This may be common knowledge to the more experienced mixers and veterans here, but it's relevant to the rest of us (and interesting to boot).
I use a good amount of TFA flavors, love some, like some....not a fan of some. I was just browsing through the specs and components sheet page out of curiosity to see how many of the flavors I have contain ethyl maltol. It blows my mind. I actually wasn't aware that so many did. I knew the obvious ones (strawberry ripe, bavarian, etc.). This isn't to say I'm against ethyl maltol by any means. I have a 10ml of it; still half full from a year ago. The point is to let the less experienced mixers know to resist the urge to add ethyl maltol (or sweeteners for that matter) before trying a recipe without it. The ethyl maltol is most likely already in there if you're using a variety of TFA flavors and, as we know, it can mute flavors at too high of a percentage.
TL;DR Check the specs of your TFA flavors before adding ethyl maltol. Shit's most likely already in there. And bookmark the specs sheet, it's very useful when mixing.
This is why the best recipes contain no added sweeteners (unless they're mimicking something incredibly sweet like a glazed donut).
Great recipes shouldn't rely on faking it.
Agreed. I think sweeteners/sucralose has their/its place for sure. It's like adding powdered sugar to a dessert, where it makes sense because you kind of want it be a bit cloying and sugary. Like funnel cakes and the like; it's fried dough, so the sugar actually is the flavor. But you don't put powdered sugar on .....an apple, or every dessert you eat (talking food here). Some of the best desserts I've had (to my palate) weren't very sweet at all. Mostly European desserts/cakes/pastries. They're rich, but not cloying.
Your deffintly a veteran here, I use 1% em and 10% tfa grape juice, any suggestions on sweetining it up without using a sweetener? I rarely use sweeteners but it just didn't seem right to have a grape juice that's not sweet and semi tart.
Not a veteran, but TFA Grape Juice is good with dragonfruit ...or pomegranate. The latter will provide an interesting tartness.
Where do you see that it has ethyl maltol? I checked both the Strawberry (Ripe) and Bavarian Cream and don't see it on the spec sheets anywhere.
bav cream
straw ripe has maltol but its close enough.
Actually be aware that maltol and ethyl maltol are nowhere close to the same thing. If you buy the volatiles (powder) pure and mix with them, you'll see.
I use regular maltol for caramellic flavor notes -- it isn't as potent as the ethyl version.
If you're interested in finding out what flavors have a particular chemical, you can find the CAS number and add as a query string. For example, ethyl maltol's CAS no. is 4940-11-8 so adding it to the end of the following URL will only show products with ethyl maltol. I'm sure there's input controls somewhere on the site that let you do it, but this is how I go about it.
http://shop.perfumersapprentice.com/specsheetlist.aspx?cas=4940-11-8