You're here for the recipe, so we'll start with that. Keep reading for other helpful information including substitutes and no-no's if you want.
Pumpkin Spice
- 4% FW Pumpkin Spice
- 3% TFA Gingerbread
- 2% TFA Chai Tea
- 0.5% FW Ginger
- 0.5% FLV Rich Cinnamon
Information:
In the beginning /u/alrahm posted this thread asking for help making the pumpkin flavor in their pumpkin spice recipe pop. My recipe is not an answer to that. There is pumpkin here, some of that flavor comes from the FW Pumpkin Spice, but some of it comes from your brain (more on that in my comment in the original thread). But, their thread got me thinking about what pumpkin spice is, so I did some research and it turns out we're only dealing with cinnamon, nutmeg, allspice, cloves, ginger, and perhaps burnt maple/buttery stuff/vanillin. So I began my quest to make a decent pumpkin spice vape.
Rationale and notes:
-
FW Pumpkin Spice: has a soft pumpkin front with appropriate spices backing it up. Mostly nutmeg, allspice, and a touch of cinnamon. If you use more than 4% it will overpower the rest of the recipe and taste basically like FW Pumpkin Spice standalone. I tested FW against TFA Holiday Spice, TFA Pumpkin Spice, NF Pumpkin Pie, and CAP Pumpkin Pie (Spice). Holiday spice tasted flat out weird, and was very clovey. Pumpkin spice is different, but again too forward with clove in my opinion. NF pumpkin pie tastes like spicy pickles at higher percentages (5%+), but tasted like vague woody nutmeg at lower percentages (0.5%-1%). Cap Pumpkin Pie (spice) almost tastes like a chai tea, and is very woody and clovey. No great substitutes here. FW it is.
-
TFA Gingerbread: Hits several of the flavors we're looking for: cinnamon, nutmeg, allspice, and vanillin. CAP Gingerbread and TFA Gingerbread Cookie were far too bready for just a straight up pumpkin spice flavor. Gingerbread cookie has the benefit of having actual ginger flavor molecules in it, but has no (or less than TFA Gingerbread) nutmeg, clove, or allspice molecules. CAP Gingerbread is way too bready and reminds me a lot of Cinnamon Danish Swirl. The problem with TFA Gingerbread is it is missing an explicit ginger molecule, which we'll fix in a minute. (Caveat: TFA Gingerbread contains A+AP)
-
TFA Chai Tea: The inclusion of Chai tea is to buttress the base pumpkin spice flavors from FW Pumpkin Spice. TFA Chai also has a stronger clove note than CAP Chai, which means we don't have to add additional clove flavoring to achieve the same result. If you took cinnamon, nutmeg, allspice, cloves, and ginger at home and threw them all together, you would have a chai tea. So we use it here at a lower percentage to add a subtle clove, but to help boost the other base flavors in the FW pumpkin spice, and I think it works really well.
-
FW Ginger: A surprisingly decent flavor. It helps the gingerbread come out a bit more, but isn't overpowering at 0.5%. I tried NF ginger in place of FW and found it imparted a strange flavor, almost TOO natural. NF Ginger is a great flavor, but it's just too "fresh" here. I was really impressed with FW on this one.
-
FLV Rich Cinnamon: What can I say about this flavor? It's the king of cinnamon and well worth the price tag. We're only getting cinnamon from the TFA Gingerbread (there's none in the chai), so we need to help it out a bit. 0.5% is the absolute highest you should go on FLV Rich Cinnamon. Any higher and it completely dominates the rest of the recipe. You could even knock it down to 0.25% if you find 0.5% is still to strong, but to my palate 0.5% is perfect.
Substitutions:
-
You can substitute 3% CAP Chai Tea + 0.5% FA Clove in place of TFA Chai, from testing it tastes almost identical
-
You should really buy FLV Rich Cinnamon, but you can replace it (to the recipe's detriment) with FA Cinnamon Ceylon or even a small amount of TFA Cinnamon Red Hot
-
No good substitutes for FW Pumpkin Spice that I am aware of.
-
FW Ginger is a relatively weak flavor. You could use many other gingers, but at reduced percentages. NF Ginger works at sub 0.5%, but does make a perceptible difference
Additions:
-
FA Coffee Espresso (no higher than 0.5% in my opinion) + FA Vienna Cream (1-2%) for a Pumpkin Spice Latte
-
FA Cappuccino or FA Tiramisu also both work at lower percentages to give you that coffee kick
-
TFA RY4 Double (1-2%) and CAP Gingerbread or TFA Gingerbread Cookie (2-3%) in place of TFA Gingerbread turns the recipe into a more cookie/pie type flavor
-
TFA Pumpkin can be added in small amounts (no more than 3%) if you feel like you need more pumpkin. If you do this, I also suggest adding 0.5% TFA Lemon to help blend the allspice (terpenes) notes with the Acetoin of TFA Pumpkin. I really don't recommend this because TFA pumpkin is ONLY Acetoin and Butanoic acid.
-
Peppermint is nice.
BONUS RECIPE:
Stumbled across this in my dealings with pumpkin spice. It's damned good, and I'm vaping on it as I type this up.
Gingerbread Cookie:
- 5% TFA Gingerbread Cookie
- 1.5% FA Cookie
- 1% INW Biscuit
That's it! Let me know what you all think.
Awesome! I've been waiting for your results and can't wait to try it out! how long of a steep do you recommend for this recipe?
Hey dude, couple of questions:
What are you vaping this on (device/build/power)?
What makes Flavorah Rich Cinnamon so different from, say, Cinnamon Danish, or Cinnamon Roll (CAP/FW respectively)?
Why did you add so much ginger to the recipe? From your description it would appear that you were going after creating a more round flavor of Pumpkin Spice, but due to the amount of straying from the Pumpkin portion, I have to ask, does it make the Pumpkin Spice more authentic or does it make it Gingerbread-y?
Having just mixed the main recipe and the RY4D + CAP Gingerbread variation, I'll throw my thoughts into the mix.
These are my impressions after shake and vaping:
The original is DEFINITELY the pumpkin spice you'd get from a latte. Not much pumpkin pie flavor but plenty of cinnamon. If you paired it with the coffee flavors he mentions or your own if you have one, you'll definitely get a pumpkin spice latte.
The "pie/cookie" variant is more bready, but not a pie by any means. After some time, it may come out but as of now it's not the elusive pumpkin pie vape I think a lot of people are looking for.
I tried vaping FW Pumpkin Spice standalone at 7% and found it wasn't a very strong flavor (to me). The concentrate itself SMELLS like a pumpkin pie, but pairing it with other things to get that baked pie flavor is proving difficult. I tried a custard variation but wasn't getting much of anything off the bat.
The cinnamon danish route might prove interesting. CAP Cinnamon Danish Swirl carries a decent bakery note, so I may give that a shot. I might also try applying some % of it to a pie base I came up with. I'll let you know if I do and how it shakes out.
/u/billgarmsarmy this whole post and all the research you've done is fantastic. Thanks so much for sharing it as it led me to some pretty interesting flavors to work with if nothing else.
>it's not the elusive pumpkin pie vape I think a lot of people are looking for.
To be perfectly honest, I'm not sure what I'm looking for. Recently decided to branch out and try a pumpkin flavored beer and, quite contrary to the other flavored beers, it was incredibly enjoyable. I'm looking for something which replicates the deep pumpkin notes. It doesn't need to be potent, and that really is what makes an ADV: flavored just right so that your taste buds aren't fed up with the flavor after an hour.
CAP Cinnamon Danish Swirl is another cinnamon that I really enjoy. Again, much like with FW Cinnamon Roll, the cinnamon is more mellow and sweeter than in exclusively cinnamon flavors, though I don't find that it adds an unbearable or muting bakery note.
If you are looking for a "pie" base, and this is an observation that I believe /u/Botboy141 made a while ago which I will echo here as I too have found it true: Apple Pie, by FlavourArt, although labeled as such, hardly adds any apple flavoring to a mix. It does, however, add the crust-like flavor when used in low percentages.
I've ordered all the ingredients for this vape, so I'll give it a shot and come back with what I think of it in a week or so.
>/u/billgarmsarmy this whole post and all the research you've done is fantastic.
Honestly, this is what makes this sub great. People who are really serious about the intricacies of flavoring and have experience and an arsenal of testing apparatus to back it. Thank you guys.
-
I did my testing on a dual coil, 8 wrap 26awg 2.5mm ID, ~0.5Ω Tobh clone, wide open. All testing was done at "stock" voltage on a mech. That is, freshly charged battery on a hybrid mod (Apeocalypse if you care).
-
Rich Cinnamon is straight cinnamon. Like the cinnamon you would encounter in an apple pie. Like freshly grated cinnamon sticks. It's cinnamon and it's rich (sorry). CAP CDS has bread and cream notes in it, and it's lighter. FW Cinnamon Roll is sort of similar in that regard, it's a lighter cinnamon in comparison and it has more bakery notes. I definitely encourage you to try it out with those replacements, I was getting tired of testing and Rich Cinnamon gave me no complaints, so I didn't test any alternate cinnamons besides what I listed in the OP. My main focus was hitting the right molecules, which is a nice segue to your next question.
-
FW Ginger is a pretty weak flavor. In one iteration I accidentally added 1.5% of it and it was only starting to bite through the rest of the flavors. So 0.5% is pretty low. The goal was to add a ginger note because none of the other flavors have one. Seriously, even TFA Gingerbread has no ginger. So if we're trying to get Ginger, Allspice, Nutmeg, Cloves, and Cinnamon we need to add some ginger. If you read my original research post you'll see the thought process behind this. Chai & Ginger both include the constituent parts of pumpkin spice minus ginger.
-
There is actually no pumpkin in pumpkin spice. I played around with TFA Pumpkin but it is only Acetoin and Butanoic acid. To me, and I'm crazy, it tastes like a soft creamy pumpkin at higher percentages (stick around for a recipe).
-
In my eyes, this is just a Pumpkin Spice recipe. Not gingerbread. Not a latte. Not a pie. Just pumpkin spice. There's pumpkin flavor in it from the FW Pumpkin spice (in fact the only pumpkin spice flavor I tested that really tasted like pumpkin to me), but most of the pumpkin flavor comes from your brain interpolating the other ingredients as pumpkin pie. It's even pretty good standalone @ 5%.
-
Here's a recipe I stumbled upon in research and testing. It's a chai latte with pumpkin and I think it's pretty tasty. Rich and creamy with just the right amount of spice. But it's not pumpkin spice. Why not? Because it's missing some parts for pumpkin spice: cinnamon and ginger. I only include this to illustrate how difficult working with pumpkin is. If you have the ingredients give it a try, you'll probably hate it, but I think the pepper notes from the high percentage of Butanoic acid actually helps the spice from the chai.
Pumpkin Chai Latte
-
TFA Chai @ 5%
-
TFA Pumpkin @ 8%
-
TFA Vanilla Swirl @ 3%
-
FA Fresh Cream @ 1%
-
Ethyl Maltol (10% Solution) @ 2%
Pumpkin spice is a tough flavor. My recipe is almost certainly not the best possible version of it. But it's pretty good in my opinion, and I'm proud of it. I really encourage you to play around with it and let us know what you think and any new information you may uncover.
> Rich Cinnamon is straight cinnamon.
That's sort of the hint I got when you mentioned Cinnamon Ceylon; my experiences with it haven't been too good as, as you've said, it's a pretty pure cinnamon. I lean more towards Cinnamon Roll (or is it Danish) from FW, simply because, although the cinnamon is surely there, at 0.50%, it won't flavor kill like Cinnamon Ceylon (FA), or Cinnamon Spice (TFA) does. The bakery notes are practically non-existent at higher wattages, at least to my taste buds, with Cinnamon Roll at low percentages. Another benefit of Cinnamon Roll that I've found is that it acts as a sweetener somewhat. I'll let you know how that pans out. Worse comes to worse I'll either purchase the Flavorah flavor or, with your blessing, try the Cinnamon Ceylon in the hopes that I'll get enough of the gist to decide whether to throw down on a new flavor that may not be appealing.
> There is actually no pumpkin in pumpkin spice.
While I had been aware of that, that article was wonderful. I knew that it consisted of Allspice, Cinnamon, and Nutmeg, but I was unaware that Ginger was involved (leaving out clove as Allspice tends to lend a clove-y flavor). When you mentioned a Pumpkin Spice flavor from FW, I only assumed that the flavor would be that of the aforementioned 4, and not of an actual pumpkin.
I guess my last question would be this:
What kind of Pumpkin Spice do you interpret this recipe as being? I know this is practically splitting hairs, but there's a few different sources. There's the pumpkin spice straight from the pie, the pumpkin spice that you get in a latte, and the pumpkin spice you have in a flavored beer. I would classify them as smooth/creamy, bright/sharp, and deep, respectively.
I'm really in the mood for some pumpkin spice, and while I will more than likely try this, I'm a little bit apprehensive due to the differences in our setups.
> What kind of Pumpkin Spice do you interpret this recipe as being? I know this is practically splitting hairs, but there's a few different sources. There's the pumpkin spice straight from the pie, the pumpkin spice that you get in a latte, and the pumpkin spice you have in a flavored beer. I would classify them as smooth/creamy, bright/sharp, and deep, respectively.
It tends towards more bright and sharp. However, it has a pretty smooth inhale, which is the soft pumpkin notes from the Pumpkin Spice, the Vanilla notes from Chai and Gingerbread, and the A+AP from Gingerbread. I found it worked pretty well as a latte with some FA Tiramisu or a tiny bit of FA Coffee Espresso+FA Vienna Cream.
> I'm really in the mood for some pumpkin spice, and while I will more than likely try this, I'm a little bit apprehensive due to the differences in our setups.
I can test on pretty much anything, what kind of equipment are you on?