When the dragon breathes...

Brach's Dragon Jelly Beans

Brach's dragon jelly beans

With Easter only a few days away, I’m having a heckuva time keeping up ith all the different bags of jelly beans that show up on store shelves. At the moment, there are three different open bags on the shelf and a fourth is waiting to be opened. And I haven’t even bought any Unicorn Jelly Beans yet!



What I did buy, however, is a little bag of (miniature) Brach’s Dragon Jelly Beans. No kidding: dragons for Easter! What the beans actually are, however, is another foray into the world of gourmet jelly beans, with a total of four different “custom” flavors. The beans themselves are gourmet-sized with a medium-soft candy shell on a translucent jellied-sugar core. As is typical of pseudo-gourmet beans, the flavoring is entirely in the shell. That being said, they’re still pretty good. The flavors are,

Chocolate Pudding: as you might expect, this bean comes in its own plain, dark-brown rapper. It tastes pretty much like the pudding you make from a box: if you like Jell-o pudding, you’ll probably like these. Dragon Fruit: I had a hard time telling… these must be the pinkish ones that have a bit of a cinnamon rush, although not as fierce – it’s hard telling. In the aftertaste, they’re a bit astringent. Dragon’s Breath: I think this is the orangish-colored beans with red speckles. This one has distinct heat, though I can’t determine whether the flavor is capsaicin or cinnamon a la Atomic fireballs. Pear & Cherry: greenish with brick-colored speckles, there’s a base of pear flavoring overlaid with… something else. If it’s cherry, it’s tart cherry. Some, although not all, of these specimens also have a somewhat astringent aftertaste. Or maybe these are just pear, and the fifth color (dark red) is intended to be cherry (it pretty much is).

Brach’s could have helped by providing a color-coded legend on the packaging, but they didn’t. Still, the beans are above-average in taste and variety, and an interesting departure from the sometimes overly sweet beans (see Peeps, below). The seven-ounce bag cost about $2.00, putting them at about the price point of some true gourmet beans.

I give them a 3.5-star rating, which might be improved by removing some of the astringency from certain beans (they are perilously close to some Beanboozled® flavors) and perhaps expanding the range of flavors.

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