Hotel Chocolat Buying Guide 2026: The 6 Best Drinking Chocolate

This is the product the rest of the range is built around. Pour in milk, add a sachet of chocolate flakes, turn the dial right for hot or left for cold, and the whisk melds them at around 68 to 70°C. The kit includes a Podcup, a Podglass and ten single serves, five hot and five cold. It was £99.95 when we read it, with £20 off a listed £119.95.

The 68 to 70°C setting is deliberate, and Hotel Chocolat’s own troubleshooting page has an entry for drinks that are not hot enough. Faults come up on Trustpilot too: one owner had two machines replaced in two years, another two that stopped working under guarantee, both replaced quickly. Keep the receipt, because it is the guarantee.

If you own a Velvetiser, this is the box to keep in the cupboard. Each of the ten sachets is real chocolate, cocoa solids first in the ingredients, at a minimum of 70%, and the label gives 27g of sugars per 100g. It is made in the UK with cocoa from Ghana, and it can be made vegan with a dairy-free milk, with the usual warning that it is produced alongside milk chocolate.

It rates well on the site from about fifty reviews. The complaints we could read are about value rather than taste. One subscriber noticed the sachets had dropped from 35g to 31g at the same price, and that the new packaging makes the 70% and 85% hard to tell apart. At roughly £1.50 a cup, it is a treat rather than a habit.

This is the cheapest way into Hotel Chocolat’s drinking chocolate, and the one we would start with if you do not own a Velvetiser. The pouch holds the same 70% dark flakes as the sachets, with 27g of sugars per 100g, and the page gives a hob method: 220ml of milk, about six heaped teaspoons of flakes, whisked over a medium heat for around four minutes without boiling. A steam wand works too.

It is new, with only a handful of on-site reviews, so there is little customer evidence either way. The page does not state how many cups a pouch makes. Some long-standing Trustpilot reviewers say the drinking chocolate tastes weaker than it used to, which a pouch at least lets you fix with an extra spoonful.

For people who find the Classic too mild, this is the next step. The cocoa solids rise to a minimum of 85%, the ingredients are just cocoa mass, cocoa butter, sugar and soya lecithin, and the label gives 14g of sugars per 100g against 27g for the 70%. Hotel Chocolat describes malty, biscuity notes from Ghanaian cacao.

It has the lowest average of the drinks we looked at, four stars from ten reviews, which tells you it divides people; this is a strong, dry cup. The same Trustpilot complaint applies as for the 70%: sachets reduced from 35g to 31g at the same price, with packaging that makes the two recipes look alike. Try one box before subscribing.

When you do not know what someone likes, this is the box. It mixes milk, dark, fruit and nut recipes, comes in an embossed box with a gift sleeve that doubles as a card, and you can choose a message wrap for birthdays, thank-yous and Christmas. It weighs 210g and rates well on the site from about twenty reviews.

The boxed chocolates draw most of Hotel Chocolat’s harshest Trustpilot reviews. Reviewers complain that boxes have shrunk while the price per chocolate has gone up, that favourites have been dropped in the redesign, and that some chocolates taste waxy or oily. One father’s day buyer said the new fruit box was missing half of what used to be in it. Buy it as a gift, not as a bargain.

Most supermarket calendars hold small moulded shapes. This one holds proper chocolates: 24 pralines, truffles and liqueurs, with Florentine, peanut butter, hazelnut praline, carrot cake and lemon cheesecake recipes named on the page, plus a salted espresso martini truffle with alcohol. It rates highly from nearly thirty on-site reviews and weighs 310g.

The Trustpilot complaint we found is from last year’s buyer of this calendar: only 15 different chocolates across the 24 days, so some repeat, and doors so awkward to open that they spoiled the daily treat. It contains alcohol, so check before giving it to anyone who avoids it.