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Starting flavor count: 2,714 (down from 2,975 originally)

TASK OR TRASH - Each flavor gets assigned at least one task or it goes in the trash.

#Flavor West

Absinthe

Accidentally skipped this one last week. It’s licking melted black jelly bean from a leaf rather than taking a shot of it. I guess it’s fine if you like black licorice, but a pretty pathetic excuse for absinthe. Mostly just tastes like their black licorice, much more like black licorice than anise, with a touch of something a little more herbal, but no booziness, bitterness, or floral qualities like absinthe. TRASH 1

Birthday Cake

Mostly vanilla frosting, with some drier cake behind it. Mingled with that vanilla frosting is something that tastes like food coloring, like FW Sprinkles does. Basically tastes like Sprinkles in a lot of vanilla frosting, on a piece of somewhat crappy, slightly stale cake. Frosting is sweet but not sweet enough. It has some decent body to the cake and does taste like cake, but lacks the kind of richness and butteriness you look for in a cake, and isn’t moist at all.

I used it to make Holy Peppus!. I think it was supposed to be the start of a series of sacrilegious recipes, but I was told that if I posted the Mohammed one, it would be taken down, so I stopped. Anyway, I know I could do this better now, as it was over 4 years ago. But I would probably still put the FW Birthday Cake in there, because it worked. I’m going to try it again and think about how I could go about improving it. TASK 1

I’d also like to try Emily’s Cherry Cupcake while I’ve got the FW Birthday Cake out. TASK 2

Black Cherry

Taste like black cherry soda syrup with some cough medicine and a little hint of that new vinyl shower curtain. More sweet than tart. A little dry. Not thin, there’s a medium body to it. Seems too medinciny and awful when enough of it used ever be useful as a standalone cherry in a cherry-forward recipe, but maybe a minuscule amount could be a back up to a better cherry flavor? I don’t know and don’t plan to stick around to find out. TRASH 2

Black Currant

Tastes like a musty, weird grape thing, almost tastes like very sweet cheap red table wine, a little fermented. Or maybe just grape juice that’s gone off a little, since it’s not actually boozy, just musty and a little vinegary. Whatever it is, it is very ripe. Very thick, but with an understated yet present tartness. I think if you’re making a wine-based mixed drink or something like a mulled wine you could totally bend this into the wine you want.

I already plan to try the version of this recipe that uses FA Black Currant, will try the FW one as well: Go Fig-ure. TASK 3

Black Licorice

Not bad at all, especially if you’re looking for more of an American style black licorice flavor, like black Twizzlers. Less complex black licorice flavor, spicy and sweet, tastes almost exactly like a Brach’s Black Jelly Bean, but doesn’t have that sort of sugary outside and chewy inside of a jelly bean. A case could be made of the sugary outside because it’s really quite sweet, but there’s really nothing to suggest a sticky chewy body. Not a thin flavor but a relatively flat one, like taking a shot of melted black jelly beans rather than chewing up a handful of solid ones.

I gave this Monkey Heads recipe a well-deserved 5 stars, but it’s not even the best licorice-banana recipe I’ve tried, so I won’t be keeping it to make more of that. In fact, I didn’t see any recipe on ATF that made me think I’d be missing out terribly if I just tossed my FW Black Licorice. Then I went over to ELR and found a couple I want to check out.

Black Raspberry. Could it be? A two-flavor banger? Doubt it, but seems worth a try. TASK 4

Tee’s Root Beer. What can I say, I’m a sucker for a solid root beer vape and while FW Root Beer is really just those barrel candies, the additions here, including FW Licorice, might turn it into a really good root beer. TASK 5

Blackberry

Delightful dark and very sweet berry candy. It does taste more like blackberry than any other berry but if you told me it was boysenberry or that it was grape mixed with some raspberry I couldn’t argue with you. Sticky sweet like candy with some tartness but very little, not enough for a whole fresh natural blackberry and missing some of that earthiness as well. Very sweet, lingering sweetness, almost a sugar lips effect. I wouldn’t call it juicy, but it’s definitely not dry either.

There are definitely some things I’d like to do with this one.

Bathroom Trash Everywhere TASK 6

Berry Tart TASK 7

Blackberry & Lime Fool TASK 8

They all look so good!

Blackberry (Natural)

This is very different from FW Blackberry. I need to go back and try it again at a higher concentration because 4% tasted very weak. I’ll try a 7% sample TASK 9

Blackberry Mojito

It’s a shame because a blackberry mojito vape sounds amazing, but this is just terrible. It is also 15 to 25% sugar syrup, a destroyer of wicks and coils and probably lungs. It is stupid stupid sweet and mostly tastes like raw sugar, with a hint of blackberry candy and some of the added tartness of lime but no real identifiable lime flavor. No mint or booze at all. Bound for the bin. TRASH 3

Blood Orange

An orange flavor whose dark and earthy notes clearly make it a blood orange. There’s a lot of love out there for this flavor because it’s such a nice natural, non-candied flavor. But I also get a pretty strong kick in the throat from it, as well as some pithy bitterness. It’s not the bloodiest of blood oranges, but that probably makes it more versatile. It works with other orange/tangerine/mandarin flavors without necessarily turning them into a blood orange.

While I can’t off the top of my head think of recipe I need this for, it’s used in a lot of them and here are the ones that most interest me:

POG TASK 10 hard to pass up a good-looking PAWG... Uh, I mean, POG

Every Day TASK 11 Yep!

Blood Orange Sherbet TASK 12 I bet that’s so good...

Blood Orange Sour Bourbon TASK 13 OK!

Dragon in the Pines. Sometimes I love that weird shit. TASK 14

Gaara. Gotta try another guava empanada type recipe. TASK 15

Alan’s Orange. How am I going to just not try a recipe named after this mixer’s dead friend? The curse of those who read the descriptions. TASK 16

Edit: Fantastic. TASK 16.5

Blue Ice

I’ve seen marketing for this that used a picture of what looks like a blue raspberry slush for some reason, but this does not taste like a blue raspberry. It’s literally just FW Blueberry, which is a fine blueberry, and menthol, and it’s fairly well balanced so that neither overwhelms the other. I like it. Although, if you have both FW Blueberry and some menthol it seems completely unnecessary to own, unless there’s a recipe that calls for it and you don’t want to have to guess the ratio to add the right amounts of blueberry and menthol. I didn’t see a recipe with it that I felt I just had to try, so imma TRASH 4 it.

Blue Raspberry

I’ve tried this at around 4 or 5% (possibly too high) and found it to be a little bitter in a medicinal way and a little soapy in the base, but definitely blue raspberry, with a fair amount of flavor to it. It seemed like it could be made to work, somehow, if those off notes could be tamed/covered.

I’m no longer in the taming off note business, when I can stay out of it, but I would like to see if this recipe accomplished it: Thanks, Obama TASK 17

Blueberry

Basically tastes blue. Like 100% artificially flavored blueberry pancake syrup. Also sort of flat and not definitely not much of a top on here, but solid and bold enough to stand out well in a mix. Suitable single flavor for a blueberry pancake syrup, not so much for a full berry. Also, tastes soapy if too much is used, but fortunately gives plenty of blueberry flavor long before the soapiness becomes an issue.

FW Blueberry, what do I need thee for? Let me count and mix the recipes.

Viserion TASK 18

BEWD TASK 19

Esdeath TASK 20

Long Gone Lonesome Blues TASK 21

That’s just the ones I already know I need it for. There are others I want to try, too.

Blue Bitchslap. I mean, just look at it. TASK 22

Pitaya Cream. That bowl of pinkish purple. TASK 23

Spark - Berry Energy Drink. Most of the time when I see an all-FLV recipe I think it could be better if they just swapped out at least one FLV ingredient for something else, but this time, I’m not so sure. TASK 24

Blueberry Macaron. Looks like a banger. TASK 25

Dragon Tears. Stupid simple but looks tasty to me. Says shake and vapeable but “comes to life after 14 days.” Yeah, no shit with that much TFA Whipped Cream in there. That stuff needs a little time. I will not be shake and vaping it. TASK 26

Melon Berry Blaster. I can’t tell if that’s going to be amazing or terrible or just muddled and meh, but I like a lot of what’s going on in there and it’s been awhile since I had something that looked that juicy and refreshing, so I’ll roll the dice. TASK 27

Blueberry Cotton Candy

I guess this is pretty accurate. It kinda tastes like what I think Blueberry Cotton Candy should taste like, but I can’t say I’ve ever had Blueberry Cotton Candy. Every blue cotton candy I’ve ever seen was blue raspberry flavored, not blueberry, just blue food dyed cotton candy.

And yet, here it is, and it really tastes like blueberry plus cotton candy. Concentration testing, I got a slight chemical edge at 3 and 4%. I don’t recommend taking it up that high. It still seemed to be there at 2%, but very faint, possibly easy to cover up and could even have been my imagination from testing it at 4% first. I did not get any off notes at 1.5%, but it’s not a strong flavor there either. It is dry though. Not the most dry thing ever, but notably dry, like cotton candy flavors can be. I think I would use FW Blueberry Cotton Candy at around 1.5% before adding straight ethyl maltol to a dark berry mix, but I can’t think of two many cases where I’d be adding EM to a berry mix, so this flavor is gathering dust. CAP Blue Raspberry Cotton Candy will do a similar job, and it’s more likely that if I’m wanting a blue candy flavor it’s that artificial blue razz candy flavor I’m after, rather than blueberry. TRASH 5

Blueberry Graham Waffle

I find this one to be a bit odd. It is definitely an option for a cooked blueberry but it is oversweet beyond realism and into more of a candy blueberry, which is a bit weird juxtaposed with a weird bakery flavor. I’m not sure what a graham waffle is. I suppose it’s a waffle made out of graham flour? I don’t know what’s supposed to taste like or why that’s something someone would want to eat, much less vape. It does taste a bit grahammy. It doesn’t taste like any waffle I’ve ever had, but it is a little buttery. It’s a very full, thick, and very rich bakery base under that candied blueberry, making for a well-rounded flavor. I think if FLV Blueberry Muffin didn’t exist I’d be trying to work this into a blueberry muffin or blueberry pie with help from other blueberries, but FLV Blueberry Muffin has rendered it pretty much obsolete. It’s easier to sweeten a blueberry than to unsweeten it and make it less candied. TRASH 6

Boysenberry

There’s an ELR user who says it “tastes like a brothel” in Swedish and while that kind of makes me want to visit a Swedish brothel, because the flavor isn’t THAT bad. But, it’s not great, either, especially when you consider the other options for Boysenberry. A bit floral and a bit soapy at the same time. It does seem to hit Boysenberry in the sense that it tastes like a combination between a blackberry and a raspberry, more blackberry than raspberry, but it has the baggage of some of the less desirable characteristics that some blackberry and raspberry flavors tend to have. There’s a nice medium sweet-ish sort of jammy dark berry with some depth in there, but it’s got those off notes and while also being a somewhat soft flavor. The tartness is missing. TRASH 7

Brown Sugar

Terrible. It’s brown and very sweet so I see where they’re coming from, but I also get a slight yet gnarly burnt plastic off note even at 1% after steeping for 13 days, like making brown sugar syrup and adding a little melted burnt plastic to it. I might have tried FW Brown Sugar at a little lower concentration to see if the plastic went away, but it wasn’t very flavorful 1% and and I just didn’t feel like bothering with it. TRASH 8

Butter Cream

Tried at 2%. Very weird, not buttercream. Sweet and similar to buttercream, with a strong slightly fakey butter and touch of bright vanilla that lingers in the aftertaste, but also waxy in a way that goes beyond just being kinda waxy and into actually tasting like I’m trying to eat a buttercream scented candle, and there’s a little sour off-ness to the dairy aspect of the buttercream, like there’s a little too much butyric acid in there making it slightly yucky. I think FW Buttercream might be ok around 1% to add a slight sweet butter to a mix but by itself this is not good.

I’m not going to toss it, though, because there’s a recipe I need to try first. New Hampshire Pumpkin Cake Roll. I love the real thing too much to not try a vape version. TASK 28

Butter Pecan

That’s just the concentrated difference between butter pecan ice cream and plain vanilla ice cream. It’s just basic math. butter pecan ice cream - vanilla ice cream = FW Butter Pecan. It’s a little chalky, it needs a bit of a steep, but it’s got the pecan, the brown sugar, and the butter. Really realistic pecan, caramelly/brown sugar sweetness, lots of bright buttery goodness. The pecan flavor is sort of wrapped around the butteriness, so you get more of that first and then it comes back around in the finish and can feel a little dry, which I guess is also accurate since I’ve never eaten a butter pecan anything and not been thirsty afterward. Anyway, it’s awesome.

Get in, losers, we’re going butter pecaning! There are so many butter pecan recipes I want to try, some I’ve been meaning to try for a long time and others I just discovered today. So many recipes that I feel like I need to organize them by categories.

So many FW Butter Pecan + CAP Vanilla Custard Recipes, I feel like I need to organize them by categories!

FW Butter Pecan + CAP Vanilla Custard + FW Butterscotch (Natural) + FW Tres Leches recipes:

Reserved Duchess.I never tried the original Duchess Reserve so I was never in a hurry to mix clones/remixes, but they look pretty tasty. TASK 29

Duchess Reserve Remix. TASK 30

FW Butter Pecan + CAP Vanilla Custard + FW Hazelnut recipes:

One of the above, plus Cookie Crack. TASK 31

FW Butter Pecan + CAP Vanilla Custard + FW Graham Cracker recipes:

One of the above, plus Duchess Court. TASK 32

FW Butter Pecan + CAP Vanilla Custard + TFA RY4 Double recipes:

One of the above, plus Butter Back. TASK 33

FW Butter Pecan + CAP Vanilla Custard + CAP Butter Cream recipes:

One of the above, plus Adams Pecan Custard Perfection. TASK 34

And Rollin. TASK 35

FW Butter Pecan + CAP Vanilla Custard + TFA DX Peanut Butter recipes:

CHINCHILLA. TASK 36

Peanut Butta Pie. TASK 37

Additional FW Butter Pecan + CAP Vanilla Custard recipes:

Angels & Demons.TASK 38

Toffee Custard. TASK 39

Now I can put the CAP Vanilla Custard away. FW Butter Pecan + TFA RY4 Double recipes without CAP Vanilla Custard:

Hazelnut RY4. TASK 40

Kate’s Recipe. TASK 41

Naughty Tobacco. TASK 42

FW Butter Pecan + CAP Sugar Cookie recipes:

A couple of the above, plus Peek-In Pie. TASK 43

And Stroop-a-whoopdy-doopdy. TASK 44

FW Butter Pecan + FW Butterscotch Ripple recipes:

One of the above, plus Butterface.TASK 45

And Over the Top Indulgence. TASK 46

FW Butter Pecan + INW Custard recipes:

One of the above, plus Butter Almond Custard.TASK 47

And Butter Pecan Pudding. TASK 48

Caramel seems to be a popular choice to mix with FW Butter Pecan. FW Butter Pecan + FW Salted Caramel recipes:

Two of the above, plus Reminiscent. TASK 49

FW Butter Pecan + FA Caramel recipes:

Two of the above, plus So-Ho-Ho-Ho. TASK 50

FW Butter Pecan + FLV Rich Cinnamon recipes:

One of the above, plus Decadence. TASK 51

And County Fair. TASK 52

FW Butter Pecan + FLV Milk & Honey recipes:

One of the above, plus Milk N Honey Sticky Buns. TASK 53

And Giving Thanks. TASK 54

FW Butter Pecan + VT Golden Syrup recipes:

Two of the above, plus The Fall Waits For No One. TASK 55

FW Butter Pecan + TFA Graham Cracker Clear recipes:

One of the above, plus Banana Foster. TASK 56

And, finally, FW Butter Pecan + DIYFS Holy Vanilla recipes:

Pecan Sandies. TASK 57 (If I have any Holy Vanilla left at this point)

Prince Albert’s Gold. TASK 58 (If I have any Holy Vanilla left at this point)

Butter Rum

I don’t think I’ve tried this one by itself yet, although I have tried it in a recipe. I’ll mix a 2.5% sample and hope it tastes like grandad’s favorite Lifesaver. TASK 59

Butter Toffee

Pleasant enough but not super accurate. I’m not sure it tastes more like toffee than some kind of butterscotch or a very buttery caramel sauce. These things are all pretty close anyway but something about the way toffee is made makes it have a different flavor than butterscotch and this doesn’t really have that distinctive toffee taste. There’s butter upfront and some soft dark caramelized sugar behind it. Very sweet, thick, and creamy, like a caramel sauce. I certainly wouldn’t hesitate to mix a recipe that uses it for that combination of butter and dark sweetness, but I don’t know how you get an authentic toffee out of it.

I’ll try this October’s Nocturnal caramel apple tobacco recipe. TASK 60

Buttered Popcorn

Terrible. It tastes like butter buds - that dry butter flavoring you can sprinkle on stuff - mixed with donut glaze - and then vomited up. At first it’s just a weirdly sweet butter flavor - not aggressively fake butter - but dry - and then towards the end of the exhale it gets increasingly creamy and less dry and more vomity. Between the dryness, and the barf, exhaling this through the nose was so much like puking and having some of the puke come out though my nose and that I could almost feel the burning stomach acid in the sinuses. TRASH 9

Butterscotch

I feel like they couldn’t decide whether they wanted to make a real butterscotch sauce or a butterscotch candy flavor so they just kind of did both in one. Top notes are caramelized sugar, not sure that’s brown sugar but it’s got a little darker, sharper edge on it so ok, brown sugar. Then lots of creamy buttery depth. But, it leaves a butterscotch disc candy taste in my mouth starting just at the tail end of the vape. It’s yummy, but odd.

Because of the candy finish, this would never have been my first choice butterscotch for a butterscotch tobacco, but Fear did it, and it’s awesome. It’s like breathing sweet pipe tobacco through an unlit pipe with a mouthful of butterscotch sundae in your mouth and it’s an amazing take on RY4. I need it for that and will happy make some more: Budderstotch TASK 61

What else should I mix with it?

RY1. TASK 62

Butterscotch Overdose Custard. TASK 63

Butterscotch Trifle. TASK 64

Butterscotch (Natural)

I don’t know what’s supposed to be natural about it - like what, did they pick it off of a butterscotch tree? It’s pretty similar to the regular Butterscotch but it’s sweeter, creamy without really being buttery - lacking that buttery depth, and the finish is less overtly candied. There’s also a dash of vanilla in middle there. I know the original FW Butterscotch has diketones and this one doesn’t, which would explain why the original has that buttery richness and this one doesn’t. I think they’re using butyric acid for the creaminess but at 3% and a six-day steep it’s not tasting terribly barfy to me, just a hint of burp behind the hint vanilla if I really focus on it. It might be a problem to someone who’s even more sensitive to it than I am, though.

I need it for a couple of the FW Butter Pecan recipes already on the to-do list.

Add to that:

Jersey Caramel. TASK 65

Duchess Reserve Final. TASK 65

Graham Central Station. TASK 66

One Smart Cookie. I’ll be subbing JF Cookie for the FA Cookie. TASK 67

Butterscotch Ripple

I’m aware that some people detect a weird off-note from this one, but I can’t find it. As far as I’m concerned, that’s some tasty stuff right here. It isn’t really what it’s supposed to be, which is ice cream with ripples of butterscotch in it. It’s way too butterscotch-forward for that, while at the same time the butterscotch is a bit more caramelly and not very distinctly butterscotch - I think because it lacks any of that artificial candy disk butterscotch flavor. But it’s also way too vanilla and creamy for just a butterscotch sauce or drizzle. If you want a butterscotch vape, you’re going to need another butterscotch to add to this. But that’s sort of nitpicky and irrelevant because it’s super duper tasty, almost like a butterscotch and caramel shake with extra butterscotch in a single concentrate. Not quite as thick and custardy as solid ice cream, that’s why I call it a shake. It’s also blended together so it’s sort-of one-noted, but what a delicious note that is! It’s been so good in everything I’ve put it in so far.

I need it for RY4 Custard, which I’m just going to keep making at least until I run out of TFA Vanilla Custard. TFA Vanilla Custard has a peppery off note for me so I might not restock it, but it works so well here. TASK 68

RY4 Custard alone is worth keeping this FW Butterscotch Ripple in stock. But I’m sure there are others I haven’t tried yet.

I’m finally going to mix Pistachio RY4U. TASK 69

I also want to try Pistachio Butterscotch RY4. TASK 70

And Buttery Ho. TASK 71

And !Checkmate. TASK 72

And Classic. TASK 73

And Donkey Kong’s Secret TASK 74

And Phil Noir TASK 75

And RY4 Cow. TASK 76

And Ruyan Butter. TASK 77

And Butterscotch Reserve. TASK 78

And Seven Sins: Gluttony. TASK 79

And finally, Grahamercy. TASK 80

Butterscotch Tobacco

Had high hopes for this one, because butterscotch + tobacco is amazing. The butterscotch is there and tastes good, like a gooey butterscotch sauce, dense, creamy, sweet, but there’s not a ton of it, and what’s underneath more closely resembles from decaying old leaves picked off the forest floor and seasoned with spices, rather than tobacco.. It’s not a strong flavor, so it could be covered up with a good tobacco maybe, but I think I’d rather use one of the other good butterscotch flavors and a good tobacco and make the combo myself. TRASH 10

WHEW! I made it through the Flavor West B’s. Lots added to the to-mix list, not a lot added to the garbage can. I’m sure there’ll be a lot more trash when I start in on the C’s.

New flavor count: 2,704