Bests & Worsts Reviews from Amazon

I'm an avid baker and amateur chocolatier, but I'd never purchased an expensive cocoa product before this. However, I'd started to have problems with the quality and baking reliability of store bought cocoas. I wanted a nice dark cocoa (dutch processed) because it tasted better than standard supermarket cocoas, but then the baked goods wouldn't rise correctly because of the increased alkalinity. (Flat brownies are frustrating!) Then I bought a new blended cocoa at my local supermarket that tasted just awful, so it was finally time to up the ante and shell out the big bucks for a decent tasting cocoa. Tough choice on Amazon if you've read some of the highly rated reviews, they vary among maybe 3-4 different favored brands with some fierce opinions! This particular product was loved by many but a few said it was clumpy or had no flavor or was inferior to the more expensive brands sold on Amazon. However, there was a limit to the number of $$$ I was willing to shell out so I gave this one a go. Once received, I opened the pouch and first took a deep sniff. My god, it has an actual cocoa smell, not just the smell of dust like supermarket cocoas! I was immediately optimistic, and set out to make a fairly basic chewy/fudgy cocoa brownie recipe, nothing special, no added ingredients like I usually throw in. Which I then promptly and thoroughly inhaled in less than 24 hours. HEAVENLY. The flavor was so gentle but noticeably chocolatey that I never feel the need to make a brownie recipe requiring baking chocolate again. I'm in love. This stuff is GREAT. The price point is not too bad compared to other organic raw cocoas sold here so I think it's a really nice starting point for the picky baker. I'm never going back to supermarket cocoa again. Now I gotta up my ante on the chocolate chips for my cookies as well.... if anyone has a recommendation, put it in the comments. Oh, the "reclosable" ziploc top is pretty much unusable, but this stuff was so good I'm not even taking off a star. Happy eating!!