I have read lots of forums in which a lot o people describe the flavor very differently, some people says caramel vanilla some others tobacco caramel with fruity notes
For me it tastes a little bit tobacco lil sweet and tartsy and a little bit electrical burnt lol (im vaping 10% TPA Double flavor RY4)
what does it taste like for you?
I feel like I need to preface this with a reminder that taste is subjective. It is probably going to be an unpopular opinion, but I think it tastes like dirty caramel. Like caramel that's literally been dropped in dirt and not washed off. Tobacco-flavored dirt? Eh, I guess, sort of. Dirt from a tobacco farm, maybe? But dirt nonetheless. Sorry, TFA RY4 lovers.
Dirt is an acquired taste, okay? Fucking delicious.
Maybe should've kept my trap shut. That is a beloved ingredient with many hardcore fans. But if there's another TFA RY4 Double dirt-taster out there, I wanted them to know they weren't alone.
I have tried TFA RY4 Double at 5 10 and 15% and although I couldn't put my finger or pick out any particular flavour I found 15% an OK vapable product with a touch of FA Pistachio. I can only describe the flavour as Umami. I found INW 555 Gold and FA Soho a much more satisfying flavour. Just for reference INW 555 Gold @ 5% tastes exactly the same as FA Soho @ 10%.
This perfectly describes how TFA RY4 tastes to me.
Dirt and earthy notes along with a very sweet caramel flavor.
I get s similar taste but its easy to cover up in a mix, I have not gone above 5% for RY4 double though.
So far, DIYFS Holy Grail RY4 is the one for me. Its sweet, nuanced and at 2-3 weeks has a real tobacco note to it along with the caramel and vanilla yumminess. The downside is that its best at 10% solo and it is kind of expensive.
I've got a batch of JF Ry4 double steeping now. I mixed it at 3% and will follow up with a review. Shake and vape it was decent but I'm gonna let time work it's magic. I'm also in Canada for the next week so that helps me from getting at it too early.
You're not alone with the dirty taste but it still is a satisfying flavor all in all. I don't love it or hate it. I also get that metallic taste similar to the one found in CAP cinnamon Danish swirl.
Edit: /u/nicobeak mentions artificial maple and I think that's pretty spot on now that I think about it.
It's definitely got a "dirtiness" about it... it feels/tastes kind of salty, kind of savory... kind of like soy sauce. With some dark caramel mixed in. Yeah, sounds gross. If I vaped it without knowing that it was trying to mimic a tobacco taste, I'd say it's pretty yuck. But because I know that it's a tobacco concentrate, I'm cool with it.
10% seems really high
I dunno, ELR says the average single-flavor recipe use of RY4 is up to around 8%. Might be wasteful to some people, but I guess it's subjective.
If your percentage is too high it distorts the tastes or mutes main elements of the Flavor Profile. Sometimes this can be okay if you do a looooooooooooooooong steep, but the flavor profile will still be affected.
Also ELR percentages are usually north of target. ATF percentages are usually off when a flavoring hasn't been used often enough yet, but down the line the bell emerges.
I've tried a few and they were all quite different.
It's supposed to be sweet. I think RY1 has the least caramel, and RY4 the most. One I tried was just like vaping sugar.
I don't really see it as a tobacco flavour as usually the tobacco is very much in the background.
I started out vaping a local house RY4, and it had a decent cigar flavor. Wasn't popular so they discontinued it, and I've been trying to find a replacement, so I've tried all of them...
I can definitely second that the "ry4" flavorings are all very different flavors. Some I get a floral taste, some sickly sweet, and one or two i can only describe as just plain weird...
If you want a true tobacco/caramel blend, you pretty much have to mix it yourself, as the "balance" depends very heavily on what tobacco you use, and a "balanced" 1 to 4 mix needs a harsh tobacco. Red type, Turkish, or American. Cigar and pipe type tobacco flavors get super muted and just come out syrupy or goofy.
IW Cuba cigar is a decent "proxy" flavor, but don't try to add any caramel at all.
If memory serves it goes from RY1 being the dry end and RY12 being the sweet end. I recall trying an RY8 in early 2015 and it was so cloying and sweet that I couldn't pick out any flavours.
RY4 is the "accepted" middle ground, or at the very least it's the one that is most popular.
Problem being when you realise RY4 is just caramel, vanilla and tobacco and there isn't any standard there to base comparisons on, so it all becomes very muddled and confused with everyone having their preference with nothing to reference it with.
Jeez with how sweet the RY4s I've had are I'd be terrified to try RY12.
It could be RY8 being the higher end. I really can't remember clearly but RY12 sticks up in the old head for some reason.
Either way yeah, the RY8 was sickening. Not in the sense that it was too sweet, but more that it made me gag. Could've been the particular blend but as you say most RY4's are sweet enough. Then again there IS no standard there so almost any caramel/tobacco/vanilla blend is an RY4 these days even if they're dry or sweet.
I can't say anything about TPA RY4 double since I haven't used it, but I mix my own version of RY4 using gold ducat by inawera, caramel by capella, and vanilla bean ice cream by capella. IMO it's the best RY4 I've had, it has a good caramel/vanilla flavor with a nice tobacco undertone.
Oooooo I'm stealing this!
I've had store-brand vendor juice called RY4 that I thought was good and complex and delicious. So I tried TFA and thought it was horribly opposite of what I had tried previously. FA RY4 was weird, too. I don't dig them.
However, I'm working on a project that calls for Double RY4 by TFA - and I'm going for it. There has to be a use for it, I have to be using percentages wrong or something, but I just - don't - like that flavor whenever I try to mix it myself.
I'll bet the vendor was using a stupid-low percentage, like .75% or something absurd. I don't know. But I'm keeping an open mind.
I must have wilted taste buds or something, because I mix it 10%. What's fast becoming my favorite is RY4D at 5%, FW RY4 at 5%, and acetyl pyrazine and 1.5% or 2%. That recipe is a variation of someone else's, can't recall who right now, and the only difference is the addition of FW RY4; I cut the RY4D in half to compensate.
Yeah I look at it like I look at Flavorah's Milk & Honey. I want to like it, I know it can be used correctly, I just haven't figured it out quite yet.
Which is why I buy small dripper bottles, like, 100 at a time.
Unrelated, there's something magical about getting a giant bag of empty bottles. Sometimes I just want to lay down and open the bag and just ro-....
...hi. Thanks for the reply, I gotta go, uhh... my... phone's ringing...
I'm all for preferences but even a FA RY4 on its own sounds painfully strong - so much so that I wouldn't even test it. In my ADV tobacco I use it at 1.5% and even then I can pick it out from the other ingredients easily.
What ratio do you use for your VG/PG?
Usually 60/40 VG/PG, but sometimes 70/30. I read somewhere that the real Tribeca is 50/50, but for some reason I can't get myself to try that.
I've been thinking about cutting the RY4 down to 5% and adding walnut at about 1%. There's a sharpness that's begun to bother me and I want to see if I can improve on this mix. I may add a little VBIC, too. I plan to keep the AP at around 1.5.
I want to add that I'm no better at cooking than I am at mixing. I can use recipes as they are and change a few things but I can’t taste a dish and say what is in it. That’s what I'm doing with this one, adding and subtracting.
TFA RY4 Double: Dirty Caramel with a faint tobacco. Dry. Needs a lot of help from other flavors to be adv material.
Hangsen RY4: Tobacco leather, with a sweeter caramel/Vanilla combo. Slightly dry, but not as dry as TFA. Needs a little boosting with other flavors to get a full bodied vape, a little thin bodied.
DIYFS Holy Grail: A much more complex and nuanced RY4. Sweet Caramel and vanilla with a mild creaminess. Authentic Cavendish type tobacco background, with none of the dryness of the others. Needs far fewer additional flavors to make a complete juice, strong as a standalone.
When I'm after an RY4 I either use DIYFS, or I start with an FA SOHO base and then add Holy Vanilla and FW Salted Caramel and build out from there.
TFA Double RY4 is still my ADV although I cannot even "logically" explain why.
Just a few days ago I made like 0.5L or so after I got a new batch of flavours. In the beginning again, right after mixing I was APPALLED. I remember this impression, not the first time this happened to me.
The initial impression from the smell alone, before steeping and vaping, is "it smells like burning old schoes", just EFFING AWFUL and in no way something you'd want to taste or vape.
So I had the bottles steep for a week, vaping them right now..and it's awesome.
Difficult to explain the taste. I don't taste/smell "tobacco", which makes sense since there is actually no tobacco in it, AT ALL. Or maybe it does remind of tobacco, in some subtle way. (You know this very strong Dutch tobacco, or some sweet pipe tobacco)
It tastes...sweetish..but with a slight dark, "harsh" or dry, yet not unpleasant note. Sort of like...straw...or dry gras. Definitely vanilla notes in it...a hint of "honey" (even tho there is none in it of course). Caramel? If "caramel" means burnt/brown sugar, then yes. Yes I can see this.
But the OVERALL impression is that it's a good mix of "dark flavour" and sweetness, a "full" flavour but not overbearing...which I think appeals to former tobacco smokers. And this is why I think I like it. It's just the "right" mix somewhere between sweet/fruity and pure tobacco flavours. A "SIMPLE" flavour essentially, to make but also to enjoy.
The other thing is that my ADV recipe (12% TFA RY4 Double, 1% AP) is silly easy to make, and that this goes also well if you want to add other stuff. I had very good exp adding "cool mint" to it, which is sort-of like a sweetish-candy mint flavour that it's not too mentholy. This gives it a very nice fruity/minty body. And I can see it going also good with other stuff, like fruit notes, cocoa,nuts, chocolate etc although I didn't experiment too much with this yet.
Tip: do NOT add more EM. I made like a pint of it and added EM by mistake..I guess I will have to toss it out. You can already smell the difference, the EM badly mutes the flavour. The "pure" one where I just added AP smells great.