Is Higher Cacao Percentage Better?
A higher cacao percentage does not automatically mean better chocolate. It means more of the bar comes from cacao-derived ingredients and less from sugar, which generally produces a darker, less sweet chocolate with a more pronounced cocoa character. But percentage says nothing about how well the cacao was grown, fermented or made into chocolate. A well-made 55% chocolate, from good cacao handled with skill at every stage, can be more enjoyable and distinctive than a poorly made 90% chocolate. The right percentage is ultimately a matter of taste: a higher percentage may suit you better if you want less sweetness and more cacao character, but it is not inherently better chocolate.
Is Higher Cacao Percentage Better In More Detail
To understand what cocoa percentages mean see: What Does Cacao Percentage Mean?
Why might a lower percentage actually taste better?
Sugar isn’t always used as a cheap way to bulk out chocolate to meet a price point. In a well-made bar, particularly in craft chocolate, it can be a deliberate balancing ingredient, calibrated against the specific character of the cacao being used. That calibration can be exactly what makes a lower-percentage bar the better choice for a particular origin.
At MayHawk, we recognise that some cacao is naturally intense: high in astringent tannins, sharply acidic, or carrying flavour notes that can read as harsh rather than interesting on their own. Pushed to a very high percentage, with correspondingly little sugar to balance it, that intensity can dominate everything else, leaving a bar that’s technically “more cacao” but genuinely less enjoyable to eat. The same cacao, made into a well-judged 55% or 60% bar, can allow its character, fruit, spice and floral notes, to come through clearly, with enough sugar to soften the edges without masking them entirely.
This is a recipe decision, one we research diligently at MayHawk, not a shortcut or a way of making chocolate cheaper. A skilled maker chooses the percentage to suit the specific batch of cacao in front of them, rather than defaulting to the highest number the beans can technically support. Chasing percentage as a goal in itself can lead to a bar at 85% or 90% that the cacao was never really suited to, sharp and difficult to eat, when the same beans made into a 60% bar might have been genuinely excellent.
None of this means low-percentage chocolate is automatically good either. Cheap, poorly fermented and over-roasted cacao made into a low-percentage bar is still poor cacao with more sugar around it. The point is that percentage on its own tells you surprisingly little about the eating experience in either direction. What matters is whether the percentage suits the cacao, not whether it’s high.
Does a higher percentage mean a healthier chocolate?
Internally MayHawk has done a lot of research on this topic, and the answer is not straightforward, so it’s worth breaking it down. The compounds most often linked to dark chocolate’s potential health benefits are called flavanols, they are a type of polyphenol found naturally within the cacao itself. So it’s natural to think that more cacao simply means more flavanols, and therefore a healthier chocolate. That instinct isn’t wrong exactly, it’s just incomplete.
Here’s the part that usually gets missed: the percentage claim on the chocolate bar packaging tells you how much of the bar comes from cacao bean derived ingredients, but not what those ingredients are, or how much of their original flavanol content remains. Cocoa butter contains very little of the flavanols found in cocoa solids, so adding more of it can occupy part of the headline cacao percentage without adding the same amount of flavanol-containing material. Processing matters too: fermentation, roasting and particularly alkalisation, the Dutch-processing covered elsewhere in this set, can all reduce flavanol content.
At MayHawk we find the easiest way to see this is to use examples:
- Bar A: 70% cacao, made from 65g cacao mass and 5g added cocoa butter. Most of its cacao percentage comes from cacao mass, which contains the cocoa solids where flavanols are found.
- Bar B: 70% cacao, made from 45g cacao mass, 15g added cocoa butter and 10g cocoa powder. With less cacao mass than Bar A, and part of its percentage coming from cocoa powder rather than cacao mass, the composition of its cocoa solids is different before we even consider how that powder was processed. If the powder is alkalised, its flavanol content is lower still.
- Bar C: 65% cacao, made with cacao that has been fermented and roasted carefully, without alkalised cocoa powder. Despite the lower headline percentage, it could retain more flavanols than either Bar A or Bar B, depending on the cacao and how each bar was processed.
So a 70% chocolate is not automatically a better source of flavanols than a 65% chocolate. A high-percentage bar can contain a substantial amount of cocoa butter and cocoa powder, and its cacao may have undergone processing that has reduced its flavanol content. Percentage is a clue, not an answer. This comparison is about the potential health benefits of the chocolate, not the flavour profile of each bar. See: What Does Cacao Percentage Mean?
It’s also worth being honest about what “healthier” is really being asked to mean here. Chocolate, whatever the percentage, is still something to enjoy rather than a health product, and no number on a wrapper changes that. What a higher percentage reliably gives you is less sugar per bar, which is a real, separate consideration, distinct from anything to do with flavanols.
At MayHawk we go into this properly, the actual research, what it shows and where it’s still uncertain, in our dedicated piece on the subject. If this is something you’re genuinely weighing up, it’s worth reading in full rather than relying on percentage as a shortcut: see Does Dark Chocolate Have Health Benefits?
Does a higher percentage mean the chocolate is more bitter or harder to eat?
It can do, and of everything covered on this page, this is probably the relationship between percentage and the eating experience that holds up most reliably.
Sugar balances cacao’s natural bitterness and astringency, and the higher the percentage climbs, the less sugar there is available to do that job. A 90% bar has only 10% of its weight left for sugar, and anything else, compared with 45% weight left on a 55% bar. Whatever bitterness, tannin and acidity the cacao naturally carries therefore has far less sweetness standing between it and your palate.
It’s the same reasoning behind why a lower percentage can sometimes taste better, covered earlier on this page, just pointing the other way. Take a naturally intense cacao and push it to 90%, and it will generally taste sharper and harder to eat than the same beans made into a 65% bar, simply because there is less sugar available to balance what the cacao brings with it.
It’s also worth separating two sensations that people often lump together as “bitter”, because they aren’t the same thing.
- Bitterness is a taste, influenced by compounds including alkaloids such as theobromine.
- Astringency is different: that dry, mouth-puckering sensation comes from tannins and other polyphenols interacting with proteins in your saliva. It can become increasingly noticeable as the percentage rises, although the cacao itself and how it has been processed make a considerable difference.
Here’s where it gets genuinely interesting, and where most explanations and research we have read stop short. Some of the compounds associated with astringency are also closely related to the flavanols discussed earlier, the compounds most often associated with the potential health benefits of dark chocolate. They belong to the same broader family of flavan-3-ol compounds.
So when a maker works to make a chocolate less astringent, there can be a trade-off: reducing some of the compounds responsible for that sensation can also reduce some of the compounds that contribute to the nutritional interest of cacao. Make it easier to eat, and you’re often trading away some of what’s good for you.
That doesn’t mean astringency is something we should simply leave in the chocolate. Excessive astringency can overwhelm the flavour and make an otherwise good cacao unpleasant to eat.
At MayHawk, our conching profiles are designed to find that balance. We aren’t trying to eliminate every trace of tannin or polyphenol content, nor are we trying to preserve every compound regardless of the eating experience. We work the chocolate for long enough to soften harsh astringency and allow the character of the cacao to develop, while retaining as much of its natural character as the process allows. It’s a judgement made fresh for each batch of cacao, rather than a fixed setting. The main question we ask about each chocolate recipe is, “what are we trying to achieve?”
Percentage determines how much sugar, or sweetener, or other ingredients are available to balance what the cacao mass brings with it. What happens after that, in terms of experience and craft, is down to the maker.
Is there a percentage ceiling where quality actually drops?
For most cacao, there is probably a point beyond which increasing the percentage stops improving the chocolate, and may make it less enjoyable. It’s worth being honest about that rather than pretending that higher is always achievable if the maker is skilled enough. At MayHawk, in the early years, this was something we carefully researched through iterations of recipes, and came to the conclusion that chocolate needed to be enjoyable while stripping out the unnecessary additions of industrial chocolate. Our range of chocolate reflects these decisions, with our darkest, two- or three-ingredient chocolates retaining some of the cacao’s natural tannic character even after the conching profiles have been applied.
In well-made chocolate, sugar isn’t only there for sweetness. It contributes to the texture and balance of the finished chocolate, affecting how it feels on the palate, how it melts and how the other characteristics of the cacao are perceived. As the percentage climbs towards 100%, there is less and less sugar available to provide that balance, and eventually none at all. A 100% bar contains no sugar whatsoever: simply cacao mass and, depending on the recipe, possibly some added cocoa butter.
That has real consequences. Without sugar to soften the edges, whatever bitterness, astringency and acidity the cacao carries arrives largely unbuffered. Even genuinely excellent cacao, carefully fermented and skilfully roasted, can taste harsh and difficult at 100%, not because anything was necessarily done wrong, but because there is nothing left to balance or sweeten it.
Texture changes too. The balance of cacao mass, cocoa butter and sugar has a considerable effect on how chocolate behaves during manufacture and on the final mouthfeel. At very high percentages, there is less sugar in the recipe to contribute to that familiar combination of smoothness, sweetness and melt, which is part of why a well-made 90% or 100% chocolate can feel quite different from a 70% or 80%.
None of this means 90% or 100% chocolate can’t be worth making. At MayHawk, we know there is a real audience for that uncompromising, unsweetened experience. For people deliberately reducing their sugar intake, the shrinking amount of sugar at the top of the range can also be a genuine practical reason to choose it, quite apart from flavour. At this point, a high-percentage chocolate made from a single-origin or single-estate cacao begins to invite a different way of tasting it. Much like a good red wine, the character of the origin, the raw material and the way it has been handled become increasingly important to the experience.
That isn’t itself a health recommendation, cacao still carries calories and fat regardless of percentage, but it is a legitimate reason why someone might deliberately choose a very high-percentage bar. The point is that the path becomes narrower as the percentage rises. At MayHawk, when we’ve explored the very top end of the scale, it has been a deliberate exploration of that narrower path, rather than an assumption that higher automatically means better.
When does buying a lower percentage chocolate make more sense?
There are plenty of times, particularly as a way of exploring the work of your favourite chocolate makers. Gifting is probably the clearest case. Someone who mostly eats milk chocolate is unlikely to thank you for a 90% bar, however carefully sourced the cacao behind it. A 60% or 65% bar, or a dark-milk sitting just above the halfway point, gives them genuine cacao character without asking them to make a leap they weren’t ready for.
There’s a similar logic for anyone easing themselves into darker chocolate rather than starting there. Jumping straight from a supermarket milk chocolate to a 90% single-origin bar is a considerable shift in flavour and texture. It can put someone off dark chocolate altogether, when the real problem was the size of the jump, not dark chocolate itself. Working upwards gradually from 60%, then 70%, then further if it appeals, can build a genuine appreciation rather than leaving someone with a single overwhelming experience.
Dark-milk chocolate exists in exactly this space too, and it’s worth mentioning here rather than assuming it only belongs on the milk chocolate side of the conversation. Sitting above 50%, it carries genuine cacao character while retaining enough milk and sugar to remain approachable. It isn’t a compromise so much as a different balance.
And sometimes a lower percentage simply suits the cacao better, as discussed earlier on this page. Some origins are naturally intense enough that restraint gets more out of them than pushing the percentage higher ever would.
None of this means you should force yourself to enjoy a chocolate simply because someone says it is better, or because its percentage is higher. But nor should a number on the wrapper become a reason not to try something new. If a chocolate maker whose work you enjoy makes a bar at 55%, 65%, 85% or 100%, the percentage is an invitation to discover what they have done with that cacao, not a threshold you need to agree with before you taste it.
Guide: Which cocoa percentage is best for me?
There’s no single best cocoa percentage, it depends on how much you want the taste of cacao itself to lead, rather than sweetness and creaminess.
- Dark chocolate: A good dark chocolate, made with a short ingredient list, is sold from 60% to 100%. Our advice is to start at around 70%. At that level, the cocoa’s own flavour, fruit, spice, or floral notes depending on origin, comes through clearly without being overwhelmed by sugar. Moving up to 85% or 100% intensifies that character further, giving a bolder, more direct experience of the bean, though it also means less sugar to soften any sharpness in the cacao itself. See: What Is Dark Chocolate?
- Milk to dark-milk chocolate: For a good milk chocolate, look for 37% to 60% cocoa solids. Many milk chocolates on the market sit toward the lower end of that range, but 40% and above is where the cocoa genuinely starts to lead rather than the sugar, giving a noticeably more chocolatey flavour without losing the characteristic creaminess. From around 40% up to roughly 50%, the balance sits as classic milk chocolate, creamy and sweet with the cocoa clearly present. Above 50%, it moves into dark-milk chocolate, where the cacao’s own character becomes more pronounced while the milk keeps the texture smooth. See: What Is Milk Chocolate?
- White chocolate: Look for at least 35% cocoa butter, well above the 20% legal minimum. White chocolate contains no cocoa solids at all, so it never develops the traditional cocoa flavour that dark or milk chocolate carries. Its character depends heavily on the quality of the cocoa butter, alongside the milk, sugar and how the chocolate is made. Below 35%, there is simply less cocoa butter contributing to that character, and the balance can tip further towards tasting like sweetened milk rather than chocolate. See: What Is White Chocolate?
Does a higher percentage always mean a better bar? No, and this holds regardless of which type of chocolate is preferred. Percentage measures quantity, not quality, it says how much came from the cacao bean, not how well that cacao was grown, fermented, or made into chocolate.