Wood

FA Oak Wood Somewhat smoky oak flavor. Not a whole lot more you can really say about it. It’s a great flavor, and works really well with tobaccos. Brings an earthiness to a tobacco mix that makes them a bit more authentic. Also pretty good with some TFA Kentucky Bourbon with a sweeter tobacco. I like it a little stronger than I usually see it used. Probably start it around .5-.75% and find where you like it.

TFA Red Oak a bit sweeter than Oak Wood, but can be used the same way. I really like to team them up to make me feel like I’m being face fucked by a giant oak tree. I’ll just leave it at that. Start around 1%

FLV Wood Spice

Cologne is all I can really think of when I taste this. Oddly, “perfume” in vape terms is usually bad thing, but I think cologne is a good thing. It’s like a sandalwood with maybe hints of cedar. I’m not super familiar with different woods and their scents (I work with metal and chemicals, so I could probably tell you if something smells like ferric chloride, but not the difference between mahogany and maple wood) but whatever kinds of wood are in this stuff, it works. It adds a nice texture and body along with that handsome cologne taste. I think handsome is the best way to describe it. This stuff is crazy strong (hence the price) and I’d suggest making a 10% dilution to work with it. Start at .1%.

FLV Oak Barrel This one is still sort of new to me (not sure it’s been released yet) but I’ve done a little bit of playing with it. Couldn’t really taste it all that much as a single flavor, but I threw it in a Butterscotch Tobacco mix, and it shows up on the back end of the exhale as a dry oak flavor. I think there could be a good place for this somewhere, but the hard part will be finding a place where it will work better than the FA and TFA oaks. I’m thinking maybe an Oak Wood and Oak Barrel combo might be interesting since there’s a bit of sweetness in the Red Oak you might want to keep out of a mix. That’s to be tested.

Nuts

INW 3 Five This is a strong and pretty bright nutty flavor. It’s kind of hard to tell exactly what kind of nuts are in there, but I think I definitely pick up a little almond and maybe walnut and pistachio? It’s earthy, yet bright. The smell is almost a chemical nut type of thing, but the taste isn’t too bad if you stay low with it. Start with .25% .

INW Sweet King This is an interesting one. It’s like a creamy hazelnut type of thing. Should fit in well in a dessert tobacco to add a bit of texture and sweetness. I believe when they first released it, or sent pre-release samples out, they were calling it Sweet King Tobacco, and all the reviewers said they didn’t get any tobacco flavor from it, so it seems like the dropped the “tobacco” part and just rolled with it. It smells really nice, and doesn’t seem too hard to work with. I’ve gone up to 1.5% without it being overwhelmingly sweet. Pretty cool flavor that I should probably play with more, but I don’t do a whole lot of dessert tobaccos.

INW Tobacco Peanut I really like this flavor, but it can take over a mix pretty easily. To me it tastes just like a raw peanut. Not sweet, not peanut butter, not bright. Just raw peanut. But it’s good. Start with .25% and decide if that’s good or maybe make a 10% dilution. It’s strong.

INW Little Space Drop The description for this one says it a toasted walnut flavor, but it’s a little more green and raw to me. I’ve seen a lot of people say they use it in cigarette mixes, but I don’t really get those vibes from it. Use sparingly if you want an earthy, almost musty walnut taste in your mix. .25% and adjust.

Toasted Almond I use CAP usually, but I’ve also used TFA in the past. They are pretty strong, earthy, and a little funky, but they work well with tobaccos. I used to use it in a vanilla/hazelnut/toasted almond thing that was like the only juice I Vapes for a year. It’s nothing worth sharing, but if it sounds appealing, play around with something like RY4 Double, your favorite vanilla, TFA Graham Cracker Clear, CAP Hazelnut, and Toasted Almond. You can probably create something better than I did. I’d start with 1% for tobaccos.

FA Marzipan I picked this up a long time ago to make something non tobacco related that I found on ELR. It sat around for a long time until I got INW Black Cherry for Pipe. It’s pretty interesting with that. Boosts that cherry note a little, and still keeps it out of medicine territory. I mixed it up with the black cherry for pipe and a little bit of INW Am4a, and it’s pretty good. Could probably be useful in other mixes, but that’s really the extent of my experience with it so far.

TFA 5% Acetyl Pyrazine I’m kind of a freak with AP. A lot of people get the corn chip taste when it goes around 1%, but sometimes I like this shit closer to 2%, and I never really taste corn chips. Or maybe I do, and I just like Fritos Tobacco. I usually use this alongside a nutty tobacco like INW Tobacco Symphony or FA Glory to boost the nuttiness a bit. I really like the texture it adds. Untested theory: 1.5% AP and 1.5% FA Caramel= caramel popcorn? I’ve been wanting to test that for a while because I’ve got those two around there in my clone of The Duke, and every now and then I’ll get a caramel popcorn vibe from it. Probably don’t start off above .5% if you’ve never tried it before though. It’s really strong, and you don’t want the Fritos in there... unless you do.

Tobacco Absolutes

INW Garuda This is just a plain and simple Tobacco Leaf taste. It’s slightly sweet and just delish. Sometimes it tastes a little like unsweetened green tea to me. I tried to email INW a while back to see what kind of tobacco they use to make this, but got no answer. My best guess is maybe some kind of Flue Cured Tobacco because of the sweetness, but that’s just a guess. Start at 1%.

INW Cuban Cigar TA There’s a bit of Tobacco Leaf goodness in there, with maybe a little bit of smoky vibe, but what I really like to use this for is to dry things out a little. If you’ve got a really wet tobacco going on, this will help bring it back to the dry side of things. I’ve never smoked a wet cigarette, so I don’t really like my tobacco vapes to be wet. With some DNB this stuff is pretty awesome. Not a strong flavor, but still one of my most useful additives. Start at 1%. Also, this is not the same as INW Cuba Cigar!

INW Virginia TA Grassy/hay type of tobacco absolute. Not as sweet as Garuda, but there’s a little bit of sweetness there. I mostly use this for the earthy grassy notes. .5% to start, but can safely take it up to 1-1.5% if you want it really grassy. Not the same as INW Virginia!

INW Oriental TA I waited for like a year to find this in stock somewhere, and I assumed it was just discontinued and I’d never get to try it. Then the gods smiled down on me and Vapers Tek had it in stock. I was so excited to try it because I love all the other INW TAs. But I was a bit disappointed. Didn’t really taste like much. I haven’t even bothered to mix with it because it broke my heart and I can’t bear it. It might be worth revisiting later because sometimes my taste buds get weird, but I don’t have high hopes like it did before. Maybe that will help me not be so disappointed. Not the same as INW Oriental! Edit: I’m testing this one again, and maybe it’s not as bad as I thought. It’s got kind of a sweet leaf tobacco that is a little bit spicy. Has a decent bite to it. I think I can definitely fuck with this one.

ECX Tobacco Absolute

This one is a bit more potent than the INW TAs. It’s closest in taste to INW Virginia TA, but about twice as strong. Maybe has a little bit of ash taste to it too. I haven’t ordered this in a while, but I believe they have sold it diluted to 50% in the past, and the last time I got it, it wasn’t diluted so I ended up ruining like 400 ml of juice because I didn’t realize it so I ended up with twice as much as I should have. So if you pick this up, check the label to see if it says to dilute to 50% or if it’s already been diluted.

My notes this week were too long for Reddit, so I’ll break it up.

Smoke/ash

FA Black Fire Just like the name suggests, this tastes like fire. I'm talkin' campfire smoke kind of fire. It's strong and requires a very careful hand, because it can get overwhelming quickly. In a tobacco recipe at low concentrations it can give your mix a little bit of authentic smoke taste to take you back to the good ol' days. A little higher and it can be like mixing in a bit of Latakia to your mix. You can fire cure your own tobacco. Start at .25% and adjust from there. If it's too strong at first, give it a few days, it calms down a little bit.

INW Dirty Neutral Base DNB is probably my most used additive. Like the name suggests, it's dirty. It adds a nasty ash taste to the mix without really getting in the way of the other flavors. In my opinion, it's going to be a crucial part of any cigarette recipe. Not a freshly opened pack type of cigarette recipe, but a dirty, burning nostalgia type. Start at .5% and adjust from there. I like it a little heavier, but it can get crazy pretty quick.

INW Black for Pipe Chem, whatchu talkin' 'bout? That's not an additive. Well, sometimes I like to use it like that. It's got a really nice smoky flavor that comes through really nice even when it's used a little lower. When I use it as an additive I usually go around .75-1%.

Captain Jack for Pipe Another one that isn't specifically marketed as an additive, but I still use it as one. There's a smoky quality to this one that I really like, but when used as a base there's some top notes that don't agree with me. I use it around .5% to get that smoky flavor without the baggage of the off notes. I'm sure there's some that really like this flavor as a base, but it just gets weird for me after like 20 minutes.

Enhancers

FA Ozone According to the flavor review by /u/ConcreteRiver this stuff tastes like coumarin. I have never had coumarin, but I trust him. It's like wet hay when vaped solo (which I actually like for some reason) but it gets really interesting when added to tobaccos. It can beef up a weaker tobacco and make it taste a bit more authentic. Even a stronger tobacco can benefit from a little bit of this stuff. It just makes it feel fuller and boosts all the right notes. So far it has been really fun to play with. Start at .5% and adjust from there.

FLV Pucker What I taste with this solo is Guaiacol with a tart top note. I picked up some 1% Guaiacol from TPA a while back because I was wanting to try to make my own tobacco additive. That didn't really work out that well, but now I can't help but to pick out Guaiacol any time it is used. So it's got a kind of phenolic smoke taste, but what makes Pucker really interesting is that tart top note. It's like taking the flavor out of INW Rhubarb and leaving just the tart sour taste.

FLV Lovage I haven’t played around too much with this one, but from what I gather from the flavor review, and my limited experience, it’s kind of like a better Ethyl Maltol. Rounds out some sharp edges, but doesn’t seem to be a flavor muter like EM. There’s some dry sweetness to it as a single flavor, but it doesn’t seem to add much, if any of that sweetness to a mix. Hopefully someone else with more experience with this one will chime in.

TFA Toasted Marshmallow This one seems to be a bit of an older trick for tobaccos. It was one of the first flavors I ever bought because in the limited research I did before diving in head first, I saw this mentioned a lot as an additive for tobaccos. Much like EM, it will round out some of the harsher notes in some tobaccos, but it really shines in the mouth feel department. If you’re feeling like your mix is a bit thin, add .75-1% Toasted Marshmallow to get a dense, full mouth feel. I can’t say that I would recommend it for a dirty, authentic tobacco mix, but it’s really nice in a dessert tobacco mix. Adds a bit of sweetness too. /u/id10-t can probably school y’all on what it does with TFA Kentucky Bourbon. I haven’t tried that combo yet, and I just barely remember reading something about it a long time ago in some thread. Hope he chimes in because I looked for that thread not too long ago but couldn’t find it.

FA Black Pepper This is still pretty new to me, but I’m really excited about it. It’s not like oxidized nic kind of Pepper. It’s more of a freshly ground black pepper. It’s got a little bit of heat to it, but isn’t too bad at .5%. I’ve only tried it in one mix so far at .3%, and it’s still pretty strong. It kind of makes it taste like an English blend that’s spiked with some perique. What I’m really looking to try to do with this flavor is enhance smokiness of a tobacco. I started to pick up a bit of pepper in INW Black for Pipe, and that’s what really got me thinking about it. FA was the only one I could find, so I crossed my fingers and pulled the trigger. Luckily FA seems to be pretty spot on with their spices, and this stuff is going to probably become a regular for me.

Ethyl Maltol/FA MTS Vape Wizard/TFA Smooth just going to mention these because a lot of older tobacco recipes use them, and if you’re searching on ELR, you’ll probably see them in some. I’d recommend not using them. Flavor muting and pseudo-sweetener. There’s better options and very, very rarely will a recipe actually need these. I’ve used MTS once for the benefit of a recipe in almost 3 years. I probably could have found a better way to make the recipe work without it though.

I must say FA Torrone is an excellent tobacco additive 0.5-3% depending on how much you like the stuff. It's kind of strange to explain by itself, but it is a soft nutty orgasm of sweetness with some people reporting a hint of lemon. I don't personally taste the lemon, but I do smell it by itself.

Throw some of this stuff in your next tobacco mix and enjoy the difference.

I also find FA Blackcurrant to be a nice pairing with tobaccos. It has a nice dark note that really sits well in a tobacco mix IMO. Other honorable mentions involving fruit with tobaccos include: FA Fuji, INW Plum, TFA Acai, TFA Juicy Peach, FA White Peach. I typically keep these at 1% or less in a tobacco mix, as it doesn't take much to accent, and there is a fine line between a fine complex tobacco or a pile of fruit with tobacco subtleties.

I've got nothing of real value to offer this week, but I know who does. /u/chemicalburnvictim, /u/t_mace , /u/feartx

I'll throw in things like spices, nuts, seeds, dark fruits, liquors, honey, vanilla and caramel. If you can find a mixture of tobaccos that you like, as well as some toppings that you like, you can combine the two to make a delicious recipe. I find it best to have the tobacco the strongest part of the recipe and have the complimentary flavors popping up in the background.

FA Clove and INW Whisky are two that have really worked well for me. They both taste like they're supposed to and can be played with under 1%. .25% for a little, .5% for medium, .75% for a lot.

These additives will likely change the texture of the vapor, which is fun to play with. I avoid creams with tobaccos, but something like a nice vanilla or coconut can really give the vapor a luscious texture.

You can't exactly find tobacco concentrates like "vanilla, almond and blackcurrant with half pipe tobacco and half gourmet cigarette rolling tobacco", so you'll have to create it yourself with individual flavorings. It can be a pain in the ass, but I find single flavor testing additives as well as tobaccos gives you the best feel for the flavors.

Looks like, if there was a decent scotch base, a bunch of these would be useful in making a single malt...