Setup: Recoil w/ flavor barrel, Dual 15 wrap 26g 3mm Nifethal 70 coils @.19 ohms. 60w power, 400F temp limit. Full Cotton Wicks.
Testing: FA Lychee@ %1, 60/40 VG/PG, Steeped 21 days.
Flavor Description: This is an interesting concentrate. Solo, it tastes a lot like grape skins, rose hips, and hairspray. Not nearly as bad as all that sounds, but definitely on the floral side of things. I've had never had fresh lychees, but the base note of this concentrate seems fairly accurate to the lychee flavor underneath all the sugar you get from canned lychee in syrup. Strong as hell, with a pretty pronounced sweetness. Taste is similar to FLV Lychee, but less sharp and intense, with maybe a touch more sweetness and that cool rosehip thing going on.
Inhale is mostly sharper florals and a solid sweetness. Little indistinct, but you definitely get some tarter non-green rosehip flavor. Exhale has tannic, tart, grape skins right up front. Citrusy, floral, rosehips show up a tiny bit later in the top notes. Underlying chemical hairspray taste to all of it though. Sweet all the way through, but gets a bit sticky towards the end of the exhale. Lots of volume to the vape, but the flavor itself is a little narrow.
Off-flavors: Yeah, that whole hairspray thing. I think it's the tart florals that are doing it. Still pretty prominent at lower pecentages, making this stuff fairly tricky to mix with
Throat Hit: Moderate. That chemical note doesn't do it any favors, and the more-than-solid sweetness and the tartness together are fairly harsh.
Uses & Pairings: So pairing this, you could look toward grapes. This flavor seems fairly similar to the more "accurate" style of grape concentrates. Talk of using this with raspberries and strawberries as well.
Plenty of people recommend this as a sort of general tropical sweetener for juices, and I could see that working. It's definitely on the sweet side. I'm not a big fan of that hairspray taste to it though.
I've never made anything with lychee that doesn't taste fairly lychee forward. Keeping it light in fruit mixes should give you most of the tartness here, while contributing a good bit of sweetness to your mix. Down low, I really do think this gives me most of what I'd want from a rose flavor without any of the nauseating (for me at least) green notes of something like FA Rose.
I'd say no to prominent creams, custards, and bakeries. I'm sure it could be done but those off notes are going to be super-distracting up against any kind of dairy or dryer bakery concentrates. You might be able to get away with something lighter like TFA Vanilla Swirl.
Notes: So S&V concentration testing, this stuff gets really aggressive really quickly. Tart and thin at .25%. .5% has quite a bit more body already, and that floral is already pretty well front and center. 1% is getting sticky sweet and increasingly tart. This isn't much fun at 2%, with the rosehip flavor getting more towards normal floral roses. Sweetness is overbearing and the harshness is pretty noticeable. I'd start with this as an accent note at .25%, bumping up to .5% for use as a floral, tropical sweetener. I don't really think you're going to get a pleasant main note out of this, but I'm pretty routinely wrong. I'd stay south of 1% though.
Second Opinions:
So.. uhhh... here are the HIC Notes:
"Sweet, sweet tropical fruit flavor. It similar in flavor to dragonfruit and can make an interesting substitute or partner for it (usually requires much less!) Try Lychee under 1% as a sweetener with an exotic fruit flavor. Lychee tastes sweet late in an exhale, which makes it especially useful; most sweet flavors don’t linger like Lychee."
Here's the ELR Page. Some good info besides the HIC copies. Pretty consistent reports about strength and sweetness.
Pretty good reviews on BCF. And on ECX.
Plus, someone with a minion avatar of Vaping Underground says this tastes realistic. So that's cool.
I'm sure everyone has a flavor they thought they mixed a bit with, impulsively bought 4oz of it in a sale, then realised it actually wasn't actually that good at all. This is mine.
I probably have 115+ml left of this that's not been touched for 18 months.
I thought it would be really interesting as an asian dessert type thing. So naturally I added some TFA honey :)
The taste of that reminded me of kissing my scary Belgian Aunt's cheek as a child. She used to wear so much sickly-sweet smelling perfume it would fill the room, and and you could actually taste the perfume if you got sent in close. Horrible.
So yeah, FA Lychee, mixes well with childhood trauma.
I actually bought this when I first started and I spent a crazy amount of time making a decent recipe. It's tricky to work with, but with supporting flavors, it can be great. Here is what I came up with: (incidentally a fruit/cream)
Lychee FA 3%
Dragon fruit TFA 1%
Watermelon TFA 1%
Strawberry TFA 4%
BV Cream TFA 2%
Vanilla custard V1 CAP 2%
I know 3% FA lychee seems high, but it's the only way to make it prominent enough as the main flavor and blend with the strawberry. The cream base I chose is also mellow enough to not overpower the fruits, but strong enough to reduce the perfume/ hairspray notes. Shake and vape ready, but steeping will reduce any chemical tastes that you may be sensitive to.
There's been some solid speculation that FE flavors at ECX are from the same source as the SC flavors at BCF and SC (but not SC Gourmet) flavors at VZ. If that's true, and you love lychee and want great lychee flavor, I'd recommend giving FE Lychee a try.
SC Lychee from BCF and VZ's source (but, I think, not currently available at BCF or VZ), is syrupy and tastes like a sweet canned pear wrapped in a tart grape skin and very lightly spritzed with a rosy perfume, but no hairspray. I keep meaning to pick up that FE Lychee and see if it really is the same thing.