WEEK XXXI
Always looking for a good time, baby
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Hello and welcome again. Looks like a good time to discuss this; being that it's on the heels of a post regarding First Order Flavors. There are flavors out there that aren't incorporated into recipes very often. One reason may be that they work as a good stand-alone AND aren't conducive to being something that mixes well. With the introduction of new flavors (and lines), they simple can't replace ingredients that have proven solid. Doesn't mean they aren't going to be potentially as promising. One way for people to want to try to experiment more with those uncommon flavors is to hear other's thoughts on what they're getting from their single-flavor tests.
Plus maybe there are long-standing proven aroma concentrates that when you try them, you're puzzled. You don't taste the same things as others. TPA Strawberry, Ripe may have no flavor (which seems to be a complaint by some). But what if you do get some flavor from it but not the expected one?? If you mention what you're picking up, other people may have noticed the same things.
And of course, there are those of us looking for something uncommon. Saw a couple of comparisons of a fruit medley or pineapple flavor that came across as Juicy Fruit gum. Ironically, had gotten this exact same flavor from a commercially available Pineapple Upside-Down Cake and supremely enjoyed it. So when others mention this, it really is helpful for wanting to replicate that.
Sharing a previously done flavor by me as an example:
CAP Bold Burley Tobacco: Meh
At 8%, originally experienced little flavor from it, thinking it should go 10-12% solo. After leaving off vaping for approximately 36 hours, was able to taste it. A day later, vaping it for a little under 2 hours, the flavor was gone again! There is nothing BOLD about it. It's like an ultra ultra-light marl boro while used with an additional plastic cigarette filter. I'm getting the mouth-feel that's desirable. But that gets old after the first 30. I can get the desired mouth-feel from a different concentrate at a MUCH, MUCH lower concentration and get the grainy/grassy hint that may be desired in certain mixes. In a word - "disappointing".
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ADDED IN EDIT:
All previous posts: https://www.reddit.com/r/DIY_eJuice/wiki/index/single_flavors
Apexified Super Sort: https://reddit.com/r/DIY_eJuice/wiki/index/flavor_notes
one on one (OOO) glazed donut: this is, in my opinion, the best donut flavor on the market, and delicious stand-alone at 6-8%, and it seems like nobody has tried it. This is more in line with a Krispy Kreme donut than any other type of donut, and with a little support from flv frosting and maybe a touch of joy it’s a ringer, but a little FA zeppola and OOO powdered sugar with a drop of rich cinnamon per 20ml turns it close to the hostess cinnamon powdered donuts as well.
Have you tried WF Glazed Donut? I was surprised when tasting it. It's like a really accurate/good yeast rised donut. I don't remember how the glaze was though lol.
I tried some candy flavors.
DIYFS Pixie Sticks - Diabetic urine. It’s very sweet and with a little fruity tartness on top, but tastes like it’s made out of TFA Sweet & Tart mixed with TFA Honey. Some powdery body, but too smooth/syrupy for pixie sticks. Along with that syrupy feel, it has that same piss-stained rotten somewhat floral sweetness of TFA Honey, like pissed-on decomposing flowers. Full bodied, deeply saturated and thick, but that just makes it even grosser.
FW Sweet Tart Type - Completely useless coil gunk. It’s very sweet but mostly just tastes like sugar, with a little hint of vague tart fruitiness, until it starts tasting a burned. No wonder, with the 20 to 30% sugar syrup that’s in there.
WF Dweeb Candy - Not good. It mostly tastes like a strawberry-grape-apple candy of the smooth hard candy shell type, with a slightly powdery sweet base, but with an absolutely gnarly plastically chemical off note. I think this is supposed to be Nerds candy based off the name but those come in cardboard boxes and this tastes instead like they were wrapped in plastic and you’re vaping the plastic. Not quite identical to the cherry medicine bottom-shelf rum plastic off-note, but similar to it.
TFA Rainbow Drops - A sweet candy fruit blend, grape forward with identifiable lemon and something that might be cherry or berry, and a faint but gnarly off note that reminds me of engine starting fluid. Body is more chewy spree than skittles but there’s a little candy shell thing to it like a skittle so it seems like it could skittle-up some fruit. But that off-note. Fuck that. I think it has something to do with the alcohol content and it might steep out eventually, but six days didn’t do it, and it tastes more like ether than booze for some reason.
FLV Candy Roll- I can’t use this. I want to, but I can’t. I don’t know what’s in this flavor that makes me react so strongly to this, but every single time I take that first hit or two from a fresh drip of this flavor, I taste something like rubbing alcohol. Every single time, even down at 0.5%. It never steeps out. It does go away after the first few hits, but every time I drip more of it, there’s that rubbing alcohol back, and it’s unpleasant. That’s why I don’t use it at all. I want the first hit of something to be impressive, not unpleasant. Between redrippings though, it’s pretty nice. It’s not quite American Smarties (Smarties means something much different in the UK and Canada) because it’s a bit sharper and more tart than those, but it’s not as sharp and tart as Sweet-Tarts, either. It’s like Smarties and Sweet-Tarts had a baby. It does a compressed powdered sugar thing very well without being too chalky or dry and has a thick, full-bodied flavor.
FW Sprinkles - Spot on Sprinkles. It’s sweet, dry and chalky, without a lot of flavor but with some artificial vanilla and a food dye finish. Those things are loaded with artificial coloring which is supposed be flavorless, but isn’t really. Artificial coloring tastes... funny. Not funny haha, but funny... off. If you don’t believe me that food dye has a flavor, do side-by-side taste tests of glasses of water, one unadulterated, one loaded up with a bunch of different food colorings. You’ll be able to tell which is which and that bit of oddness is here. Anyway, this FW Sprinkles has that food dye in the finish after that sweet dry chalky body and touch of vanilla. Off note-wise, has the very slightest touch of something like anise.
RFSC Sweet Tart Candy - More like Smarties than Sweet Tarts, doesn’t have as much tart punch as a Sweet Tarts but has that sugary indistinct fruity candy top note and even a lingering candy finish. Also has a hint of vanilla that’s pleasant but maybe a little off for a Smartie. Very thin in the middle, where it’s lacking that lacking that sugary candy body.
OoO Sweet & Tart Candy - Lemon Sweet-Tart. It’s a Sweet Tart for sure, with that sugary candy base, but when it comes to the fruit, I just get lemon. Not a mix of different sweet-tarts, or vague hodge podge fruitiness, just lemon. Like it’s sweet and tart but it’s relying entirely on a bit of lemon for that tartness. It’s fairly soft for a lemon or more like the lemon is softened by all that sweet sugary candy body. The lemon is very slightly pledgy, but that pledginess lingers at the end.
TFA Sweet & Tart - It needs to steep for about a week to not taste like Sweet-Tarts flavored vodka, and even after that alcohol taste steeps out, some extra throat hit remains. But aside from that, it tastes like Sweet-Tarts. No specific Sweet-Tart flavor, more like all of the Sweet-Tarts at once, but a little bit more grape and cherry than the blue punch, lemon, and green apple, as those are the only two I can sort of pick out. It is indeed Sweet and Tart, with a gritty candy body that can also work to texturize other things that are supposed to be granulated, like slushies.
CAP Rainbow Candy - Very tart and somewhat sweet kinda fruity candy thing. Some throat hit, about what I’d expect with this level of tartness. Tartness is it’s most defining characteristic. This is not Skittles, it’s nowhere near fruity enough for Skittles. I can’t pick out any specific fruit from this, but it’s bright and lightly fruity. Maybe some lemon and lime with darker grape-berry candy fruit behind it, but more freestyle top note tartness than a specific tart fruit. There’s some dry chalky sweetness under that and it comes across more like a Spree or Sweet-Tart base than a Skittle. Seems like this could be a better tart additive for fruit candy than a bunch of the other stuff called “Sour.”
WF Sour Ball Candy - It’s not really sour, but it is tart, and kinda citrusy in a way that’s closer to lemon than other citruses but not distinctly lemony. It’s also candy sweet, and full-bodied. It’s smooth and kind of powdery-to-creamy but tastes like it has a tart candy “shell” around that creaminess that comes across like a partially chewed chewy Sweet-Tart body. A couple of recipes on ATF right now that use it are using it in sherbet-type recipes and that seems like a great use for it, to tart up those fruits while at the same time contributing to a sweet, creamy base.
WF Chews Candy - It comes across like a mix of different flavored Chewy Sprees. The top notes are a little sharper and tart and more like vaguely fruity candy shell, while the base is more like a thick candy that rides the line between powdery and chewy, much like the Sour Ball Candy. The tart part is such a mess of fruitiness that I can’t very clearly pick out a single fruit, which could be a very good thing because versatility. Unlike the Sour Ball candy that leans more citrusy, this tends toward something more like a candy apple and candy grape combination, without really being either of those things. I pick up a hint of vanilla in the powdery-to-chewy base that seems to contribute to the thickness and body or chewiness, kind of like when adding a very low dose of TFA Vanilla Swirl for volume in a candy fruit recipe and still having a bit of vanilla peeking out. Lingering powdery but not chalky sweetness.
WF Pixie Stick Candy - Just about perfect. Sugary to powdery sweet base with some tart vague fruity top notes. Iti’s a bit grapey, but with a green apple-like tartness and some berry (maybe raspberry?) notes playing around the edges. But the fruitiness tastes light enough and vague enough that it seems like you could use it as the base for any kind of Pixie Stick or Fun Dip recipe, or even just the sugary part of some other fruity candy, like the sugary layer of a Skittle between the candy shell and chewier core. It vapes in that middle range, too, with lighter top notes and a lingering sweet-tartness but not much of a finish, just a lot of sugary center. I don’t get anything I would call an off-note from this.
WF Candy Stick Candy - This tastes exactly like the stick that comes with Fun Dip. Vaping it standalone gets old fairly quick, but at first it’s just a crazy nostalgia trip.Maybe I was a weird kid, but I remember wishing you could buy just the stick without the Fun Dip. This flavor suffers from bad marketing in that I see it paired up with pictures of candy cigarettes and those things are nothing but edible chalk. Nobody wants to vape that. Fortunately, this does not taste like candy cigarettes.It is a little chalky, I would say appropriately chalky, and a near perfect mimic of a Fun Dip Stick. Basically very tightly compressed sweet powdered sugar with a touch of vanilla marshmallow flavor, but if there’s anything else that does into a Fun Dip Stick to give it that distinctive flavor, it’s in here. Obvious use is what it tastes exactly like, but I’ve also seen it used in a recipe to with Meringue to fill out that sweet sugary body of a hard meringue and that is just plain genius. I’d love to see what some more creative uses for this might be.
VT Fizzy Sherbet - It basically tastes like Sprite, but not as limey. It’s not supposed to be a sherbert like what we mean when we say Sherbert in the US. It’s supposed to be a kind of Australian candy that’s like a cross between Pixie Sticks and Pop Rocks. I don’t know whether that candy is necessarily lemony but this is very lemony. And yes, even a little “fizzy” or probably as close to fizzy as we’re gonna get in a vape, although FLV Citrus Soda comes pretty close, too. So because of that it makes a great soda additive. It’s also a nice lemon candy vape on its own. It’s sweet and has a sharp candy/artificial lemon with a little hint of lime and has a powdery candy back end with a little bitter edge to it that does that sort of fizzy thing. Just a little tingle on the tongue combined with that powderyness.
TFA Acai Berry at 3%
Vaping in the Moljnir at day 28. Dry and tasteless first few puffs. Then.... chocolate? Huh? Not really tasting like a berry. Slightly reminiscent of jelly candy made from watered down kids juice boxes then coated in a razor thin layer of shitty fake chocolate. It's a "warm" flavor. Berry-ish flavor only at start of exhale. Getting some harshness but I may have overnic'd this tiny 5ml batch. It's pretty underwhelming at 3%. It might come alive at 5% but I don't think I'll spring for a bigger bottle. Next berry will probably be that WF Bumbleberry stuff that's supposedly really good.
This is actually a good one where you can use it at 1.5 to 2%. It's not a strong, powerful fruit flavor. But yeah, you have to vape it a while before your tongue really starts to pick up on what's there. It's not very complex, but it is rather gratifying. I may up the percentage to see if I get that chocolatey taste. :) And yeah, wasn't getting harsh from it.
I tasted TFA Lucky Leprechaun again today. It's got that grainy ceral toasted oat thing going on but it feels soft to me. Some drags I could clearly taste those little marshmallows on the tail end of my exhale. It would be distinctive and clear to me. I'd get a smile and take another drag only to not get that sensation again. Weird, I know. But overall its not a horrible flavor. I always think to myself, would I be able to tell myself what this is, if didn't know what was in it. Like a blind taste test challenge, I'm not sure if I'd guess Lucky Charms cereal. But that's normal for me unless it's clearly a recognizable flavor like fruits, chocolate, ect.
A few weeks back I needed VG so shopped at NicRiv. I saw a new brand there that I've never tried, Flavor Monks. I got like eight of them, mostly fruits/berries. I did a little bit of reading, but I always buy random flavors to try out.
I didn't care for most of them. Maybe I used too little, but they're nothing to get excited about. Their Orange is decent though and tastes really natural. When I re-taste them, I'll post my impressions.