoy in jelly bean form.

Apple Pie A La Cold Stone – French vanilla ice cream, cinnamon, graham cracker pie crust, apple pie filling and caramel. Strong caramel and canned apple pie filling flavors make this thing too sweet. I’m not a fan.

Overall, the flavors are interesting, but they’re not for me. And they don’t mix well. I chased a mint with a chocolate and got a wave of bitter. Blech! An O from me, but an A for effort.

Finally a personal note – I’m playing in my last Yale Concert Band concert tonight, April 3, 7:30, in Woolsey Hall. We’re playing the Rite of Spring and the Artie Shaw Clarinet Concerto (with an amazing Yale School of Music professor of clarineting soloist), so it should be a good one – a great way to finish off my YCB career. Come listen if you happen to live near New Haven/Yale!

I can’t recall ever having worked with Jelly Belly before, so I was quite surprised to find a free sample tin of their new Sunkist Citrus Mix in my PO Box. I’m not exactly sure how they found me (probably via a PR company that I’ve worked with on another candy), or my address, but there are more frightening invasions of privacy than Jelly Belly knowing my PO Box address, especially if it means surprise deliveries of free Jelly Bellies.

I was immediately taken in by the beautiful tin that these beans came in. I’m used to eating my Jelly Bellies out of plastic branded bags since I buy them from bulk bins. The tin is slightly smaller than that of Altoid’s Sours. Its made of burnished metal, and its clear plastic lid is adorned with a Japanese-y drawing of a blossoming branch. It’s absolutely lovely and a total keeper. My only issue is that the script and font are a significant departure from the Jelly Belly logo and font, which confuses their brand image.

The flavors are Sunkist Lime, Sunkist Pink Grapefruit, Sunkist Orange, Sunkist Lemon, and Sunkist Tangerine. I wish I had easy access to a candy store that sells Jelly Bellies (being a carless out of state college student, I don’t) so that I could compare these to Jelly Belly’s usual Lime, Pink Grapefruit, Orange, Lemon, and Tangerine flavors. Even though the press release claims that they’re new, my guess is that they’re the same; Jelly Belly is just using the Sunkist name to push these beans, which are “made with real juices, purees, and citrus oils.”

The press release claims that the flavors are “so authentic that even the aroma of citrus peel comes through each bite.” As expected from Jelly Belly, the flavors are indeed authentic. Lime has that zesty astringency that makes caparinhas so tasty, while lemon has a sweeter, brighter tartness. Like Cybele did in her review, I didn’t realize that the mix contained both tangerine and orange. They look the same to me, so only one made it into the shot. While I can tell the tangerine and the orange apart by taste, I don’t know which is which. One is sweet and round while the other has more of an orange zest kick to it.

The pink grapefruit was my favorite, not because grapefruit is such a wondrous citrus flavor, though it is, but because Jelly Belly did such a great job of capturing the unique taste of grapefruit. The bean not only tasted like grapefruit but also tasted like grapefruit smells, if that makes any sense at all.

I thought this was a great mix. Then again, I expected to love it, as citrus flavors are my favorite fruit flavors. I polished off most of the tin in one go as I typed this review, and now my tongue has taken on a light tingle, from all the acidity, I guess. An OMG.

Remember the Jelly Belly Dream Bean Contest from back in July? Tomorrow they’ll reveal the five finalists in the running to become the next Jelly Belly flavor. Make your voice heard and vote for your favorite.

I have been wanting to take a tour of the Jelly Belly (BUY!) factory for years. I remember back when I was in middle school you could go to their website and, if your timing was right, get a free sample bag of jelly beans mailed to you. Now that they’re a beloved and well-established candy company, they no longer need to mail out free samples to drum up business.

The people at the Jelly Belly Factory were so nice! We arrived at 3:15 to find a huge line winding out of the factory through those gates. I was worried that we wouldn’t make it in for a tour that day (the website said that tours are offered until 4:00, and we were dozens of people past the hour-long wait marker), but they reassured us that, if we were already in line, we would get a tour. We made it in at about 4:20, and there was at least one more tour that went in after our group.

To make the wait easier, Jelly Belly employees constantly walked up and down the line handing out Jelly Belly samples. They had a special scooper that doled out exactly one jelly bean at a time. We got to taste a Very Cherry, a Kiwi, and a Pomegranate. I also visited the Jelly Belly sample bar (hooray for my parents, who held my place in line for me), where you can try everything they sell. Basically, you’re only limited by your shame. I tried a dark chocolate Jelly Belly (a sort of new flavor), a chocolate covered Sunkist fruit gem (not worth buying; the plain fruit gems are way better), an orange Jelly Slug (also not that great), and a lemon-lime Sport bean (super juicy!). And because I’m not a horrible daughter, I bought a little bag of buttered popcorn flavored Jelly Bellies for my patiently waiting parents, as that’s their favorite flavor.

Alas, photography was not allowed on the tour, so you’ll have to be content with their painted representation of the Jelly Belly making process. The tour basically walks you through the factory (you’re overhead on a walkway that has window cutouts at adult and kid-friendly heights) as you watch the Jelly Belly employees work. Each stop has featured video that’s introduced by your tour guide. When we visited, the panning room smelled strongly of buttered popcorn Jelly Bellys with a faintly fruity undertone (Tutti Frutti, perhaps?). I asked our guide, Desmond, if it always smelled like that, and he said the smells vary from day to day as they change the flavors of beans that they’re manufacturing.

At the end of the tour, we all got free mini bags of Jelly Bellys. My family also walked out with 3 bags of Jelly Belly Belly Flops (they were buy 2 get 1 free) in addition to the Bertie Bott’s and on sale Christmas candies I picked out for myself. If you’re ever in the San Francisco area, you should definitely make the Jelly Belly pilgrimage. It’s fun, and you get free Jelly Bellys out of it!

I have been searching for pomegranate Jelly Belly beans (BUY) ever since Cybele from Candy Blog reviewed them. I checked all the Jelly Belly selling places that I could think of, but to no avail. Finally, I discovered them in an unexpected place: the hospital gift shop. My doctor has an office at the hospital, and after my annual checkup, I decided to pop in the gift shop to see if they had candy. Not seeing any, I was on my way out when I noticed the Jelly Belly dispensers in the corner. Lo and behold, they had an entire dispenser just for the pomegranate beans! Hooray!

The beans are beautifully colored, and my camera didn’t do them justice. They’re a gorgeous shade of red with white and/or dark red splotches.

They taste good too. Honestly, I was a little disappointed at first taste because I had made these guys into my Holy Grail of candies. After a few more beans, however, I realized that my expectations were completely unreasonable. Just because the pomegranate beans didn’t send me to candy nirvana doesn’t mean that they’re not delicious.

They’re a little tart and super fruity, with a little hint of olfactory raspberry. While I usually hate that taste, in the pomegranate Jelly Belly it was light, understated, and it worked. I didn’t get a distinctively pomegranate flavor, but then again, I haven’t had an actual fresh pomegranate in years, so I don’t really remember what they’re supposed to taste like. Either way, the pomegranate Jelly Belly is a tasty flavor that will mix well with the other fruit-flavored Jelly Belly beans that they already sell.