I started the search for Dirty Chai, before I even started vaping. Back in early 2009, during my final deployment in the army, I landed in a place called Tallil, Iraq. I had been on previous deployments, but saw very little of anything outside of Baghdad. Tallil was like the Wild West by comparison. One of our earliest missions after we arrived was getting tasked out on security details for Public Affairs, where we ran short humanitarian missions for local villages. While I was standing out about 100m or so from where they were working, one of the men from the village approached me with a steaming tea pot looking device. He sat next to me, and poured two cups of tea without speaking. The tea, as it was later explained, was basically a farmer's version of Chai tea. It was filthy dark, and smelled faintly of tobacco, coffee and tea all mixed together with a little vinegar. No cream for miles in any direction. When I first smelled it I thought I would probably die after I drank it, but I tried it for the sake of entertaining hospitality. I had never been so incredibly blown away by a single flavor in my life, and still haven't been. The spices were much more faint in the flavor than they were in the scent. It was bold, deep flavored. Sweet, but not sickly sweet. The were trace bits of bitter coffee, tobacco like notes, a very light vanilla and a really deep earthy black tea. It was thick feeling, though not creamy. I later learned that this was mostly due to the way the brew their tea in a waterbath type device, instead of directly on a burner or fire. We visited briefly, not really talking, but enjoying that tea while we sat out in brutal heat looking into a vast wide desert. It was probably the most human moment of my entire 10 year career, and that flavor stuck with me every since.

What we think of as Chai tea in the US is horrendously over spiced, and generally served with far too much cream. Since I started mixing around 2 years ago I've chased chai off and on repeatedly, but it often ended in frustration so I would leave it be, only to come back to it awhile later. A few weeks ago, /u/CheebaSteeba sent me some 5ml samples of some FLV flavors that I was dying to try, but didn't have the budget for. As soon as I opened the Thai Chai, I knew I'd found a missing part of the puzzle. It's still a little incomplete, but I am fully aware that this White Whale will likely never be caught.

Enough story time, on to the recipe and notes. Previous versions included Black teas, green teas, a variety of spice combinations, and probably 10 different tobacco/shisha variants. The final version, Dirty Chai is

Dirty Chai  

Ingredient|% :---|---: Booster (Tiramisu) (FA)|0.1 Chai Tea (TPA)|0.15 RY4 (Hangsen)|3.5 Thai Chai (Flavorah)|1.5 Vanilla Swirl (TPA)|1.5

Flavor total: 6.75%

Remember to rate it at e-liquid-recipes.com!

Notes in order of precedence:

FLV Thai Chai: At first I tested this standalone at 2%. It's really weird, off the vape. But it had the qualities I was missing from other Black tea concentrates. It's thick. Like a super concentrated tea. It has some floral qualities, like you would get in a traditional black tea, but they're more earthy. It's very sweet, and I get hints of mint, cardamom, and a very light back note of citrus. At 1.5% I can keep all those notes, while letting the rest of the recipe settle in on top of this base. It's glorious, and I will be ordering much much more of this.

Hangsen RY4: I chose this RY4 for it's smooth, low key flavors. The tobacco is incredibly mild, and the vanilla/caramel tones are very non invasive. At 3.5% it's just barely present alongside the Thai Chai. If you wanted it to be more prevalent it could probably go as high as 5% without totally mucking up your mix, but I really think the magic spot for this is where I left it.

FA Tiramisu: The tiny coffee hint. This is the only coffee flavor I use with any consistency. I only wanted the tiniest note of coffee to drift in and out of this mix, and this stuff is ultra potent. My first trial was at .25% and it totally ran right over everything. I dialed it back to .1% and got exactly what I was after. It's there, but only just so.

TFA Chai Tea: The Thai Chai was incredible on it's own, but just lacking a tiny touch of the spice I wanted to finish this up. Anyone who has worked with this stuff knows the spice profile in this is stupidly pushy. I first tried it at .5% and it was just way too strong and harsh. It would have needed creams to smooth it out, but since I wanted to keep the cream to a minimum, I settled here at .15%. Just a dash of extra nutmeg/cardamom to really make it pop.

TFA Vanilla Swirl: With the tea base finally where I wanted it, I was getting some off notes feeling kind of dry. I needed more wetness, and cactus just wasn't going to be the answer in this case. I tried DIYFS Holy Vanilla, but frankly it was kind of too good at being an amazing strong vanilla. I needed something that would take a back seat and smooth out the dry bits and add a little body. At 1.5% you can't even really taste it. It makes the whole thing sort of come together into a wonderful, smooth, warm cup of chai.

A few notes of value, I steeped the versions previous to this around two weeks, but this version really starts to come together in just a few days. 3, or maybe 4 days. In truth though, it's pretty decent fresh. I vape generally on a build that's sort of medium heat/power. Dual 28g twisted coils at .5 ohm on a velocity with the airflow fairly closed at around 35-40w. I use a derringer at 1ohm and a Royal Hunter with a big fat single clapton for testing as well, but I test the most on my daily driver.

I'll answer any questions folks might have about subs in the comments section.