Humphry Slocumbe - Salted Caramel Cocoa Nib

Salted Caramel Cocoa Nib - Salted Caramel Ice Cream with Cocoa Nibs

Today is the last pint from my four-pint shipment from the San Francisco-based Humphry Slocumbe brand.  This flavor is called Salted Caramel Cocoa Nib.  This is an interesting twist on the salted caramel pint.  Some flavors add chocolate to complement the salted caramel.  This pint goes so far as to add use cocoa nibs -- the unprocessed part of the cacao plant from which cocoa is extracted.  They are kind of like the chocolate version of coffee beans.  I've reviewed two pints with cocoa nib mix-ins before.  This should be fun.

The top of the pint is a bright orangeish brown color.  I suppose brown is simply dark orange, so maybe I am being redundant?  Anyhow, there are a lot of cocoa nibs visible up top.  I've seen chocolate chips with that density, but not cocoa nibs.  Digging in, the caramel is quite salty.  I did a tour of salted caramel flavors earlier this summer and this caramel would rank as one of the saltier implementations.  It is quite delicious.  The cocoa nibs are quite crunchy and have a bit of a salty/bitter bite to them.  The coffee bean analogy works here.  There are quite a bit of them throughout the bit.  This is a crunchy pint.

This is a bold and well-done flavor.  The caramel is quite salty and flavorful and the cocoa nibs are abundant and crunchy.  After a few subtler-than-expected pints, I now see where Humphry Slocumbe's reputation for boldness comes from.  I eat a lot of ice cream, so I enjoyed the variation that cocoa nibs provide, but occasional eaters would note that the nibs do not actually deliver as much chocolate flavor as good old chocolate chips, flakes and chunks.  People who like their caramel salty and are enjoy chocolate in nib form will like this.