i was messing around with /u/skiddlzninja nana cream clone and think i messed something up with a couple very small additions. can anyone let me know if the % of TFA pineapple or TFA smooth is too high? his version was good, but i wanted to get just a little bit more out of it and thought that these 2 additions would help it and i think it ended up hurting it. thoughts? recommendations? is it a general rule to use a certain number of drops of TFA smooth instead of a set %? something just tastes weird to me in this, maybe the LA pineapple needs to mellow out a bit, even that low it seems to have almost killed the LA banana cream.
my recipe was as follows:
- 9% TFA strawberry (8% on original recipe)
- 5% LA banana cream
- 2% TFA quince
- 1% LA pineapple (not on original recipe)
- 1% TFA smooth (not on original recipe)
30mL 3mg 23pg/77vg
Add one ingredient at a time when you're tinkering with a recipe you already enjoy. I do believe that Smooth is the problem and I would remove it altogether
thank you for the help. i did see in another thread about the TFA smooth that some use it as 1 drop per 5mL so I will remove the TFA pineapple and use just a couple drops of the TFA smooth and see how that goes
So my understanding is that you've successfully remade the previous recipe without and strange aberrations? If that is the case, I would say do what /u/ThirdWorldOrder suggests. Add one ingredient at a time and see what happens. This way you can see what is going wrong. Then I would suggest trying to replace flavors.
Of course that could just be me being paranoid, but that's my thoughts on the matter. You're an alchemist now, sir. You must conduct your scientific endeavors laboriously, and meticulously. Otherwise your magnus opus may be corrupted.
> The Alchemist: Half-mad. Convinced that they (and they alone) can turn VG/PG into gold. Spends enough on flavoring to support a third-world village with food and clean water for a year. Secretly measures by celestial alignment. Steeps by lunar phase. Thinks like (and usually drinks like) a chef — which is to say irrationally (and in quantity). Typical recipe contains a minimum of eleven ingredients. No, make that twelve.
Source: http://redd.it/30jn1u
Don't go by a % basis with additives. Go by drops/10mL. I'd say to try 2/10mL Pineapple, and 1/10mL smooth.
In /u/fizzmustard's NC clone, which was the starting point for my recipe, he stated that pineapple was too strong, even at 1%, and that's why he went with dragonfruit.
And as an update to my original recipe, I've been doing some work with trying to narrow down a better flavor to replace Quince/dragonfruit/apple&pear. I took all the ingredient lists from TFA for the flavors that either smell like they may be in it, or people say it tastes like might be in the authentic. I put them into an excel document, used a function to get rid of the unique ingredients in each flavor, and created a comprehensive list of ingredients that are shared between the possible flavors. I then removed any common ingredients like Ethyl Maltol, Maltol, and Hexane. Once those were out of the way, there were 4-5 volatiles that were in more than half of the flavors evaluated. After using the CAS# search in the spec sheet list on the 4-5 volatiles, I found one flavor that contains ~80% of the volatiles searched- TFA Apricot. I haven't tried it yet, but it'll be on my next order, and will post an update if it works well.
For anyone wondering, the flavors I used as reference were pineapple, dragonfruit, kiwi, quince, green apple, and pear.
Thanks for the update! I happen to have some TPA Apricot so will try it out. They make a great tasting apricot that tastes awesome with Coconut. Do you think it's there instead of the Quince or in addition to it?
Instead of quince; I'd like to be able to search more than one vendor, but no one has the ingredients list like TFA :/
I just started DIYing, so I might be completely wrong, but: You increased the amount of flavours from the original 15% (which is already a lot) to 18% (which is most likely too much).
Try to get the total down again, keeping the same ratios, i.e. multiply by 15/18=0.8333 or smaller. e.g. by 0.8:
- 7.2% SB
- 4% BC
- 1.6% Q
- 0.8% PA
- 0.8% Sm
p.s. just read /u/Botboy141's link to "The 5 Personality Types of DIYers". It has this one: > The Naif: Annoying. Mixes everything starting at 20%. [...]
(although you are not annoying ;)
Some flavors are weaker than others. For example, TFA Blueberry extra & wild are both weak and I use them upwards of 10%. TFA coconut & banana ripe are the opposote. They are both very strong and I use them at sub 1%. There is no set number for a good overall flavor percentage. Some of my recipes total 18%, some total 4% flavor. Just something to keep in mind.