Chocolate Milk – the unsung hero, the quencher of everyday thirst, the big brother of vanilla and less quirky than its strawberry sister – let’s talk about it.
In my humble opinion, this is a drink a that doesn't get the recognition for what it is. Chocolate Milk is a real lifesaver for the common folks like you and me.
Which is why we at YAMU got curious, who makes the best of these?
Knowledge for its sake, we went scouring for your day to day chocolate milk in local supermarkets and a few kadeys – the places that you'd normally find them. We tried to find as many as we can from different brands, tried them out and paid attention to what they taste like and how they differ from each other.
These are the contenders in this taste-off.
| Brand | Volume (ml) | Price (Rs.) |
|---|---|---|
| Ambeweka Kiddos | 160 | 40 |
| Anchor Newdale | 180 | 50 |
| Daily Chocolate | 200 | 50 |
| Richlife | 180 | 50 |
| Kothmale | 180 | 50 |
| Highland Packet | 180 | 35 |
| Elephant House | 190 | 50 |
| Highland Bottle | 250 | 80 |
So here's what went down.
#8. Ambewela Kiddos
Ambewela has a huge 1l chocolate milk carton that is seen in almost every supermarket. Since you are unlikely to gulp down 1l carton by yourself, we didn’t include that here.
But we did come across this one, named Kiddos. In a very kiddish packaging with an obvious demographic in mind. When we tasted it, however, it made us wonder whether they were kidding.
The chocolate flavour here was so synthetic, almost to the point that it tasted like plastic. Even the milk tasted like it had been watered down. We don’t know why any kid would drink this unless they have never tasted anything else, or any adult who’d recommend this. Fun feedback I got from our team was that it tasted like "Jeevani" mixed with chocolate, instead of that orange zing in it.
#7. Anchor Newdale Chocolate Flavoured Milk
We were quite surprised by this one's artificial flavour. It was bordering on being plasticy. While it did have a strong chocolatey flavour and had enough sweetness to go along with it, the subtle sour aftertaste caught us off-guard. This sourness was very, very mild, but the sour flavour in a pasteurised milk is bound to give you a long pause and make you take a look at the packaging. We did, and the packaging was quite nice, and not being expired was a plus.
#6. Daily Chocolate Flavoured Milk
We couldn't get the amount of chocolaty flavour we’d have liked here. The sweetness and milkiness didn't seem all that harmonious either. Even though the other elements weren’t overpowering, the chocolate flavour is more like an afterthought which produced the unbalanced characteristic.
#5. Richlife Chocolate Milk
Richlife had a rich milky flavour which was just a little bit thicker in comparison to the rest. The downside of this was the milkiness suffocating the chocolate flavour which dropped its fun factor. This could serve as a plain straight-forward chocolate drink for your needs if you don’t fuss about the flavours too much.
#4. Kothmale Chocolate Flavoured Milk
Kothmale essentially took chocolate flavour, along with the cocoa powder, mixed it up with sugar and turned it up high heaven. The sugar content is quite dominating, but not in an annoying way. Yes, it's sweet, but in a weird way, it that flavour quite works out with the rest.
However, now we know why all the kids in school were so hyped up after the interval.
#3. Highland Chocolate Flavoured Milk
Chocolate Milk packet from Highland steals the spot for being the best bang for the buck. With the exception of being a bit hard to come across, you can get an inoffensive flavour here.
Nothing here could overwhelm you – everything is well balanced. It's pleasingly refreshing and captures the essence of their in-house flavour profile. Make sure to check out a Highland outlet if you cannot find it down the closest supermarket.
#2. Elephant House Chocolate Flavored Milk
Elephant House came up with a pleasant surprise with their handy milk box. It barely snatches the second spot in this list for just being weirdly tasty. First, this is chocolate milk, but we got hints of malt and almost a smokey taste. This could be from their pasteurization method, but hey, fluke or no, this gives a rather eventful depth to the flavour that other contenders lack. It was such quirky goodness, that my colleague ended up literally praising God while drinking it.
#1. Highland Chocolate Flavoured Sterilized Milk
All hail the long-reigning king. If there’s any sterilised milky drink in Sri Lanka that is actually worth going the distance just to get a taste of, this is it.
Highland has done a good job keeping their signature kal kiri taste in this bottle. One of the more obvious aspects of this drink is how it doesn't taste artificial. It has just the right amount of sweetness that balances out the smooth chocolatey flavour. While it does have a hint of powdery texture, it’s not too much so it won't bother anyone. The only issue with these is that they are a bit hard to come across and even if you do, you can hardly take the bottle away from the premises since Highland outlets are more or less instructed to not let you.
Conclusion
It’s not easy to hold down milk from different brands at once, especially while cleaning your palate every time. But we did and we are surprised and awed from what we observed. While we are sure you have your own favourite or maybe you know of something we missed, do let us know in the comments.
