Everything feels ok and it goes down the hatch without a fight, but it's light on flavor. It’s averagely sweet, salty, and creamy, but there’s no punch to the cocoa at all.
Lactel Max Chocolat UHT
Thick and dense, especially for a boxed drink, but also sweet and plenty chocolaty. It’s creamy, but not overly ‘milky’— it feels a little heavy for milk, and the flavor is akin to chocolate candy, albeit good chocolate candy.
Candia Viva Chocolat
Nicely chocolaty with nothing else (texture or flavor-wise) that detracts materially from the experience. The sweetness plays its supporting role rather well, enhancing the cocoa flavor rather than overpowering it.
Paturages Lait Chocolat
Strong cocoa flavor, paired with more-than-ample sweetness and cream to create an indulgent-feeling chocolaty boisson. The texture is a tad on the starchy-feeling side, but overall it’s a very flavorful experience that far exceeds the UHT version.
Paturages Lait Chocolate UHT
Inauthentic oily/watery texture is its biggest drawback. The flavor is decently sweet and chocolaty, but is whisked away too quickly by the unnatural medium in which it is contained.
Temple Dairy Chocolate Milk
Excellent creamy flavor that transcends the limits of what you’d think its fat content could produce. It’s buttery, with mature cocoa flavor and a clean finish that keeps you coming back for more.
Dunnes Chocolate Milk
Strongly sour cocoa flavor that dominates the experience, in part due to the noticeably dialed-back sweetness (a welcome feature). You can taste the sourness well beyond the swallow, and while very unique, it was the only thing I didn’t care for.
Kinetica Milk Protein Chocolate
Either a bitter fruitiness or a fruity bitterness greets you on the first sip and instantly manifests as regret. That’s more than $0.01 per mL— provided you drink the whole bottle. Pretty sure you won’t want to.
Weider Muscle Protein Smooth Chocolate
Thick and dense feeling, but pleasantly undersweet and carries enough chocolate taste to warrant the claim. It’s also very chalky, which renders more in the aftertaste than upfront.
Avonmore Chocolate Protein Milk
Milky and salty, but not quite malty or chocolaty. The artificial sweeteners are there if you look for them, but the smoothness greatly enhances the drinkability and makes sucralose less likely to be noticed.
Mooju Fresh Chocolate Milk
Super smooth and malty with a salty snap that both marks the end of each sip and creates desire for the next.
Moovers Tasty Chocolate Milk
Sweet with a tiny bit of ‘tang’— reminiscent of a cheap barbecue sauce. Beyond that, it’s decently creamy and has a milky texture that won’t set off any additional alarms.
Dunn's River Nurishment Active Chocolate
Hides the fortification well and despite a noticeable density, it manages to deliver a natural-ish consistency, and creamy, balanced flavor that doesn’t skew too heavily in any particular direction. You could do a lot worse in the ‘recovery’ drink market from a taste standpoint.
Kakaomaelk Cocoa
A brilliant concoction perfectly demonstrating how cocoa, sweetness, saltiness, and cream can be delivered from just 3 simple ingredients. I had the misfortune of busting a bottle on a Pimlico sidewalk, but found solace in knowing that a colony of ants will have its collective mind blown.
Delamere Dairy Chocolate Milk
Smooth milky texture and a slightly sour (not in a bad way) cocoa flavor that you will appreciate a little more with each sip. The chocolate component settles quickly, so remember to shake between applications.
Nrich Chocolate Milk Drink
Rich, coffee brown in color, super dense feel, and a sweet, unoffensive melted caramel flavor that is milder than you may initially expect. It’s similar in feel and taste to sweetened condensed milk, and does well to hide much of the fortification contained therein.
Bounty
Pale, smooth, lightly sweet and decently coconutty. There’s no identifiable chocolate flavor (the Bounty candy bar is chocolate-covered), so it tastes like watered-down coconut milk, which is still pretty good. But as a chocolate milk, this is not to be taken seriously.
Funtime Chocolate Milk
Earthy cocoa presence with not much else to pick up the slack. The flavor dissipates quickly which suggests a watery base. I'm sure 29 pence doesn't buy what it used to.
Coop Chocolate Milk (189mL)
Cardboard flavor and aftertaste make for a highly unsatisfying experience. Who at Coop thinks this tastes like chocolate milk?
Best-in Milk It! Chocolate Milk Shake
100% rotten-- even shelf-stable milk has its limits. Took a big swig of this and had to run to the sink, unfortunately, most of the mouthful went down the hatch. I’ll update this review if I can get a non-spoiled version.