I've only just recently found my knack for mixing, especially when it comes to making up my own recipes. One thing that I see a lot in popular recipes that I'm just curious about is using several different flavorings that are all, more or less, of a similar profile. As an example, I've seen dessert recipes that call for multiple kinds of Cake/Cake batter flavor, or like two cake and one cookie flavors. It's especially vexing when it comes to Creams...because I've single-flavor tested every cream flavor I've purchased so far, and I can barely tell a difference between them. Some subtle differences, sure, but nothing that ever makes me go "Oh, this specific cream has to be paired with ____, and then I need to add that cream to make it really pop!"
So how do you guys arrive at the choices that you do in these scenarios? What makes you put together one fruit and one dessert flavor, and then decide it needs several more different dessert flavors (just an example)?
I hope this makes sense. I'm not asking like "why Capella cake batter over FW." I'm more so just wondering, especially with regards to complex recipes, how and why you arrive to the decision to include kinda redundant flavors...because honestly, most of the time I tend to stop after trying 2-3 flavorings together, and I don't ever seem to get much out of trying to get more complex than that.
I think this is a very interesting and important question, especially for newer mixers as all of the different flavorings and how to use them can be really intimidating. Even for seasoned mixers it can be a bit of a crap shoot sometimes, learning the different ways to use a flavoring or where it will fit. /u/abdada did a really good job on a lot of the points. What's difficult is there are so many different flavorings and they all bring something a little bit different to the party.
For me when I mix it's developing a flavor profile, balancing compounds/flavors, and then minor tweaks from there. Let's say you want to make a strawberry & cream type flavor (something we're all familiar with I'm sure).
You'd start with a good strawberry and a cream base. Most of us know and love TFA Strawberry Ripe, so we'll use that as our strawberry, and a simple cream, FA Fresh Cream as the cream. So you've got your start to a strawberry and cream, it's probably vapable, but as you vape it you notice a few things.
The strawberry is good, but it doesn't hold very well throughout the vape. So you bring another strawberry to the party to accent it (or as the main strawberry, using Ripe to accent it). We'll say FA Strawberry, just a touch of it to give it a more pronounced strawberry flavor.
The cream is ok but you want a little bit more body to it, so you add some CAP Vanilla Custard to bring some dikes to the party and thicken the mouthfeel up a bit.
Ok, now the cream is starting to come together nicely, but you want the cream to be a little bit sweeter and a little creamier, without adding much additional body, so you bring FA Meringue to the mix.
So now your mix is starting to come together pretty nicely. It's still missing a little bit of depth, you decide you want to increase the vanilla a little bit, so you find yourself a nice semi-strong vanilla with a smooth texture, we'll use INW Vanilla Concentrate, although there are plenty out there that will work in this scenario, so you pick whichever one you like best.
So the mix is complete now right? You vape it and think to yourself, "This is pretty darn tootin', but man that strawberry needs just a little bit more help standing up to these creams." You need something to brighten up the strawberry, but not something that will add to the already plentiful strawberry compounds. You've heard some dragonfruit will help it pop or raspberry will help brighten it up, so you decide to add just a touch of TFA Dragonfruit to help accentuate the strawberries and get them to stand out among the cream a little better.
And now, you have a well balanaced delicious vape. One that is tailored to your palate and is unique to you. Maybe it's not the best in the world, but it's sure as shoot better than what you started with!
I am by no means an expert mixer, and still have a lot to learn but this is kind of what I do and it helps me visualize the mix, a lot of the time before even mixing it. I hope that explanation kind of made sense on why you would use different flavorings of similar profiles. Obviously as you get in to more intense bakeries and desserts there are a lot of different nuances to play off of and interesting ways to make these flavorings work for you. A lot of it isn't so much single flavor testing (although this is extremely helpful), but experimenting with new combinations to see how they interact with each other.
Or you could science the shit out of it like abdada and some of the other folks =P
Base notes, heart notes, top notes -- learn these.
A great eliquid is well balanced with the note ranges. Shitty eliquid has too much of one and nothing of the others.
Ok, so I just went and googled the three different types of notes, and I have a follow up question...how do you determine what kind of note a flavor will be? Is it something that the mixer just comes up with by deciding which flavor will have the highest concentration? Or are specific types of flavors (fruits, creams, desserts, etc) just destined to be one kind of note because...science? Most of the google results are about perfume, and reference smells that do not translate in to flavors I would ever dream of trying to vape, so I'm having a hard time translating the information from perfume to juice. There are some topics/threads on it, but holy hell does everyone cover their ass by saying "its all subjective" with every piece of advice.
Flavors are composed of individual notes -- each flavor concentrate you buy has different notes. You mix the flavor concentrates together focusing on the notes themselves and how well they blend with each other.
How do you learn? Pay attention when you mix flavorings and write it down based on your subjective palate.
I actually am starting to post what the different flavor notes are for each concentrate and how well they balance with each other, but it's a lot of data and I only have 1/2 hour a day to post the data up. Might take me 8 months to get it all online.
That will definitely be something to look forward to. I guess I'm still just confused about how one determines that a flavor is a specific type of note...Call me an uncultured simpleton, but if I'm single-flavor testing like a custard, for example, my brain goes "Yes, we like that" or "No thanks." Not "Oh, that would work well as a base note with a heart note like _____, and I'll make sure to add ____ as a top note."
The biggest loop I'm getting thrown for here is how you go about initially determining that a flavor is a specific kind of note. With perfume, they say that a top note is what you smell first, and it forms the initial impression. Heart notes are what come next after the top notes dissipate, and base notes are what's left after the departure of heart notes, and "depth and solidity" to the scent. Does the same "order" (of taste, rather than smell, I suppose) apply to mixing juice?
I can see how this would all be subjective...my favorite strawberry custard might have the strawberry as the base, while your favorite may have the custard as the base...?