Setup: Recoil w/ flavor barrel, Dual 15 wrap 26g 3mm Nifethal 70 coils @.16 ohms. 60w power, 450F temp limit. Full Cotton Wicks.
Testing: INW Cherries @ %1, 60/40 VG/PG, Steeped 10 days.
Flavor Description: A cherry flavor that doesn't taste like plastic! A light, rainier cherry sweetness with a spicy dry peel note. A really light flavor, never really giving you a solid body and instead of just coloring everything it touches with a bit of cherry.
Inhale is slighty airy rainier cherry sweetness. I think the spicier, drier top note is sort of accentuating the airy-ness here. Inhale actually has a slightly deeper cherry flavor than the exhale. Exhale has a lighter rainier cherry sweetness right down the middle. No floral component here, although the top notes taste a lot like raw vg. Back half of the exhale has spicier, tannic, dry top notes that show up out of that raw vg taste. Relatively clean finish, with some lingering dryness.
Off-flavors: I'm getting a decent amount of spiciness here. Hard to place, not like distinct cloves like INW Cherry Concentrate, more like a dry, earthy, tannic, berry skin kind of spice. Almost like blueberry skins. No plastic though, so that's cool.
Throat Hit: Light, mostly from the dryness.
Uses & Pairings: So this tastes really great, but it doesn't have much body. It needs some help getting up to a full saturated cherry flavor. Something like INW Cherry at .75% helps provide a richer, fuller bottom end of a cherry while letting this fill in the top notes. In the same vein, FA Apricot or an apple or pear flavor can fill in some of the juicier low-end you'd expect from a fuller cherry.
Useful to add really distinct cherry top notes to fruit mixes. Non-floral and pretty mellow, so your fruit pairings are basically wide open. Doesn't seem to like stand up front solo, so you'll likely end up with a cherry twinge as opposed to a distinct cherry flavor.
This is also the cherry you want to use if mixing with creams or bakeries. You won't get a ton of body, but there is nothing here that will clash with heavy dairy notes or dense bakeries. Using some marzipan will help to really fill in the base of a baked cherry flavor for fillings and the like.
Notes: I'm having some serious issues getting something that feels like a full, saturated vape from this concentrate solo. This stuff seems really airy, no matter the percentage. S&V concentration testing, this is noticeable but light at .5%. I get some lighter cherry top notes and that light spice note. 1% is still seeming very airy. This seems to be mostly top notes without any substantial body. The actual flavor here is good, it's just fairly subtle. 2% is largely similar, if a bit heavier on that dry spicy top note. 3% has a good tart rainier cherry note, but again those drier spicy top notes are getting in the way. 4% is finally starting to push towards medicinal, but there is no weird plastic note. Still dry, tart, and spicy. The good news is that this is a pretty forgiving mixer. I don't think your going to run a mix by working with a heavy hand here. I'd start with this at 1% if you want to add a bit of cherry to a fruit mix. I'd probably bump up to about 2.5% and work up for mixing with bakeries, creams, or as a strong cherry that you're going to fill in with a juicier base.
All in all, a really good flavor... I just wish it hit a bit harder. Solo, I can't personally get away from the thinner, drier, airy character of this concentrate. I think it's a great mixer, but not like the one-shot answer to all your cherry prayers.
Second Opinions:
Glowing reviews on BCF. Realistic, not cough syrup, "best cherry flavor" appears multiple times.
Thanks for another awesome review!
I know you weren't fond of INW Cherry, but, I've noticed combining the two at varying percentages (>Cherry for more tart, >Cherries for more rounded/sweet) works fantastically in fruit mixes.
I haven't tried either in anything bakery-related, but if I could figure out a cheesecake with a saucy cherry pie filling topping, I would be so happy.
Gotta be accurate when introducing INW Cherries to a bakery/cheesecake recipe. I found that it can be easily overwhelmed, even at 4%, and you have to make your base very light. Awesome flavour, but in bakery recipes with common bases it can decently act only as an accent, not as a main tone.
IDK if i got a bad batch but my INW Cherry is horrid, even at 0.5% its too strong lol
Thanks for the notes! sounds like something I can finally use to imitate those sweet russian tea cherries you add to your drink to sweeten it up. Looking forward to playing around with this in some late night tea vapes and some light bakeries. Also think it could be quite interesting pairing it with almond.
Another great review! Thank you sir. I told you you'd like it :p
excellent analysis, I've only messed with it a little bit so this will help a lot next time I go to mix with it!
Are you one that gets much more cherry flavor than any kind of almond paste type thing out of INW Marzipan?
Pretty much. but I think almond paste tastes like cherries too.
Do you think the two of them (INW Cherries + INW Marz) would have a use outside of bakeries? Like in a beverage that calls for both cherry and amaretto?
These kind of wild guesses always get me in trouble. I think maybe if you're talking about a cocktail type of vape with a darker booze like rum or whiskey it'd probably work. I'd deliberately push that marzipan up a little higher than you'd think, but then you may run into some sweetness issues.