I told myself, I would know any recipe was good enough to share when I couldn't put it down and I killed 30ml in a straight chain vape of epic proportions when I got up Saturday and it's been heavy in the rotation since. The drink vapes to me are fun because of their potential for change and variety. I found one that really hit my buds where I liked it. So here's my version of an Arnold Palmer, my first public recipe here and at atf:

Arnold Plumber

|%|Vendor|Flavor| |:-|:-|:-| |1|INW|Grape| |1|TPA|Honeysuckle (pg)| |0.5|FA|Lemon Sicily| |4|LA|Lemonade| |2|INW|Plum| |1.75|FA|Tea Black Water Soluble| |1| FLV|Yakima Hops|

Disclaimer: I am also airing my dirty laundry in a public display of a lack of better judgement. Just making lemonade...

Background:

I've only ever had one all day vape a year ago when I first started vaping: Zenith Orion, a raspberry lemonade. So I decided before (diy) to try to explore the world of drinks. I purchased SVRF Satisfying, a raspberry dragonfruit sweet tea which spurred me to pursue tea drinks specifically. My earliest attempts to clone these followed typical beginner mistakes: not researching flavors to find what would likely produce my desired results, not really knowing what I wanted anyway, not checking recipes for percentage suggestions, not testing what I already had to find a good place to start experimenting.

Development notes/narrative:

Flash forward. I found a few recipes that were good but didn't quite scratch my itch. I tried the Best Damn Pink Lemonade and i felt like, for my tastes, it was just a bit too soft, too smooth. I realized I wanted a bolder taste of some kind but that LA Lemonade/FA Lemon Sicily was a solid combo for a sweet lemon drink base. (I've read of another combo suggested by u/ID10-T but I was missing some flavors and I've lost the link.) I then looked at the recipes out there for teas and such looking for inspiration. I saw u/HashSlingingSlashur's London Haze. He described FA Black Tea as 'dry' at higher percents and it got my mouth watering wanting to retry my hand at making a satisfying tea drink. I also had just gotten an order of new fruits so instead of using his recipe as is, I removed the cream and tested it with the new fruits I had purchased. I made two sets, one with a black tea/bergamot base a la Hash and one with an FA Sweet Tea base with some lemon. The sweet tea wasn't hitting the spot so it got sidelined while only one fruit tester overall captured my imagination: INW plum. She called to me like a siren while the berries were fickle and too wishy-washy, always wanting to go somewhere cooler. FLV mango was trying to put me in a cage with golden bars. The apples wanted to bring me home to meet the 'rents. The one who stuck around until closing time was plum. She handled her drinks like a champ and stuck around for more. She was the Wanda to my Barfly. We were getting somewhere and nowhere at the same time.

Meanwhile in another forum, u/Foment_Life shared his Arnold Palmer with me that was a peach fruit flavor forward with the lemonade portion super scaled back by comparison to the other palmers I had seen. I really liked it because it was a strong and bold fruit forward yet too little lemon for what I wanted. However, it gave me hope to revisit the plum tea. I settled on the lemonade portion at LA/FA 4/0.5 and was happy with how that balanced with the Tea portion without becoming a sweet drink. I stuck to my guns with plum at 2% [in retrospect, I may experiment to see how much higher I can take it]. I was pleased with how it kept its head above the sweet and the dry, but also settled back too and never thought to change it. Next I wanted to flesh out the Plum without losing its distinct taste.

So I had the base, the plum forward, but had room for something sweet. I decided to stick with colors and found INW Grape added a purple that I liked and some sweet. FA Bilberry could do the same and still hide behind the plum. I add it at 0.5-1% and together they're probably better than alone. (Tests with grape solo held out over Bil solo so I figured Bil wasn't essential and more of a varietal.) TPA Honeysuckle was to add some floral notes with hints of sweet. This was the one that maybe could go up. I tried it at higher percentages and didn't like it but never really experimented to find it's true sweet spot. So 1% is the conservative safe zone where it never really stood out and just blended in.

However, I still felt like it was missing something. I tried it with FLV Lovage thinking I'd bring out some bottom note green @0.5% but I didnt notice some major changes. So I left it out. I had just got FLV yakima hops and tried it at 1%. The first time I tasted it, I ripped through a 30ml in one sitting. So I mixed it again but waited 24 hours for the flavors to settle. Day 1 it was same, flavors starting to settle, but playing nice. Day 2 the yeasty portion made it kind of like that beer soda taste like you get out of a Goya Malta but waaaaay slighter, just a hint. I felt like it had taken on a new taste altogether with nothing quite distinct. Like a purple dry earthy slightly sweet tea drink. I preferred it with a 0.5 of Polar Blast to give that iced feeling, but find that coolants are really a personal preference.

Final thoughts:

I told myself that I'd share any recipe that I would vape straight through since I usually get bored with a mix quickly looking to change. I rarely vape a flavor for a full session. I still have some things I need to try to flesh this out for my own curiosity (FA Fuji at low percentage in place of grape, different berries/fruits to flesh the body of the plum or add sweet floral or balance, how high can plum go, Honeysuckle sweet spot or is it necessary at all, different and more mint like coolants, long term steeping and how it affects the flavors particularly hops) so this is really unfinished business. Suggestions on all of these and more are welcome.

I decided to add this to the forum for feedback and late entry into the July recipes thread. It's my first shared recipe here and it's the first I've really followed in my roundabout process that seemed to make something I really enjoyed vaping and would want to repeat, continue to develop, and get feedback on. All this coincided with some major changes in my personal life which I am very pleased with (homage to the ex Mrs. Isuamadog) and so I share with you my joyous dirty laundry and a tall bold drink to wash it all down with. Cheers!

Happy mixing and thanks for reading this poorly edited, garbled mess.

edit: tables are hard