Setup: Recoil RDA. Dual kanthal clapton coils @ 0.339 ohm. 50w power, Cotton Bacon wicks.
Testing: Real Flavors (Super Concentrate) Grape @ 1.75% and 2.5%, 70/30 VG/PG, Steeped 6 - 13 days.
Flavor Description: Grape cotton candy. This tastes like maltol/ethyl maltol combined with a grape kool-aid flavor. So much EM that it has that spun sugar thing going on, very much like using crushed grape suckers to make cotton candy on my home cotton candy machine. Or mixing 10% TFA Cotton Candy with 2% FLV Grape, maybe.
Off-flavors: Cotton candy. It's just called "grape" - it were called grape cotton candy or just grape candy, you couldn't call it an off flavor. I also got a very light hint of the notorious grape medicine flavor at 2.5% at 6 days' steep, but it is gone at 13 days.
Throat Hit: Very slight itch at 6 days, none at 13 days.
Notes: At 1.75%, or half the manufacturer's suggested use percent, I get more cotton candy than grape. It calls to mind a lavender colored cotton candy with just hints of grape. At 2.5%, more grape punches though and this tastes purple, like the dark spots where bites have been taken from fluffy bunch of grape cotton candy. Inhale is mild, somewhat powdery grape, with a fuller but one dimensional grape kool-aid coming in right at the top of the exhale and giving way to a spun sugar with light grapey finish that's neither offensively dry nor especially juicy.
Uses & Pairings: Other grapes, strawberries and other berries. If grape is your main flavor, this is going to need some help. There just does not seem to be enough grape here in relation to the maltol taste to carry any kind of grape recipe. The concentrate seems to be muting itself, if that makes sense. But it seems like it might be very useful in making other grapes, as well as strawberries etc., more jammy, ripe, or sweeter, similar to adding EM or TFA Strawberry Ripe to get that effect. Might also have use in candy profiles. It's not terribly sweet as a standalone but tastes almost certain to bring out the sweetness in other flavors. Don't recommend buying this flavor, because I think anything it can do can just as easily be done with other ingredients. But if you happen to have it, as I now do, I would probably use it around 2.5% in a mix for these applications and be sure to let it steep a bit to fully rid itself of any medicine flavor or harshness.
Second Opinions:
ELR notes have preferred single flavor mixes 2.5% to 3%.
juice junkie lover: "Mixed at 2.5% and let it sit a week. This is the best grape flavor I have tasted to date. It has no back taste! It reminds me of grape koolaide! I love this one!"
I'm guessing yucky off-notes is what is meant by back taste, and I have to agree that this is not unpleasant and does remind me of grape kool-aid. But "best" grape? Compared to what, I wonder.
louiesquared: "This flavor is a wonderful sweet grape with a bit of a bite on the end. No cough medicine here. Reminds me of Welches grape juice but a little lighter. Single flavor mix at 3% with a 3 day steep and it's very nice."
That bite is probably pretty common among short-steeped RF SC flavors. It is indeed lighter than grape juice to me. Light and fluffy.
TheTinMan: "Mixed at 1.5% in a recipe. The grape really shines. Wonderful flavor with no artificial taste."
No artificial taste? Because kool-aid grows on trees, right? LOL
Be sure to check out all of the other great reviews at:
Video Review: In this video, the third episode of NOTED, I try this flavor for the first time and talk about it and other related flavors with my co-hosts /u/CheebaSteeba and /u/mlNikon.... as well as a SPECIAL GUEST, Mr. Grack Juice himself, /u/Philosaphucker. Check it out!
Thank you for this. I am really enjoying the vid content. I love how you guys stay on topic and really dig in to the matter instead of glossing over it. It is so interesting to see how even among mixers how divergent opinions are...when I heard Cheeba say he preferred FW or FLV I nearly had to restrain myself. Yes, I said bad things to the TV ...hahahahh. Its' funny how we almost get emotionally attached to what we like and don't like. I am in love with FLV for a grape candy flavor and getting INW in tomorrow for that authentic thing I keep hearing of.
Thanks S.H.! We're trying to stay on track and get into a rhythm so we aren't talking over each other or having dead air. Trying otherwise to improve the production of the show, too. We have a new intro that we should hopefully be able to integrate by tomorrow and I just got a new headphones/mic setup that I hope to have figured out in time. That won't fix my lighting situation though, I really need to work on that.
The subjectivity of taste is something else, isn't it? Someone else was in the live chat screaming about the wonders of FW Grape Soda and all I could think of was those little packets of Splenda, so much sucralose.
I don't feel like I'm watching good content if its' not some abrupt intro with some hard mic taps while the other hosts are taking direct lung hits with the loudest air flow known to man...its part of the charm....hahaha....in some video forms the amateur content beats the pro's by a mile...I've heard.
Kopel has mastered what to do when that split second of dead air arrives...he hits you with that thousand yard stare that makes you wonder if he is watching you and thinking, "what a lackluster viewer we have here"....hahaha...Ckemist in his garage (best I can tell)...Fresh shows going on for 3 hours....its all good man you guys are doing just fine!
I feel bad knowing I inspired that FOTW by requesting it. Grape is such a difficult flavoring for vaping to nail and you guys sat and talked about it for an hour, had to have been painful lol. Sorry guys 😕
After a lot of messing around with grapes, I finally decided on a 50/50 blend of TFA Grape Juice and FW Grape Soda. TFA has that crappy medicine flavor but FW is the sugary goodness and they meld together nicely in my opinion. I provided that grape mix to a work employee for a couple years and no complaints. I know its not the most amazing recipe in the world, but it tasted good imo. I think I used around 8% each I think, but its been a while.
Testing the RF SC stuff is a bummer, right? Because you look up the second opinions and you so badly want to be tasting what these people are apparently tasting.
That pretty much nails it. Between your reviews and my own tastings, I don't feel enthusiastic about testing the rest of them.
But I have Aged Bourbon Cream and Bourbon tests already mixed up and I'll be giving those a go within the next few days.
Yeah, that's the problem with all flavors though. We all have differing taste buds and what I like you may not. Just as ID10-T used my notes as an example, I didnt get any Grape Kool-Aide out of this. Like I said it tastes more like Grape Juice to me just lighter. Even after a full 3 weeks the bite never went away. This is a good thing to me as it has a rich almost Concord Grape flavor. Of course, as I said, it's all just opinion and personal taste.
I still think we need some sort of baseline comparison for flavor. I think preferences are all well and good, but unless we can discuss flavor from a common jumping off point, then all this flavor review stuff is pretty useless. I realize that it's pushing the argument to an absurd place, but if you taste apples and I taste oranges from the same concentrate somebody has to be more right, regardless of preference.
I get that nothing is universal, but by putting a review out in a public forum you're implicitly asking for people with different experiences to share. My comment is admittedly a little tongue-in-cheek, but I'm honestly curious about why I'm not getting anything approaching the rave reviews I've been reading about RF SC flavors.
I would agree with you if you tasted blueberry and I tasted grape but we both tasted a different variation of the same grape. It could be more than just a difference in our taste buds. The brand and blend of PG/VG, the percentage used and the atomizer all play a part in the overall taste. The same goes for reviewing atomizers as well. You may like one that I feel is subpar. I've been disappointed after selecting a flavor based on reviews but that doesn't mean that the reviewers were wrong.
2nd opinion for wiki purposes.
Nice review idiot