Happy Monday juice heads!
Today's inspiration comes from a recent thread that was certainly well intentioned, fell a bit short on actual teaching. That's where I think I can help fill in the gaps. Don't worry, you don't need 8 versions of strawberry for today's lesson though.
Our lesson day it's going to be a little different from the last two weeks. Today, we will focus on layering flavors.
To break it down as simply as possible, there are three sections of an recipe:
- The base - the primary flavor profile. They set the tone for the juice and give the other flavors something to cling on to.
- The background - the flavors you may only catch a hint of, if at all, that are boosting and enhancing the other flavors. They add complexity and depth to your masterpiece.
- The accent - your "top notes", the flavors that accent the entire juice and you just can't miss. They tend to be sharp and potent. They are fun and memorable.
Now, a flavor can fall between two different aspects either based on how much or how little you use and based on HOW you use it.
In order to create great juice, you have to balance all three. Miss an aspect, and it will stick out like a sore thumb. Focus too heavily on something and you'll get a muddled mess.
Now, the recipe. I highly encourage you to make this recipe several times in your 10ml bottles with 1-2 ingredients missing as a side by side test. Try to figure out how each flavor is contributing to the juice as a whole and how it's reacting with the other flavors:
Strawberryish & Cream | % ---|--- TFA Strawberry Ripe | 5 TFA Strawberry | 2 FA Fuji | .75 FA Fresh Cream | 1 CAP Vanilla Custard | 1.5 TFA Dragonfruit | 0.5
The Base - FA fresh cream, CAP Vanilla custard, and TFA strawberry ripe.
FA fresh cream is a nice fresh cream. Duh. Medium mouth density. No vanilla. No egg. Just a pleasant dairy to lighten up the fruits. CAP vanilla has a heavy mouth feel, strong vanilla, medium egg. Strawberry ripe. Light and airy. A whisp of strawberry flavor. This flavor easily falls between background and base. We'll talk about that more in a second.
Background - TFA strawberry ripe and TFA Dragonfruit
Even though strawberry ripe provides a good base to go along with the creams, it's barely noticeable. However, it will be doing a ton of work with TFA strawberry. It's boosting those back end notes you want. Adding complexity and sweetening with EM. TFA dragonfruit is doing the exact same thing. It's pushing the strawberry flavor forward. Accenting the sweetness and adding complexity to the overall flavor profile, though you can hardly taste it, especially after a 3 day steep, but if you leave it out, it will be obvious what it's doing to the juice.
Accent - FA Fuji and TFA Strawberry
The fun flavors! These are the two flavors you will immediately be hit with on the inhale. Fuji is very forward. It adds a nice freshness to the juice. It can also make for a very nice background flavor of you use it below 0.25% and just want to impart a nice dry crispness to the strawberry. I really can't ever see Fuji being a base flavor though. It's just not in its profile. TFA strawberry will be the forward strawberry flavor we want. It's jammy and juicy. It could be a base, but using it in combination with TFA strawberry ripe and TFA dragonfruit pushes it too far forward to occupy that role. Take those two flavors out and then it will be a base. FA Fuji will then be the lead accent. You won't really have strawberry and cream anymore, and your juice will lack complexity, but I insist you try it. This will show you how all the flavors are interacting.
Overall, this is a very simplified way of looking at things. There is a lot more that could be said about how flavors are layered and how they interact.
Credit goes out to /u/matthewkocanda for the inspiration on this juice.
Great post, brother. And thanks for the shoutout. The changes on the recipe I sent you definitely help it out, but fuck me for still not having FA Fresh Cream. Soon, though.
Crap, I must have missed the changes you sent me. I'll see if I can dig them to and mix it tonight.
"I highly encourage you to make this recipe several times in your 10ml bottles with 1-2 ingredients missing as a side by side test. Try to figure out how each flavor is contributing to the juice as a whole and how it's reacting with the other flavors"
Yes, this! Thanks for providing such a clear, accessible way to illustrate this aspect of mixing. I look forward to these posts every Monday, they're so incredibly helpful.
So I've tried recipes such as Mustard Milk, Strawberry Astronaut Clone, Strawpeary, Strawberry Cheesecake, and a plain 5% TFA Strawberry. And I haven't been able to taste the strawberry in any of them.
I haven't tried Strawberry Ripe alone yet but I just mixed up 5% Strawberry Ripe and 2% TFA Strawberry... Holy moley, I can actually taste the strawberry!
Any how, thanks to you, I'll probably have a decent strawberries and cream to enjoy - as long as the other flavors don't end up masking the strawberry for me somehow. Mixing 10ml of your recipe right now. Thanks so much! Recommended steep time?
3 days! This is the perfect amount of time for Fuji and Dragonfruit to assume their proper roles in the juice.
I highly agree, I find fuji itself very very potent the first two days after mixing, almost takes your breath away on deep hauls. And as for the dragonfruit, I find the first couple days it gives off kind of a creamy coconut type of hint, kinda odd and hard to describe but it fades quickly. (might just be me as well lol)
^ perfect description of Dragonfruit at higher percentages. For your own notes, and Vurvey makes note of it with how it acts with Fuji, but a little bit of dragonfruit with Strawberry Ripe really boosts that strawberry flavour and makes it even better. I typically do something like 6% SR with 1% dragonfruit for a nice in your face strawberry note.
Same. I just picked up inw strawberry shisha but haven't had a chance to try it yet. Hopefully I can taste it. It seems every recipe has ripe or sweet as the main accent...
Really digging these threads, thanks for them. I mixed two 10ml batches subbing TFA Strawberry with INW Shisha Strawberry in one and Cap Sweet Strawberry in another (was out of TFA Strawberry).
My first impressions right after mixing are that the Cap substitution is good but not great, probably due to the fact that I can barely taste that flavor. I primarily detect the fresh cream and fuji in a way that reminds me of rhodonite on the inhale with the vanilla custard coming through pleasantly on the exhale.
The INW substitution is in my opinion better, more strawberry forward. I find it interesting that I don't get the fresh cream/fuji rhodonite effect here but the overall flavor is creamier and more custardy somehow. I'm having a hard time picking out the individual flavors and they all work well together.
It will be interesting to see how these steep. Well done.
Yes! INW shisha strawberry is an amazing flavor! This recipe was the first one I tried it in and I was very impressed with how it played along with everything. I only omitted it from the posted recipe since most people probably don't have it yet.
Also, don't compare anything of mine to Wayne's. My ego simply can't handle that. I flatter easily. 😊
Lastly, thank my brother /u/matthewkocanda. He came up with the recipe. I just tweaked a little bit.
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I know its late, but incase someone finds this, it might be helpful.
How would FA Strawberry work instead of TPA? My local vendor is out of TPA and wondered if this experiment would still work. Don't know what TPA/FA versions taste like or the differences.
I think I got it but my question is how do I know what flavors are good for base, which ones are for background and which ones are for accent. For example I have tried all of those in single mixes but I can hardly notice which one works for what.. And in what %