Chartreuse: A shade of colour; a pale apple-green.

Chartreuse (ATF LINK)

|Co.|Flavor|%| |:-|:-|:-| |INW|Dragonfruit (Pitaya)|0.5| |TFA|Dragonfruit|1| |INW|Pineapple|3| |FLV|Sour Apple|1| |FLV|Wild Melon|2| |CAP|Super Sweet|0.5| ||WS-23|0.2|

Normally I try to avoid making mixing random fruits, it's really tough to get the balance right and usually ends up a big mess. This recipe however started out as a request by a friend of mine, who really liked a specific commercial juice. Since the name of it was very nondescript and I hadn't actually tried it myself, I only had his description and the pictures to go on. The fruits that we could spot were; Pineapple, Melon and Dragonfruit. There was also grapes on some of the pictures, but since I can't stand INW Grape it was quickly ruled out. However when I did a first attempt on only mixing CAP Golden Pineapple (replaced by INW in the final version) with FLV Wild Melon and TFA Dragonfruit, I knew I had a really good base to work with.

I made a total of 9 different versions before I settled on this specific combo, which I really enjoy. It's very sweet and I don't think you can distinguish any of the specific flavours, hence the rather wierd name, it simply tastes like "Chartreuse" ;). The final mix doesn't taste at all like the juice we based the idea off, but I'm still really happy with the end result.

This is going to be a rather long post, but I figured it might be interesting to share my thought process for this one, as it's a bit different than I usually do my mixes.

V1
1% TFA Dragonfruit
2% CAP Golden Pineapple
2% FLV Wild Melon

Since Pineapple, Melon and Dragonfruit were three of the fruits I could spot on the picture (of the commercial juice), I figured this would be a good starting point. I know TFA Dragonfruit doesn't particularly taste dragonfruit, but I feel like it's a 99% chance that it's the one used PLUS it's just a great blender. Having it here definitley helps blend the melon and pineapple flavors together, and adds some sweetness. Once I tried this I knew I had a really good base to work off. Very sweet and pleasant fruit combo.

V2
1% TFA Dragonfruit
2% CAP Golden Pineapple
2% FLV Wild Melon
1% INW Grape

Being very content with v1, now it was time to start experimenting a bit. INW Grape is by far one of the flavors I hate the most, but I felt like it had to give it a try since I could spot it in the picture. I wish I didn't though. 1% was probably waaay too high, but it just completely overtook the entire mix. This was utter garbage and it ended up in the bin.

V3
1% TFA Dragonfruit
2% CAP Golden Pineapple
2% FLV Wild Melon
0.4% INW Cactus

Here I wanted to try a "wierd" flavor to add some complexity to the mix, rather than it just being a sweet fruit combo. It did however not taste right at all, as it just ruined the good thing this mix had going for it, the awesome sweetness. I could probably lower INW Cactus even more, but I just opted to remove it, didn't feel like the right direction at all.

V4
1% TFA Dragonfruit
2% CAP Golden Pineapple
2% FLV Wild Melon
0.5% HS Blueberry

Still wanting to go for the "wierd" route and see how some berry(ish) flavor would work, I wanted to see how HS Blueberry was. It's one of the wierder (good wierd) berry flavors. This was just a wild swing, unfortunately not in the right direction. Just like the grape, it just overtook the whole mix and ended up really messy.

V5
1% TFA Dragonfruit
2% CAP Golden Pineapple
2% FLV Wild Melon
1% CAP Lemon Lime
1.25% FLV Citrus Soda

If you have tried any of my other recipes, you'd know that this is my bread and butter. This felt like the perfect idea, just adding my soda base (1% CAP LL + 1.25% FLV CS) to my newly discovered fruit combo. Has to be good right? Unfortunately it wasn't. The citrus flavors again ruined the best thing about this pineapple + melon combo - the sweetness. While this wasn't as bad as the previous versions, it wasn't what I was looking for.

V6
1% TFA Dragonfruit
2% CAP Golden Pineapple
2% FLV Wild Melon
1% FLV Sour Apple

I have to admit, at this point I had almost started giving up on this idea. I was just randomly looking through my list of flavors to see what wouldn't be completely terrible to try, and I figured I'd try adding a bit of FLV Sour Apple - a flavor I hadn't used much at all, so I didn't really know what to expect. But when I tried it... holy sh*t. It's amazing. I can't describe exactly what it does to the mix, but when used here it adds some kind of "bubblegummy" flavor. This was exactly what I was looking for, just finding an element to make a unique recipe.

V7
1% TFA Dragonfruit
2% CAP Golden Pineapple
2% FLV Wild Melon
1% FLV Sour Apple
1% INW Dragonfruit

After finally having a breakthrough with the addition of FLV Sour Apple, I still felt like it was a little bit too sweet and missing a bit of complexity. INW Dragonfruit felt like a compelling choice to take it even further into the wierder spectrum. It did work really well, however 1% was a bit too much, so I immediately lowered it to 0.5%.

V8
1% TFA Dragonfruit
4% INW Pineapple
2% FLV Wild Melon
1% FLV Sour Apple
0.5% INW Dragonfruit

At this point I felt like the recipe was almost done. I did however just want to see how INW Pineapple would work instead of CAP. It was much better, as INW is a bit more "watered down", which made the whole mix a bit more "wet" if that makes any sense. 4% was a bit too high though as the pineapple flavor was a bit too distiguishable, so I immediately lowered it to 3%, which was perfect.

V9
1% TFA Dragonfruit
3% INW Pineapple
2% FLV Wild Melon
1% FLV Sour Apple
0.5% INW Dragonfruit
0.5% CAP Super Sweet
0.2% WS-23

Having tried this mix several times by now, I felt like I just had to embrace the sweetness even more. 0.5% sweetener and some coolant (WS-23) as it's just perfect for a fruit mix like this. I'm really happy with the end result, and after I found FLV Sour Apple to be such a good addition, I knew I had to find a somewhat abstract name for it, hence Chartreuse.

Long ass post, but I had all this written down already so figured I might as well share it. Maybe someone will enjoy :)