Instead of trying to clone a real world cereal, I set out to make an entirely original cereal. I'm proud to present Snozzberry Cereal. This one is DA/AP Free and perhaps most important to readers here, is also quite excellent as a shake & vape!
I was dissatisfied with previous cereal vapes; which focused on either the dry cereal flavor, or just the milk leftover in the bowl. Here I've delicately balanced a combination that should taste like the milk absorbed into the cereal you'd get from a spoonful. Achieving this delicate balance took many iterations. Looking at my notes, I started on this road last May (with a break in September when I nearly gave up). It took 11 iterations just to refine the flavor profile, and then 13 iterations to balance those flavors.
Unlike /u/Botboy141's recipes, most likely planted here from Big Flavor trying to get us to buy more and more obscure flavors... Snozzberry Cereal uses flavors everyone should have already! Seriously. Everything in here, perhaps excepting Malted Milk, is a versatile flavor that you'll use in many other recipes.
Ingredient|% :---|---: Berry Crunch (TPA)|5 Cotton Candy (TPA)|0.2 Cream Fresh (FA)|2 Dragonfruit (TPA)|1 Joy (FA)|0.2 Malted Milk (TPA)|1 Strawberry (TPA)|1.5
Flavor total: 10.9%
Suggested Use: 70% VG. Works well at low wattages in the 35-45 range. I'm enjoying it on a TFV4 at 40 watts for a firehose of cereal goodness. Great fresh, but if you can wait 1-3 days it does get better.
Flavor Notes: I'll break this down into the 3 important parts of the flavor profile: berry, cereal, milk.
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Berry - Berry Crunch is one of the weirdest flavors out there, and it can be hard to pair with other flavors. At worst it tastes like mushrooms and at best it tastes like chemical berries. For a long time here the conventional wisdom was that it was best at 10%, which is just before it starts to hit the mushroom threshold. If you want Chocolate Truffles I'd suggest 12% Berry Crunch and all of the chocolate flavors from MF. If you want berry cereal, you need to make peace with the fact that cereal flavors are often artificial and chemical. At just 5% you get that sweet spot of slightly artificial flavoring found in sugary cereals. 1% Dragon Fruit is helpful in pulling out the berry in Berry Crunch. Just a splash of Strawberry (TPA) adds a slightly different berry quality that goes well with the Berry crunch berry, thus creating an original berry flavor that doesn't actually exist in nature. Do not use too much Strawberry or it will overpower the Berry Crunch, and do not use Strawberry (Ripe) with this at all! Berry Crunch does not get along with many flavors and Ripe in particular will take it into a muddy-earthy realm of suck. Many cereal vapes use meringue, and to some great success, but it will overpower delicate notes in Berry Crunch at even very low percentages.
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Cereal - Berry Crunch has its own cereally quality, so adding Acetyl Pyrazine, or flavors high in it, is unnecessary. However, 0.2% of Joy (FA) does a remarkable job of making that cereal note pop. Once again you cannot use too much Joy with Berry Crunch or you get into that funky-earthy territory, with a hint of grease paint. Ethyl Maltol plays very well with Berry Crunch, but you just need 0.2% of Cotton Candy to make this a sugary cereal.
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Milk - Cream Fresh/Fresh Cream (FA) is so good and can be used and abused in different ways. I tried a lot of variations of milks and creams before settling on a 2:1 ratio with Malted Milk (TPA). NEVER use more than 1% Malted Milk (TPA) in any recipes, because something in there will kill all of your flavors. At 1% though it is an extra sugary-creamy note that sits well in the mix with Cream Fresh. Remember we're not going for a bowl full of milk, we're going for spoonful!
Where is the DIY_EJUICE bot to warn the poster that cereals aren't complete until they taste like lemon pledge?
During the initial design phase I was playing so hard in the lemon pledge territory.
I haven't seen other people explore Lemon Meringue Pie (FW) - probably because FW - but they should! This one flavor in the bottle smells more like the frosting and citrus in Fruit Loops than any other single flavor. I decided I wanted to get away from citrus entirely for this one, but there were some promising early recipes using it with added Meringue (FA). I think an interesting side-project might develop in trying to nail down some cereal goodness with that combo.
How'd you know, i have everything but Malted Milk. Adding to next order.
Gave this a spin and i was a little 'i dunno...' after mixing it. Left it on the shelf for a couple weeks.
Just came back to it a couple days ago and I've blasted through the 15ml that i mixed. This is pretty dang good!
Kind of tastes a bit like a strawberry frosted flakes cereal but a little more earthy/grain-y, almost bran-y. Absolutely says "cereal with artificial strawberry/fruit boosted fruit flavor!" when i vape it.
I've never had much luck getting a good flavor out of malted milk, but this is probably the best use of it that I've tried. Regardless, i think I'll try fiddling with lowering or removing it in favor of more Cream Fresh, or some other additional milky notes (TFA Dairy, maybe a hint of FA Meringue which might also boost that sugary cereal aspect?)
Glad you like it! It's lot fun for that "cereal with artificial fruit flavor" kick. Especially when you hit it from something that delivers a lot of vapor volume.
True on the vapor-volume upping the flavor. I've been vaping with my trusty SubTank with rebuilt stock coils (not the RDA head.) Twisted 30 gauge nickel, about 2mm diameter, vertical/chimney, about 0.1 ohms, around 450F. The wicking is a bit loose so the coil always stays super saturated without leaking. I've been getting dripper-quality hits on this build and have been loving it.
Will anything work in place of Joy and Cream Fresh?
Joy is adding some unique sweetness and a hint of Acetyl Pyrazine. Trying to sub it out would be hard. Maybe some combination of Acetyl Pyrazine and Sucralose? It would be tricky to figure out what ratio you'd need to replace Joy though since the difference between too much and too little will be around 0.5-2 drops per 10mL.
Trying to replace the cream base all together is going to be equally tricky. Since Meringue doesn't work out here you can't use the Meringue/Hazelnut combo that is popular in many cereal vapes. Definitely do not use Milk & Honey (FLV)... god that was the worst. The honey part of that equation mixes so bad with the mushroomy part of Berry Crunch.
Hmm i could make a heavily substituted mix of this... because i have lots of similar flavors but not the exact ones in this mix :( Do you think this would work:
Ingredient | Percent ---------|---------- Berry Crunch | 5 Ethyl Maltol | 0.2 Sweet cream | 2? Dragonfruit | 1 Joy | 0.2 Dairy/Milk (TPA) | 1? Strawberry (ripe) | 1.5?
Im unsure how more/less strong my sub flavors will be, any suggestions so i dont waste ingredients? I think i will give this a shot regardless, but getting some opinions from those more experienced always helps!
I'm not sure how Sweet Cream would work, but it might. I stopped using it when we learned it gave us all full-blown AIDS. The same with Dairy Milk. Some combination of them might be good though.
You should definitely not try to sub with Strawberry (Ripe) though. The mushroomy quality of Berry Crunch is exacerbated by the earthiness of Strawberry (Ripe), which itself blends poorly so you get some added weirdness. It is seriously unpleasant.
Thanks for the awesome reply! I also have a strawberries and cream flavor from TFA but i find that flavor also has that earthy note you were describing.
In regards to the Nude Nic PSA, would the butyric acid + Diketones issue still be present if you were to vape some juice with diketones and then switch to a juice with butyric acid within a certain period of time?
Unfortunately the study Nude Nic posted wasn't recent, and there weren't a lot of details explicitly applicable to vaping other than: if you have Diketones and Butyric Acid in your lungs, you're going to have a bad time. So firstly I dropped everything with both AP and Butyric Acid from my roster, but I found I really don't need AP in my mixes... And so many things have Butyric Acid it is hard to avoid the combo in the other direction.
Just mixed this up! Leaving it in a hot water bath for a bit and will try in an hour or so!
Awesome! I look forward to hearing what you think!
I did the 2.5% Cream Fresh variant as I had no malted milk. Do you use that flavor a lot? I mostly do fruits, but I've seen it pop up here and there, wondering if it would be worth nabbing a 10 of.
Shit, I mixed it up but went a smidgen happy on the malted milk. Came out at 0.38g instead of 0.30g so hopefully not too bad. Didn't have EM either, so I put a little meringue to assist in the sugary aspect. I'll let you know here's in a few minutes.
That little extra on Malted Milk is probably not going to be too detrimental. It's amazing how much that kills flavor at 1.5%, but you're still short of that!
The meringue is going to alter the flavor profile somewhat though. Even 0.2% in my tests was overpowering some of the more subtle flavor notes. How much did you use?
Yeah I can't really tell of the malted milk so I think we are good there. I did about 0.30 of the meringue and I think you're right, it's taking a little away from some of the fruitiness, but I'm going to see here while I watch the hockey game. I'm skill getting the fresh wick taste lol.
Ok, so I mixed this exactly as stated on 1/27. Vaping now, and it's good but I think it needs some work. I'm not sure that adding AP is unnecessary. To me, I'm not getting the cereal note that you explain Joy giving to Berry Crunch.
I feel that AP may just bring out more grainy cereal from Berry Crunch to really help this recipe, in fact I may mix up a 15ml with maybe .75% AP to see what happens...unless you have already in which I'm interested in what you think.
To me, this taste of a watered down strawberry flavor. However, I think TFA Strawberry may be the right one to use.
I also get a unique back end on this, almost a steel or foil taste...make sense? Weird, I know but thats what comes to mind when describing, it's very subtle and attributes to the watered down strawberry. Almost like a strawberry sport drink (gatorade, powerade, whatever). Maybe it's the dragonfruit. Ha, hold on while I go all over the fucking place.
Anyways, good work. I may mess around with this and post back. Thanks for sharing.
I'm curious to know what you're vaping it on? We seem to be getting quite different results.
I did try it with AP, but didn't like the result. It was just a little too grainy, like Cheerios, at... digging deep into my notes here.... 1% AP. Perhaps 0.75% would work if you're looking for more of a cereal note, but I'd start at 0.5% because Joy already adds some.