BW, I have hard-wired smoke/heat alarms in the house and they, too, have batteries - so you don't die during a power cut is the rationale, I think. But yes, nails on blackboard annoying, esp when you can't prise the cover off to take the old battery out and have to wait until you can trap an unwary neighbour to do it.

Fingers crossed for Mildred's safe arrival and non-violence following Black and White Familiars' reunion.

Oh, she’s waiting!

That's bad news for us Sue as the smoke alarm in the new downstairs bedroom up north is also hard-wired (apparently they have to be now for building regs). It is about 20 feet up.

More chance of dying falling off a ladder trying to change it in our old age than dying in a fire methinks.

BW, a small crumb of comfort - mine, at least, are D-Cell (I think) - and are supposed to last for either 5 or 10 years. Having said that, only one smoke alarm out of two and a further heat alarm in the kitchen has screamed at me for a battery replacement and they were all done at the same time (approx 9 years ago) and the replacement was a year or so ago.... It also did a progressive chirp - the longer you ignored it, the more often it chirped at you so hopefully you would have a few days to catch a man and a big ladder before you resorted to shooting it.

That one was a PP9 (or whatever they call the cuboid batteries these days, I still think of batteries as HP7 and PP9s) Sue.

It lasted just 3 years and 7 months. You'd think they'd put rechargeable batteries in them that kept topped up from the electric supply, wouldn't you? The chances of finding a man and a ladder round here are zero, once Mr BW is beyond ladder climbing.

Very irregular reader and (I think) first time commenter here (over from DG). Sorry, this is not about smoke alarms.

I was reading your 11 May post about G&B hot chocolate, and comments there appear to be are closed. We have an old glass jar (best before 2016) into which we decant granules/powder from the cardboard tube.

You've given the ingredients as they are listed on a new tube we bought recently (best before 2024).

The second list appears to be about the same as the jar from 2016, when it was:

Organic Raw Cane Sugar †, Organic Fat-Reduced Cocoa Power † (28.6%), Organic Dark Chocolate (16.3%) (Organic Cocoa Mass †, Organic Raw Cane Sugar †, Organic Cocoa Butter †, Emulsifier (Soya Lecithin), Organic Vanilla Extract †. MINIMUM COCOA SOLIDS 60%). † = Fairtrade ingredients.

No tapioca starch, no potassium carbonate, and a bit clearer on almost all of the ingredients being both organic and fairtrade.

That is about the same as your second list.

Looking at the nutrition information panel, per 100g of dry powder, Energy has gone up from 1585 then to 1618 kJ now, Fat down from 9.2 to 6.6g, Protein up from 7.4 to 8.7g, and Carbohydrates up from 65.9 (62 sugar) to 67g (61g sugar).

Some but not too much additional sugar: perhaps cutting back on fat has made sugar more prominent in the flavour profile?

I wonder when they reformulated. I've not opened the new tube yet, and fear I may be disappointed when the last granules run out.

That is very interesting Andrew, thank you for going to the trouble of copying all that out.

The second list came from a grocery site, so probably the old formulation, as per your glass jar. Interesting that the energy count isn't a whole lot different, despite the change in the percentages of the different food groups.

I'll be interested to hear what you think when you open the new pack and granules become powder (and unlike DG I don't change the colour or font of comments not directly pertaining to a post. Largely because I can't on this outdated platform ;))

You are most welcome.

I've finished the last serving of granules over the last few days and started the new powder. My impression is that the new formulation is not noticeably sweeter, but it does seem a little less chocolatey, so perhaps a loss of that slightly bitter dark chocolate savouriness changes the impression of sweetness.

Still pretty good, but less impressive.