Why Are Chocolate and Berry so Different Than Vanilla?

Experiences
1

I’ve gone through a few bags of vanilla v1.0, and I find the taste and consistency pleasant. With vanilla v1.1, it seems that not much has changed. But, the consistency and flavor of chocolate and berry (v1.1) are so different than that of vanilla that I find it hard to believe there wasn’t something wrong with my batch. It’s almost as though I got some mislabeled bags of gluten-free chocolate and berry in place of regular.

The choc/berry have a very different consistency than the vanilla. They are much thinner than the vanilla at the same water to Huel ratio. At first, I thought I would just use less water to achieve the desired consistency, but that intensifies the strange new sweet/bitterness far too much. Which is the other difference.

These two flavors have a sharp bitter/sweetness to them that becomes far too intense when concentrated. Additionally, there is also a notable lack of grainy, oaty flavor. Chocolate and berry taste empty in the background, completely lacking the wholesome oaty fullness of the vanilla. It’s as though the machine that made these bags malfunctioned and accidentally replaced one of the basic grains with a ton of artificial sweetener.

Both the watery consistency and lack of bready flavor are what I imagine the gluten-free flavors would be like. However, I haven’t had the gluten-free to compare. Has anyone here had both regular and gluten-free to confirm or deny this?

What happened here? Was there actually a problem? I can’t figure out why the only difference wouldn’t be the relatively small substitution of added flavors. Thanks to Huel’s poor return and replacement policy, I’m stuck with these. I suppose they will be good diet food, since I’ll only want them if I’m dying of hunger. At least good, old vanilla Huel is still great, and if I want chocolate, the rival brand which shall not be named does it wonderfully (that’ll probably get me banned).

2

I have eaten both the regular and gluten free version of Vanilla Huel 1.0 (Amazon had the gluten free), as well as regular and gluten free U/U Huel. I am unable to detect a taste difference between regular and U/U of the respective flavors.

Huel does not contain any wheat. And Oates do not contain gluten. However, the regular version of Huel has oats that were processed at a facility that also happens to process wheat. Therefore there’s a very small chance it may contain gluten in trace amounts. So they cannot certify that as gluten-free. hence they offer a gluten-free version where the oats are made at a separate facility. It cost a little more but people with celiac disease can consume it safely.

3

I’m sorry to hear you’re not a fan of chocolate or berry Jake! There is no difference in taste between the standard and gluten-free versions, the gluten-free oats are simply grown and processed in a gluten-free environment to ensure there is no contamination.

Both the vanilla and chocolate use stevia and sucralose for the sweetener system on top of their respective flavors which berry uses just sucralose. The difference in the amount of sweetener used is minor.

Personally, I do find there to be less of an oaty flavor compared to vanilla I put this down to vanilla complementing the vanilla flavour more. The watery consistency is odd.

One of the Customer Experience team can advise you further on this shortly.