When I started mixing I did thorough research on what flavours I should buy for my first order of 30 or so... 4 months and ~350 flavours later I'm wondering if this could be a useful thing for new mixers to avoid doubling up with multiple concentrates of pretty much the same thing, but the older versions of which will likely go unused?
Obviously taste is subjective though and each flavour will have its own pros and cons that will differ between people, mixes, steep times and all that but I'm talking relatively specific replacements for (mostly) older flavours and a general consensus they do a better job than the original...
There's a whole lot of information round here (thank you all) would this be something that could be helpful? Are there even that many occurrences of this happening? Probably quite a few off the top of my head but wanted to see what you guys thought..
Any flavours you'd add to the list?
TL;DR: Cool - the original title question pretty much sums it up, objectively anyway 🙏😅
It would be cool but as you said taste is subjective. What I have found is aligning myself with other folks that have similar tastes helps me with increasing my inventory. But then these same folks chase licorice, sodas and baccos. I find I can't keep up. There's just too many damn flavors and I can't afford them all
Man one of my go-to flavors to this day is a black jellybean recipe that was buried in the comments in some random thread when I first started years ago 😬 Bacon though? Wtf lol
Edit for anyone curious
5% TFA Absinthe
2.5% FW Black Licorice
1% FA MTS Vape Wizard
0.25% Ethyl Maltol
0.25% TFA Koolada
Yes - such a good point that does seem to really help. I'm not one for licorice either, give me all the fruits and creams and custards in the world I WANT THEM ALL plus it's half the fun of it chasing flavours isn't it ? It gets costly too.. you know what's free though? Self control.. which, apparently I have none of 😅 I feel your pain
Comparing different flavors withing a group (such as strawberry) is not a linear question of "better" or "worse". To be useful, you'd have to map the flavors on multiple axes, such as sweetness, fruitiness, ripeness, off-flavors, etc. And strawberries are a relatively simple example--groups like creams involve a lot more complexity.
Edit: The best format for a useful resource would be decision trees.
Valid point! And even all those are going to differ from person to person. Perhaps I did not quite appreciate the power of the word 'SUB-JEC-TIVE' until AFTER I asked the question 😅 this has been a helpful conversation, I do enjoy having my perspective widened, even at the expense of feeling a bit silloy. Oh man if I started working on those decision trees, I think I'd end up in the psych ward..
It's not possible because taste is too subjective and things taste differently to different people. To me JF Strawberry Sweet isn't a good flavor at all because I can't taste it. Cap Sweet Strawberry is better to me because I can at least get some flavor from it. Another example is I read that multiple people were saying that VT Bilberry Ripe is the best Blueberry flavor. Well to me it tastes like grape candy, which I find to be absolutely disgusting.
As much as I'd like that too, we can't even get flavour tags implemented on either of the main mixing websites - and all attempts at 'making a new one' have fallen flat, either from lazy implementations or stalled development.
It's arguably something that could be implemented in Odies Flavor Facts spreadsheet, but I don't want to see him burdened with more workload.
I'm open to suggestions on how something like this could be implemented.
I've just been going through my saved copy of flavour facts and hilighting the ones that sound most promising . Thank you for all your hard work! 🙏
Oh tell me about it, I tried contacting the ATF people for ages with no reply, and I realised I was waiting for something that was never gonna come. I can just imagine what their inbox must be like... [ Unread ✉️ 2,743 ] there are so many little helpful functions that need to be added hey!
I think you'd be doing the community a disservice.
" Obviously taste is subjective though and each flavour will have its own pros and cons that will differ " Nothing replaces single flavor testing. There is no way you can arbitrarily say X is better than Y.
If you're talking about replacements for flavors that no longer exists, then maybe you'd do a new mixer a favor (e.g. finding a retired flavor in an old recipe, what would I replace it with?)
I'm pretty new to this i.e. a few months in, and I am discovering that while many people can love a flavour, I might just hate it and vice versa. So, it seems not a practical idea after all, I guess I just thought what's good is good, but when I think about it, the whole point of DIY is being able to customise to your own personal preferences.
It was still worth having this conversation for sure and broadened my perspective - thanks guys! I am soaking up info like a sponge. If I will be able to give back even a fraction of the useful info I've learned here I'd be happy with that!