Hey all. I've messed around with DIY juice for quite a while, and prefer to stick with simple, easily repeatable mixes. Ideally, I like to work with a vanilla type "core" flavor and add one or two fruit flavors on top (especially citrus). I'm down with light sweeteners, mostly depending on what my wife might like (she's just now switching to vaping from smoking!).
If there's anything that turns me off about DIY juice, it's too many flavors in a recipe, and having too many flavors from different manufacturers to sample and collect. I'd like to avoid some big collection of specialized flavors to find the "perfect strawberry" or "there's no better key lime". I find analyzing "notes", "layers", and all that jazz quite exhausting.
Now that I'm running low on flavoring, I need to re-up. So far I've only worked with TFA flavors (Vanilla Swirl and various fruits), but now realize there are many, many more options available!
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Anyway, enough background. Time to talk Sonic!
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If anyone is familiar with the delicious ice cream slush drinks you can get at Sonic, this is what I'm after. Basically, a creamy vanilla "core" flavor and a variety of fruits to blend in. Lime, coconut, cherry, grape, and so on are what come to mind.
So, maybe it's impossible to answer, and might even start a sort of flavor holy war, but I'll go for it anyway. Which 1 or 2 flavor providers should I look into for this ice cream(y) vanilla core I keep referring to, and will also offer up good fruit flavors (especially the citrus variety)? Think lime ice cream, or coconut ice cream slush type juice!
If you've made it here, thanks for reading! I'm looking forward to suggestions after spending a very long time depleting my supply of TFA flavors!
As luck would have it, you can probably get to your vanilla ice cream base exclusively using TFA flavors. Specifically Vanilla Bean ice cream, marshmallow, and vanilla swirl. It's what I use for my Orange Dreamsicle recipe. It is decidedly the kind of fakey ice cream that they use in many "frozen desserts" . For fruits to mix in you are going to be best served by cherry picking from various companies but you can sort of pick from Flavor West, Inawera, Capella, or Vape Train as your second company and run into a fair list of good options between them and TFA.
You should really consider expanding your horizons past 1-2 flavor manufacturers. You're leaving a lot of great options on the table by pigeon holing yourself.
Thanks for the info! I've used the vanilla swirl quite a bit, and their marshmallow for a short while. Although, I didn't really feel like the marshmallow produced anything for me.
It seems like things aren't as simple as I'd hoped, and I should either go down the rabbit hole (I have too many hobbies already!), or make some serious compromises.
I'm sure the former is coming, and I'm just in denial at this point. Haha
It is a rabbit hole for sure, but one you may be better off for having decide to go down. A lot of it can be passive learning though, just listening through the Noted videos in YouTube can help a ton in getting yourself familiar with what flavors may work for you, similarly reading through recipes that are well reviewed on ATF that fit into profiles you're interested in should give you an idea as to what flavors will help you reach your goals.
The thing is, there isn’t a single flavor provider that will best satisfy you for all of those fruits. Some would argue there isn’t even a single flavor that will suffice for a well-rounded fruit profile, but I imagine you would write those people off as perfectionists. That said, I would propose that you instead ask what flavors would best help you achieve your goals, not what flavor providers. A little flexibility will help you best harness the flavor wisdom here and achieve a satisfying fruit that will stand up against the ice cream, and you have access to many manufacturers in a single order to BCF or NR.
If you want to get your recipe to taste as good as you imagine, I suggest you don’t constrain the options to just one or two manufacturers, and ask instead which flavors (perhaps available from a specific shop) will capture the profiles you seek. Harnessing our wisdom will allow you to pick the right flavors and keep your collection reasonable in size while hitting the mark much more accurately than a collection constrained to one or two manufacturers.
TLDR: flavor manufacturer loyalty will only hinder your quest for the perfect anything.
Thanks for the detailed reply! I wouldn't say it's manufacturer loyalty as much as it's just wanting to stay simple. I get what you mean though.
Honestly, it's just overwhelming to see so many brands available. Many more than there were just a year or two ago.
Is a basic lime or cherry flavor so different from one company to another? So much that which company I get my vanilla from could make a terrible lime or cherry?
I guess I'm banking on the idea that the vanilla ice cream would need to be chosen carefully, and then the simpler straight fruits could come from the same maker without much concern.
Seems it's not so simple!
I understand the notion, but I’ve found each manufacturer has both hits and misses— with no real correlation to how they handle other flavors, even within the same category. So I guess it isn’t that simple, but asking for flavor recommendations will help keep it simpler. And there are a massive number of terrible cherry flavors, so yes it can make that much of a difference.
FA Cold Pressed Lime Tahity or VT Persian Lime
INW Cherries or TFA Cherry Extract
FA coconut, FLV coconut or FLV sweet coconut
INW Grapes or FLV grape (both are purple flavor)
Inw lemon mix & la lemonade. Maybe The two JF lemon flavors.
FA Polar Blast & WS-23 (use both) if you want to do a cold beverage
VT banana custard for banana flavor.
Noticing a trend? You need to just research individual flavors before buying, and don't worry about sticking with one manufacturer.
Thanks for filling in the specific flavors to my abstract flavor generalizations; between our replies I think we provided the perfect “theoretical and practical” answers to his queries. And I agree with all your recommendations, with the possible addition of LA banana cream (i have yet to try the VT flavor so it may supercede my suggestion).
IIRC /u/id10-t actually made something he described as exactly what you're looking for. Finding which one of his 13793 recipes it is may be a challenge, but it may not take as long as trying to dial one in using just one flavor manufacturer.
My picks for single fruits would be... Lime I'd go with TPA key lime... Inw Cherries .. For strawberries I love Fa juicy strawberry.. Fa Peach (white).. Cap Harvest Berry is great for berries and Inw Pineapple... Those are my favorite fruit flavorings... Recently I have found Cap creamy Yogurt to be an amazing (cream) base and or mixed with a cap vanilla bean ice cream..and obviously Cap Vanilla Custard is far superior in the cream/custard column... Good luck!!
Not INW Cherry. INW Cherries. (Yes, these are different flavors.) Or TFA Cherry Extract. Most other brands cherry flavors will ruin a recipe. Even one that's already been ruined.
FA Forest Fruit, INW Grape, & LA Lemonade. These recipes are heavy on lemonade. and forest fruit & grape are really flexible and taste great