Here’s an easy cherry faux-bacco recipe to start the new year. It’s cherry flavored SOHO up front resting on a thick cream base with a lovely candied marzipan accent that comes out to play around day 15 in the steep. If I ever get tired of vaping this as-is, my plan is to use it as a cherry-tobacco base recipe and just throw different tobaccos at it and see how they work out.
|Percent|Flavor| |:-|:-| |5.00|FA SOHO| |2.00|RF Aged Bourbon Cream| |1.50|FW Bavarian Cream| |1.00|INW Cherries| |0.50|INW Marzipan|
Total flavor: 10%. Recommended steep: 15-20 days
I’ve been avoiding FA SOHO for years because of it’s reputation as being a weak flavor, often used at 6% or more in some recipes, with an average use of 4.48% on AllTheFlavors.com. It ended up being a “top-up-your-cart-to-get-free-shipping” addon for me one day while agonizing over what last flavor I should chose before checking out. Eventually I find myself eyeballing this 30ml of FA SOHO on my desk wondering what the hell to do with it.
After a quick troll through ATF I decided to mix SOHO Time. It’s a quick 2 flavor banger, 7% FA SOHO and 3% FA Meringue. I let it steep a full month then finally worked up the courage to load ‘er up. It was awesome. Well, the SOHO part anyway. The 3% FA Meringue - not so much. So I decided to take a crack at my own SOHO recipe (because I really don’t have enough unfinished recipes in progress, lol).
SOHO #0
Whenever I have a new recipe idea I usually start out with a “#0” base recipe that I never mix. It’s just a placeholder where I brainstorm ideas in the Notes section and list off flavors that I think will work. Here are those notes:
>Use FA SOHO in some recipes. SOHO and:
>
>- TFA Pie Crust
- TFA Pistachio (almond/cherry notes)
- INW AM4A (hmmmmm, I think this was reformulated and mine is the O.G.)
SOHO #1
4.00% FA SOHO
2.00% TFA Pistachio
2.00% RF Aged Bourbon Cream
2.00% FW Bavarian Cream
0.25% SC Cherry Cigar
SOHO #1 was the first batch I mixed. As you can see I decided to run with the cherry/almond idea using TFA Pistachio and also jump right in with a real tobacco to back up the SOHO. I have a love/hate with SC Cherry Cigar – it tastes great but it’s freakin waxy. I figured just a small accent might avoid the unwanted wax. After mixing and labelling I do a knuckle test and right off the bat I can tell that SOHO is too low at 4%. 25 days later I loaded it up in the Nudge 22 and wrote down the following notes while vaping it:
>HO LEE BALLS she's good! SUPER DUPER THICK CLOUDS. Cherry accent maybe a touch too strong. SOHO flavor not standing out enough, needs 5%+. There is a slight "burn spice" while vaping this after the wicks settle in. It's unpleasant.
No notes about the wax so I guess that part was OK. But something needed to be done about the slight harshness.
SOHO #2
5.00% FA SOHO
2.00% FW Bavarian Cream
1.50% FE Oak Milk
0.75% RF Molasses Extract
While mulling over SOHO #1 I realized that maybe, just maybe, I could pair my FE Oak Milk with something and finally get some use out of it. Throwing molasses at it was also just a last minute brain-fart that I thought would be a good idea. I mixed a 10ml of #2 and a 30ml of #3 so they would be ready for comparison at the same time. Mixing 2 different batches at once helps speed up my recipe development and it’s something I need to do more often. Here’s my tasting notes for #2 around day 15:
>#3 was a stunner. Trying #2 in the .Blank now and it's not nearly as good. Mostly Oak Milk with a fairly strong chocolate vibe. SOHO is covered up, unidentifiable. Can't put my finger on any Molasses either, that Oak Milk is very potent stuff. Glad I only mixed 10ml of this one.
SOHO #3
5.00% FA SOHO
2.00% RF Aged Bourbon Cream
1.50% FW Bavarian Cream
1.00% INW Cherries
0.50% INW Marzipan
#3 here continues the cherry/almond theme from #1 but with different ingredients. I also dropped the FW Bav a half-percent hoping that it will help bring out the SOHO. I mixed a 30ml and off the knuckle I thought that the cherry accent was way too strong. I let her steep for 15/16 days before loading it up in my point Blank (.Blank) RDA:
>Holy balls this is fantastic! Lasted 1 day, all on 1 wick. This can go up to 100ml right the frick now! SOHO and cherries coming through loud and clear.
Winner winner chicken dinner. I mixed a 100ml batch next:
>Vaping in the .Blank at day 13. Not that impressive*.*
2 days later:
>Day 15 - shit just got serious (ly better). The marzipan has come out to play adding a nice candied sweetness to the cherries. Unfortunately I vaped half this bottle a couple days too early but I was out of everything else. It's so freaking good now. Remix yourself another 100ml in 2 days when this is done... Actually, do a 50ml of this and also do a 50ml with WF Aged Bourbon Cream so they're both ready at the same time. Order more marzipan and cherries.
At this point I was confident the recipe was done. Just one nagging question remained: would it be better with WF Aged Bourbon Cream SC? Well I did the homework for you guys and the answer is no, it’s not better with the WF version, but still good. SOHO #4 was #3 with 2% RF Aged Bourbon Cream replaced with 1.5% WF Aged Bourbon Cream SC. For these 2 x 50ml batches I let them steep a bit too long at 23 days before comparing. #3 at day 23 wasn’t as good as #3 at day 15, so I would say the sweet spot is between days 15-20. #4 wasn’t nearly as good as #3 – I found that the WF aged bourbon was stomping on the cherries and muting the top notes. If I had to use it here again I would use it at only 1%.
So yeah, that’s it. With the steep time dialed in and the WF question answered it was pretty clear that #3 was the finished recipe. Next I will mix a 250ml batch once I get more INW Cherries and Marzipan. I think a 500ml batch would be too big because of the short optimum steep window but 250ml is probably perfect for me.
One last note on the RF Aged Bourbon Cream – I use the non-SC version here. If you have the SC version I would start with 1% and bump it up as needed.