So it's been a little while since I posted my A Real Nightmare clone. I've received some incredibly positive feedback, and I'm grateful to here that folks are enjoying my recipe. Since then, I've still been working at it, listening to suggestions from members of this community and working on making if better. /u/_Bombies made a post recently releasing the results of testing for acetoin, diacetyl and AP, and as a result said that Bacco B and A Real Nightmare would be slowly phasing out, so I want to get this recipe AS CLOSE AS POSSIBLE before he nixes the juice on the chance that he won't release the recipe. Without further delay, here is the updated clone:
(CAP) Dutch Chocolate Mint - 4.5%
(LA) Mint Chocolate Chip - 2.5%
(FA) Cookie - 2%
(TFA) Graham Cracker - 3%
(TFA) Mild Black - 2.5%
(CAP) Root Beer - 1.5%
(TFA) Double Chocolate (Dark) - 2%
(TFA) Coffee - 0.5%
(TFA) Espresso - 0.5%
(TFA) Smooth - 1 drop/ 5 mL
On to the notes:
Going back to my notes on cloning, I'll touch up on sight, smell and taste.
Sight: same color; juice looks the same. Done here.
Smell: Much better, the coffee mutes the mint just a touch, but adds to the cookie smell that I talked about in the original thread, and brings it closer and closer.
Taste: The taste is overall much better. There were some certain flaws with my recipe, so I had to flip the script a little bit and switch it up.
So I dropped TFA Fudge Brownie completely. I love that flavor, and in my personal preference, i like it in the clone, so I put some in for personal use. Though I'm really thinking it's not there, and there's more of a presence of Double Chocolate (Dark). I'm gonna try a little switcharoo here next time I make a batch and sub Fudge Brownie in for Double Chocolate (Dark) just to see what happens.
Listening to the feedback from the community, more than one person suggested a tiny bit more mint. I bumped the percentages up each the mint chocolate flavors by half a percent, and it works. It was also suggested that the tobacco be a little bit higher with the root beer a little lower, and voila, this is where I'm at now. It's good. The root beer takes more of a back seat to the tobacco, which is how it is in the real deal as well.
But I was still missing that bite that helped the cookie flavor profile, and I didn't quite know what to do. I was looking at the product description for ARN, about to buy some, and I decided to read the consumer reviews. A few people mentioned coffee. BAM. I hadn't even considered coffee as I don't get any coffee to stand out in the real deal. But it made some sense. I bought a few samplers of a few types of coffee and made about 6 iterations using singles and combos. 0.5% of each TFA coffee and TFA espresso is the closest. It could be an entirely different coffee flavor, I'm not sure. But the addition of coffee has complemented the cookie and mint chocolate flavors so well, that I'm certain that punk uses some sort of coffee flavor in his recipe.
At any rate, this is where I'm at. I love this community and everyone in it, and I'm glad I've contributed something that people enjoy. I'll continue to work on this clone and take feedback and suggestions from members of this community and hope that some folks make some progress as well. Enjoy!
Great work so far. I look forward to trying this out in the future.
Thanks! If you ever do get to whip this up, shoot me a pm and let me know what you think! My favorite part about posting recipes is hearing what folks think and listening to suggestions.
We are close to the same page after our last conversation. I bumped MCC and DCM 0.5%, upped Cookie 0.5%, dropped GC 1.0%, upped MB 1.0%, dropped RB 0.5%, dropped Fudge Brownie 0.5%. I will post my current working recipe when I get home from work. I will definitely try dropping the Fudge Brownie altogether and see how that pans out.
Coffee? Hmm. Could be. Of course, I am all out of ARN original at the moment. And of course, I have no coffee flavorings. But I do have 300ml of the work-in-progress! Just made another 100ml with slight variations last night, needs about one week to cure.
I am also thinking that Mild Black is definitely not the tobacco flavoring in the original. Now, I really enjoy Mild Black, so it's all good to me, but I may try INW Chocolate Tobacco or INW Desert Voyager in the next batch.
I played around with a few of the corrections; there were a lot of them lol. The coffee flavors are a big improvement. You gotta add them in. As far as tobaccos go, I just got in like 10 different tobaccos from FA. INW and ECX. I'm gonna fool around with a couple of those as well.
I tried to make this with FA Coffee Espresso (0.25%) and FA Cappuccino (0.25%) instead of the TFA coffees. Huge mistake. I need to just throw these FA coffee flavors away. Everything else is GREAT though. Nice work.