Hi-Chew Premium – Yuzu

You may wonder why I do so many reviews that include citrus flavours when I very obviously do not enjoy them. To you I say, life is all about balance. While I may not love citrus, I do feel that it helps to balance out other flavours. After all, how boring would life be if everything was just sweet and there was no sour to go with it? Flavours are like life, it varies and to limit yourself to just one or two would be doing yourself an injustice. Except durian though. You don’t have to experiment with that flavour if you don’t enjoy it. No one would blame you.

Hi-Chew premium is just a variation on the classic candy we know and love – it comes in a small pouch and each piece a small spherical ball that houses the soft chewy taffy inside. I’m not clear on if it’s premium because it’s more difficult to manufacture this versus the standard pieces, or the flavour is different, but I can tell you it comes out to be a premium price because the amount you get is definitely less than a standard stick of twelve pieces. I don’t even know if a single pouch has 12 balls in it.

These things smell very distinctly of yuzu. For those who haven’t experience yuzu, the smell can be best described as cross between a grapefruit peel and an lemon peel. The aroma isn’t as strong, and while distinct isn’t offensive in any way. I could see myself getting some air fresheners of this. It’s got a bright feel to it, kind of like a lemon.

While I don’t tend to clamor for citrus, I find yuzu flavours to be a nice complex balance of tart, sour and bitter in a good way that I tend to enjoy it more than a lot of sour lemon or lime flavours. This is no different – the flavour is distinct yuzu, and is hard to confuse for anything else. It has just enough sweetness to keep me coming back for more, but not enough to overpower the many flavour notes that yuzu fruits have. Out of all the citrus flavours I find yuzu to be the most intriguing, largely because I try to benchmark it against the few citrus options available to us here in the frigid north.

The texture is more mochi like and somewhat soft than the more firm, taffy texture of the traditional stick format. I find that both have their strengths – these ones are a lot easier to eat and much softer, but don’t last as long as the stick formats. If price were taken out of the equation, it would be tough for me to choose one over the other, as I like them both quite a bit. For this particular flavour, I feel like I enjoyed this more than the stick yuzu flavours I’ve had before.

As I often mention, citrus is not my thing. But I also don’t hate it, so if the opportunity presents itself and I’m feeling peckish for something that tickles the sour or tart part of my brain, I wouldn’t mind grabbing this if it’s nearby and readily available.