Percentage Used: 12%

 

Equipment Used: Troll RDA with a wickless single SS .8 ohm Clapton coil at 20W.

 

PG/VG: 30/70

 

Steep Time: 2 Weeks

 

Aroma: Candy, toffee, nutty, dulce de leche, vanilla.

 

Flavor Description: Smooth sweet crunchy toffee with candied nuts. Sweet without being sickening, rich authentic toffee flavor, almost like a richly caramelized brown sugar and butter. So very close to a caramel candy. I was pleasantly surprised by a rather prominent toasted nut in this one. I can't place a specific nut, I believe it's mixed nuts. There are faint top notes of a medium vanilla flavor, not as dark as a baking extract, more like a vanilla cream or milk? It helps to add delicious layers to the toffee, making it a very good single flavor candidate. The cream is very light and doesn't provide much body at this 2 week mark, I'm not sure if it will come out more at a longer steep. Since the creams tend to take more time, I'm hoping it will develop a bit more mouth feel in the next couple weeks.

 

Off Flavors: Nuts

 

Throat Hit: 4/10

 

Pairings: This is definitely better suited to desserts, candy. bakeries, cookies, cakes, creams, custards, other nuts, tobaccos, ice cream, coffee, chocolate, rum, orange, coconut, salted caramel, cheesecake, popcorn.

 

Notes: What I am enjoying about this is even though it's a buttery toffee candy cream, the butter and cream aspect are very mild, mellowing the richness. I think this will allow for a much more adaptable flavor, add a little cream or ice cream for toffee ice cream (better known as Butter Brickle to some of us older folk, and yes it really reminds me of it). Or coffee and yellow cake for a nice toffee coffee cake with nuts. 12% is a good strength for me on this one for a single flavor, although I've heard some people comment they really like it in the 15-20% range. That might bump the creamy mouth feel as well, but it would be too rich for my subjective tastes, so I would try adding 2-4% more cream, custard, or ice cream first.