I recently grabbed a bottle of INW Cherimoya to play with some tropical flavors, and it inspired me to re-approach one of my wife’s favorite flavors: The Vapor Chef's Hobbe's Blood. She had a bottle so I took a whiff for the first time in forever. Sometimes a "fresh nose" gives you a great new take on a liquid.
I noticed something I hadn't picked up on previously...pineapple. Not a lot, but it was definitely there. Now, there are very few pineapple flavorings I enjoy. Most are way to aggressive and often sharp, easily overpowering a recipe. But what if I tried a more complex flavoring where pineapple was an element rather than the standalone flavor?
Hobbe's Blood is a strawberry-watermelon-coconut modeled after the “Tiger Blood” snow cone; a familiar and straightforward flavor on the surface. Breaking it down, the strawberry is sharp and has some zip, the watermelon is candy-like, and the coconut is subtle and a bit creamy.
INW Cherimoya plays no role other than the inspiration to play with tropical fruits – the secret here is TFA Pina Colada.
I wanted to keep this recipe simple. Hopefully this is an easy and cheap recipe for everyone to try. With the looming market freeze I think we’ll see many more vapers turn to DIY.
This recipe:
- Is pretty simple with only 5 ingredients
- Uses inexpensive flavorings that are easy to source
- Contains no D/A/AP
I think it’s a winner!
Mustard Tiger, an homage to Hobbe's Blood
Ingredient|% :---|---: Dragonfruit (TPA)|1 Honeydew (TPA)|0.3 Pina Colada (TPA)|4 Strawberry (TPA)|5 Watermelon Candy (TPA)|5
TFA Strawberry - You all know my affinity for this flavor. It fits the "sharp" strawberry bill and is easy to work with. TVC may be using a different strawberry like FlavorWest, but I don't use that vendor's flavorings so I can't confirm. TFA works just fine here and forms the primary fruit base.
TFA Dragonfruit - Used here to give the strawberry a little more vibrancy, just like in my nana cream homage. It also imparts its own tropical tone, and in low percentage acts as an accent.
TFA Pina Colada - Coconut, cream, and pineapple all in one flavoring. TFA Pina Colada is key to achieving a subtle impression of both coconut and pineapple. It’s not in-your-face, and the fruits are very well balanced with its creamy aspect. This flavoring is fine enough on its own but is a real powerhouse used here. No need to build a flavor profile from scratch when a single flavoring does all you need.
TFA Watermelon Candy - I don’t see a lot of mention about this flavor. It’s not a great watermelon on its own but fits into this recipe exceptionally well. More than any other watermelon, TFA’s Watermelon Candy reminds me exactly of watermelon snow cone syrup. It’s sweet and has that “fake watermelon” flavor we’re after.
TFA Honeydew - We use a teensy tiny bit of honeydew to amplify the watermelon flavor. This flavor is extremely potent so a light touch is required. I’ve spoken ill of this flavoring previously because it is sickly sweet and nauseatingly cloying at the higher percentages typically used. The 0.3% used here amounts to about 2 drops in a 15mL bottle of finished liquid, however. Hopefully it won’t be too difficult to measure! FUN FACT: This flavoring contains a bit of vanillin, which helps “bind” the creaminess of the Pina Colada with the other fruity elements.
So that’s it! Keep in mind this is an homage recipe, so don’t get your jimmies rustled if you notice slight differences between this recipe and Hobbe’s Blood. This is my take on the flavor profile, and I really hope you all enjoy it!
...and if you don’t, go tell Phil Collins.
BAAAAAAAAAAMMMM!
Dammiiiit, no Pina Colada!
... Always something
You could use /u/id10-t's Pina Colada recipe as a flavor base and sub that for TFA Pina Colada. I mean, if you don't want to spend the money and enjoy making things more complicated than they should be ;)
Thanks for adding to my wish list. If it was anyone else......
I hope this means we will be seeing you more around here!
Do you know how much relief this brings to me reading this post? I spent ages trying to clone Hobbes Blood back when i first started DIY, and I KNEW it had to have some pina colada in it. The smell is spot on and the flavor is similar as well but I could never make it quite right. all my friends thought I was crazy.
Damn. I just had one of those Tigers Blood cones. It was bloody delicious. I'm at 2/5 of these flavors....may have to step up the next order. Not sure if I can bring anything fruity as an adv though...never have been able to. Might try though.
I use a drop or two of TFA Honeydew in my thug juice clone for the same reason as you use it here. One day I might use it as a base flavor but it's SO DAMN GOOD as a watermelon booster that I haven't felt the need.
I Just made this a while ago. It's okay as a shake and vape, I had to sub TFA strawberry for TFA ripe strawberry. I think it will be good in a few days.
How do you feel about maybe adding a touch of FA meringue.
It won't be the same with Ripe Strawberry in place of regular. Rather than add Meringue, I'd saw try it with the non-Ripe strawberry :D
Late to the party on this, but as someone who has vaped almost exclusively Hobbes Blood for 2 years and thousands of dollars spent at TVC, I tried this recipe last night and it's dead on. Thank you a million times over for the money this is going to save me!!!
I'd think that capella honeydew melon would go better, and at a little higher of a percentage, maybe double what is in here. Cuz in the back end of the exhale, I taste honeydew and the coconut HEAVY. I'm ordering these flavors for SURE. Hobbes blood was the VERY FIRST premium juice I ever vaped, back in June 2014. It's my unicorn literally. I make a pretty killed tigers blood, based off of the ever popular tigers blood 6% recipe but I use both regular TFA strawberry AND strawberry ripe, and I add 1.5% cap golden pineapple cuz you got that taste in there too. I wanna find a happy medium of Flour art coconut, TFA coconut and capella golden pineapple to make my own Pina colada, TFAs sucks imo. It's almost sour and u can't use it at too high if a percentage or else it'll ruin the juice. Flavors like that are NOT very forgiving therefore aren't flexible at all. Either u get it right on the nose perfect percentage or u have shit juice. I like finding ways to do like I said, to make my own Pina colada and I want it to be flexible & forgiving, mine gonna have 8, flavors and I need almost all of them to be forgiving and able to taste good at different percentages. Sucks tho, the flavors where u HAVE to get that one perfect guess at the percentage? Those are the flavors that make the best juices. The ones where the juice will taste good at 3% or even at 5-6%< those flavors usually aren't as good. But it's nice to have a forgiving flavor that can be stretched like that when making complicated recipes, ya know? I've figured out a LOT in my 7 years of DIY. I've went thru so many hundreds of 30mls and 130mls of flavors, my god I've probably thrown away a few thousand failed 30ml testers lol but I'm to the point where I don't even need syringes or a scale anymore to mix my favorite recipes. Just do it off top and my friends freak out at how well I can freestyle mix like that 🤣 only thing that can teach that skill is time and dedication💯 have a good day guys, and happy mixing!