As always, the purpose of this thread is to gather the community to explore a flavor and its many uses. And it's also to have FUN!
Post recipes containing this week's Flavor of the Week, as the star or in a supporting role, with or without development notes. Talk about other people's recipes that use it. Compare and contrast different manufacturers' versions of the FOTW. Ask for help using that flavor in general or to achieve something specific, offer advice, brainstorm ideas, consider substitutions, suggest pairings... really anything at all as long as it's on topic.
This week's flavor is: Stones
For the uninitiated: What is that?
"Stone" is a name given to a number of flavors pre-mixed together and designed to be used as a single ingredient in different recipes, such as a "creamstone" that contains 30% of three different creamy flavors and 10% of another. They might also be called "flavor bases" (though that can also refer to whole one-shot recipes, so it gets a little confusing). And there are some people now trying to change their name to "layers" for whatever reason, adding another layer of confusion. Anyway, a recipe might read:
- 5% Strawberry flavor
- 1% Dragonfruit
- 7% Creamstone
And another might be:
- 4% Peach flavor
- 2% Cookie flavor
- 6% Creamstone
And, how did that get to be the FOTW?
It was requested. If you're not interested in this FOTW, please take this opportunity and comment to suggest one that interests you (or send me a PM to do that).
Past FOTW posts can be found here
Next week's flavor will be: Apples
The week after that will be: Aromatic Tobaccos
The week after that will be: Non-aromatic Tobaccos
The week after that will be: Tobacco Additives
The week after that will be: Marshmallows
The week after that will be: Pumpkin
The week after that will be: Persimmon
The week after that will be: Champagne
The week after that will be: Cake/Pandoro
The week after that will be: Hazelnut
The week after that will be: Maple
The week after that will be: Fig
The week after that will be: Blue Raspberry
The week after that will be: Dairy: Milk/Cream/Whipped Cream/Butter
The week after that will be: Banana
The week after that will be: Vegetals
The week after that will be: Gummy Candy
The week after that will be: Lemon
The week after that will be: Caramel
The week after that will be: Lime
The week after that will be: Cereal
The week after that will be: Orange
The week after that will be: Cheesecake
The week after that will be: Cherry
The week after that will be: Cookies/Graham Cracker/Pie Crust
The week after that will be: Coconut
The week after that will be: Cookie Dough & Cake Batter
The week after that will be: Custard
The week after that will be: Peach
The week after that will be: Raspberry
The week after that will be: Sweeteners
The week after that will be: Cinnamon Pastries
The week after that will be: Vanilla
The week after that will be: Canteloupe
The week after that will be: Honeydew
The week after that will be: Watermelon
My pudding base
FLV Coconut .2%
Inw Custard .5%
FLV Vanilla pudding 3-4%
So far ive tried it with a few fruits and it hasnt failed me.
Tried with soursop, banana and mango.
Cant say that i premix the base cuz it confuses me with %s.
But still a puddin stone IMO
So that's the regular FLV Coconut and not Sweet Coconut correct?
also the easiest way ive found to make a flavor base is through extrapolation:
move the decimal of your recipe 1 place to the right. in other words: mix 10x the amount of flavor you normally use (lets say for a 30ml bottle).
then use 1/10th of that for every 30ml bottle.
so a flavor base for an ultimate 300ml of your recipe would look like:
- 2% coconut (or .6g per 300ml)
- 5% custard (or 1.5g per 300ml)
- 30% Vanilla pudding (or 9g per 300ml)
- 11.1g total
your original recipe has a total flavor percentage of 3.7%
so for every 30ml bottle thats 1.11g of flavor or 1/10 the amount of base you made. add 1.11g of that base you made for every 28.89ml and youre good.
if you want 600ml then double the amounts i listed. if you want to make 3000ml add another 0
sorry for the wall of oddly worded text and double reply (had to check my math). im tired and this makes way more sense in my head hopefully it helps someone....
I felt sure when I tried your original FLV Soursop version that this was going to be portable to other tropical fruits. Sadly I haven't had a chance to try it with any of them yet. Do you actually have bottle of "Puddingstone" for this or is it just a combination that you've found to be a reliable base?
Care to share the banana and mango versions? I feel like I could go for a nice mango pudding vape.
Just my go to combo. I dont actually have a bottle of puddinstone. Sorry.
I just threw some flv mango at 2% and guanabana at .5% (for some more mango meat)..
Wifey wanted a banana pudding the other day so i made her a one with tfa banana cream 2% hs banana .75% and tfa banana nut bread 1% turn out great and she was very satisfied.
I woukd make a bottle of premixed but the 30% of this just confuses the crap outta me
On ATF, if you check "no Nic," you can actually hit a button that says "mix as flavor base" and it will give you the by-weight amounts to add to create one shot or flavor base. That's how I used to make my Mixer's Club samples when I didn't have 60ml bottles to just shake them up all at once.
nice man that sounds awesome. Also from the sounds of this, I bet WF Coconut Custard would be up your alley
I made pretty straight forward gummy stone. It brings a candy like sweetness and gummy like texture and fullness.
- TFA Gummy Candy 50%
- TFA Marshmallow 50%
I've used it in a haribo peach rings recipe and haribo cherry gummy recipe so far, and it seems to be doing its job. I should also mention, that I put about 4% of this in a recipe.
Care to share cherry gummy recipe? Sounds delicious.
Sure! This one is still a WIP, but I'm happy with it so far. The exhale reminds me of the after taste of cherry gummies. Tastes best after 3 days. As the cherry blends with the other flavors, the slight medicinal taste is phased out and the candy aspect starts to dominate.
-
Cherry FA 1% (This is where the slight medicinal cherry comes from. But to me, it's reminiscent of the artificial cherry flavor in haribo. My next iteration will use black cherry FA.)
-
Wild Cherry Cap 3% (this is a nice balance of natural and candy cherry)
-
Hibiscus Cap 1% (emulsifier for the two cherries. Dragon fruit TFA @ 1% could probably be subbed. But I found that hibiscus with cherry worked really well.)
-
Gummy Candy TFA 2%
-
Marshmallow TFA 2%
-
Sucralose 10% 1-2 drop per 30 ml (recomended to emulate the and emphasize the candy aspect)
*Edit: Feel free to give me any feedback!
Hey man please hit me with that peach rings that's my unicorn
Hope it's what you expect. This was my second successful recipe. I haven't updated it in a while, since I felt like it was done, so it uses some old school flavors.
-
White Peach FA 1% (this is essentially the opaque yellow portion of the peach ring. It has a much softer flavor, and it gets perfumey fast so I settled on 1%.)
-
Peach (juicy) TFA 4% (This is the transparent orange-ish part of the gummy. Very bright and slightly tart. This flavor got a little muted and a little harsh at 5% so I went with 4%)
-
Kiwi Double TFA 1% (Peach rings always had a distinct tartness that I struggled to pin down. A 1% Kiwi double does a good job of adding a small kick without adding a kiwi flavor)
-
Gummy Candy TFA 2%
-
Marshmallow TFA 2%
-
Sucalose 10% 1-2 drop per 30 ml (Personally, this mix is sweet as is, but my friends tell me the added sweetness helped)
This is a SNV. Let me know what you think!
Stones...that's an old term I haven't heard in years. I think back then, people didn't know how to measure things appropriately. Most people were mixing by volume,using 1 part this, 2 parts that, counting by drops, it was hard to find percentages. It's pretty easy to just list the "stone" as part of the formula now, so that's why I'm guessing I haven't heard of stones recently. Nice throwback!
I haven't made a stone of this yet, but it's something I've been thinking about trying. It's pretty much a straight English tobacco type of thing. As a stone I would use it like a tobacco absolute on steroids.
FA Black Fire- 6.67%
INW Black for Pipe- 26.67%
INW TA Garuda- 20%
INW TA Virginia- 26.67%
INW Dirty Neutral Base- 20%
If I end up doing it, I'll probably use it around 3% or so.
Tried to make this but it came out to 100.01% and my PC caught on fire.
Fuuuuuck. Now the impossible decision of which flavor loses that .01%.
I cut the BF down to 6.66 because I love B4P and couldn't cut it down.
Mixed a small bottle and then made a small tester. I'll let you know how it is once it steeps. Now to think about what to add to it...
I also made a second small batch and tester with D4P subbed for B4P just for the hell of it.
i didn't know this was a thing. i like the concept.
i've more or less been doing this with Simple Sugar Cookie, i keep trying random stuff mixed in with it. i guess i could just mix a bunch of that as a base and save myself some time lol
Simple Sugar Cookie was sort-of meant to be used that way. It's ridiculously versatile and receptive to a small amount of just about anything you could throw at it. But while you could save a minute or two by having a bottle of 75% Sugar Cookie and 25% Vanilla Custard already mixed up and ready to use at 10 to 12% + whatever else, perfecting mixes to me means that there will be some additions where you'd want to lower the Cookie, some where you'd want to lower the Custard, and some both. That's why I don't generally use or recommend using stones. But I'm aware that some people do enjoy using them and that's DIY, you are free to do things whichever way you want. I've bought one-shots that were good but when I got bored with the way they're supposed to be used, I used them as ingredients, mixing them together and adding things to them. Similar concept except that "stones" are designed to be portable across multiple recipes.
I feel like the 2-3 ingredient stones are probably not worth the time considering the limitations that you list but when a stone has 5, 6, or even more flavors than you can save a boat load of time creating a bottle no?
I posted one like a year ago that was decently received.
TFA Bavarian Cream 27.00%
FLV Sweet Coconut 5.00%
TFA Marshmallow 14.00%
CAP Vanilla Custard 20.00%
TFA Whipped Cream 15.00%
FA Meringue 1.00%
TFA Sweetener 5.00%
CAP Vanilla bean Ice Cream 3.00%
PG 10%
I call it "Creambone" and it's pretty OK. I've seen it mentioned a few times across the subreddit. I usually use it between 5 and 8%. It's bordering on pudding and boston cream.
If I had to sub out the sweet coconut is there anything else you would suggest.. it looks tasty as hell but I just can't afford the FLV concentrates right now ..
That looks delicious! What kinds of things have you enjoyed mixing it with? Has there been anything it hasn't worked well with?
It was the backbone of the Ube Custard recipe I had posted. It works well with pretty much any fruit. I can't really speak for strawberry, because I can barely taste them, but it's mellow enough to be a good compliment to most things. I definitely want to revisit it now that I have another year of experience.
There is one thing it doesn't play well with. RY4 Double. I thought it would make some kind of creamy 555/RY4 blend and I was wrong. It just brings out all the wet dog aspects of the RY4.
Dank Base from my Grape Ice Cream Cone recipe. You'll need a hell of a fruit to stand up to this one, but when you nail a standalone or decent pair comparable to INW Grape at 4%, it's a thing of beauty. I recommend leaving the Liquid Amber in to help carry the flavor through the creams, although if you have a top secret ingredient that works similar to this beauty, leave a comment!
I've had luck with a TFA Papaya/TFA Philippine Mango combo and INW Raspberry/TFA Raspberry Sweet combo as well.
Others I've considered are INW Cactus/FA Pear and some sort of dark berry involving FA Blackcurrant.
Failures have been blueberry and strawberry at every level, numerous attempts. (This might be where /u/ID10-T has a point about making adjustments to the base)
Without further ado, Dank Base...
Ingredient | Percentage
---|---
TFA Vanilla Bean Ice Cream | 3.5%
FW/TFA Bavarian Cream | 2%
TFA Graham Cracker Clear | 2.5%
FA Joy | 2%
FA Liquid Amber | 1%
TFA Koolada (optional) | 0.8%
Ingredient | Base %
---|---
TFA Vanilla Bean Ice Cream | 29.66%
FW/TFA Bavarian Cream | 16.95%
TFA Graham Cracker Clear | 21.19%
FA Joy | 16.95%
FA Liquid Amber | 8.47%
TFA Koolada (optional) | 6.78%
I try to leave the fruit % at the same as the original 4% INW Grape, but with a little tuning, I think this base could probably accommodate lighter fruits as well.
Edit: TFA Philippine Mango, not FLV Mango, sorry guys. I'm sure you can still use FLV if you prefer, I just really like TFAs Philippine Mango.
EDIT 2: added base %s for simplification, also link to base mix.
Yeah... I'm gonna need the percentages on that papaya/mango dank. Pretty please
TFA Papaya 2.5%
TFA Philippine Mango 1.5%
Sorry, checked the recipe and I indeed used TFA Philippine but only because I prefer it over FLV. You can definitely use FLV if it's your preferred Mango.
I'll also edit my previous comment :( I know FLV Mango is pretty sacred around these parts!
So, I don't really use stones as one would think like mixing up a bottle of just those flavors and using it has a single ingredient but I do use several combinations of ingredients when I need a certain flavor. My current favorite "stone" is the daveberry trinity which is a combination of INW Strawberry Shisha, FA Red Touch and JF Strawberry Sweet. To me it is better than the old standby of tfa stb ripe/cap stb sweet because it doesn't fade and is a very versatile stb flavor.
I never set out to create a strawberry stone. I firmly believe you're better off not mixing those up together ahead of time, as making them work from one recipe to the next will likely mean modifying that ratio of Shisha/Red Touch/JF Sweet. But they do taste great together!
Same goes for /u/ediblemalfunction's Blueberry Trinity of TFA Blueberry Extra 4%, FW Blueberry 3%, FA Bilberry 0.5%. I'm sure there are people who will mix a blueberry stone out of that but I wouldn't, though I'd probably use those exact amounts as a starting place (plus a dash of lemon - lemon makes blueberries pop just like it does in cooking) and adjust from there.
So I don't really use stones in the traditional sense of mixing up the flavor bases and then just using those, but I do have a few different combinations of flavors that I will use in various recipes such as:
Edible Malfunction's Blueberry Stone (found here)
- TFA Blueberry Extra @ 3%
- FW Blueberry @ 2%
- FA Bilberry @ 0.5%
My Strawberry Stone
- TFA Strawberry Ripe @ 3%
- INW Shisha Strawberry @ 2%
- FA Red Touch @ 0.5%
And my Cream Stone (which I think I should revisit, I was trying to avoid using LA CCI and was on a bit of a TFA VBG kick =X )
- FLV Frosting @ 0.5%
- FLV Sweet Cream @ 0.75%
- TFA VBIC @ 3%
- TFA Vanilla Bean Gelato @ 2%
That's about it for stones I've used. I'll prob get some mixed up for the show for easy mixing as well as checking out a few of your stones! I'm sure it would save a fair amount of time and also lead to some more consistency.
That Cream stone is the same cream from your persimmon recipe, right?
Correct
That Cream stone is the same cream from your persimmon recipe, right?
Correct
That Cream stone is the same cream from your persimmon recipe, right?
Correct
A bit late to the party here but I do have a strawberry stone I use. It's good for both the strawberry blind folks and to keep your strawberry from fading away.
Strawberry Stone
Mfg | Flavor | %
:- | :-: | -:
TFA | Dragon Fruit | 5
FA | Pear | 5
TFA | Ripe Strawberry | 55
TFA | Strawberry | 15
INW | Shisha Strawberry | 20
Use it anywhere from 4 to 10% when strawberry is a main note in your profile. It is a very natural tasting strawberry. If I want more of a candied strawberry I toss some CAP Sweet Strawberry up in the recipe in addition to the strawberry stone. I have a huge bottle of this right now. When I run out in a year or two I might replace the TFA Strawberry with FA next time I make it.
Edit: Don't know wtf is wrong with my table but 15 minutes spent trying to fix and I'm done!