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Starting flavor count: 2,644 (down from 2,973)

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

#CAPELLA

Caramel

Update. I tried Maple Art by Fear thinking it would be a perfect use of CAP Caramel and the only reason for me to keep that flavor. I was somewhat wrong. It’s not that the recipe isn’t enjoyable to me, it certainly is, it's just that, as written, it’s probably not something I would make again. First of all, that’s not as much maple as I was anticipating. After steeping for 18 days, the maple is a barely-there accent. Very surprising because in my experience FA Maple grows quite a bit over time. It’s instead an extremely robust tobacco that’s super woodsy, something like a cedar/sandalwood/oak combination. I certainly don’t mind the oak but the cedarish/sandalwoodish part is too sharp and strong if I’m being picky about it. I think it comes from a little too much FLV Cured Tobacco. I still believe in this combination of ingredients though. I want to try it again with just some minor adjustments to the concentrations.

Maple FArt V1 TASK 1

Co. | Flavor | % ---|---|---- CAP | Caramel | 1.25 FA | Maple Syrup | 2 FLV | Cured Tobacco | 1.5 FLV | Red Burley | 2

Cereal 27

Update. I made some more Toasted and it remains my number one reason for keeping CAP Cereal 27. Doesn’t taste like Cinnamon Toast Crunch, it tastes like Cinnamon Frosted Flakes. YUM!

I had also mixed some Manson & The Pebbles to see if it might be another reason to keep CAP Cereal 27. It is! After all, I’m going to run out of FW Fruity Flakes (or get tired of replacing cotton/coils so quickly from using it) sooner or later, and where else am I going to get a Fruity Pebbles vape? It’s a very, very good recipe that tastes very much like Fruity Pebs in milk.

I’m still irked about one thing, though. One of the stated goals was to consolidate the original 2016 Pebbles recipe into fewer ingredients. They got it down from 10 flavors to 7 and some sweetener and it’s a better recipe than the original so it was certainly a successful endeavor. But it seems like they could have reduced the flavor count even lower if they’d just used WF Lemon Orange Rice Candy instead of the separate lemon and orange flavors. It just looks like a glaring missed opportunity to me. So I’m going to give that a try:

Manson & The Pebbles Reunion Tour V1 TASK 2

Co. | Flavor | % ---|---|---- CAP | Cereal 27| 3.75 WF | Lemon Orange Rice Candy | 2.25 FA | Marzipan | 0.5 TFA | Meringue | 2 FA | Milk | 2 CAP | Sugar Cookie | 2 FW | Sweetener | 0.5

#Flavor West

Orange

Natural, tastes like an orange that's a bit out of season in that it’s not juicy or sweet enough for a really good sweet, vibrant orange, but it’s not orange candy, at least. Thinner body than orange juice, some bitterness, some throat hit. It leaves me not really a fan without that darker earthiness of FW Blood Orange to make it interesting. It needs to be sweeter and thicker without being a candy or waxy, why is that so much to ask? If you try a bunch of orange flavors, you’ll see that yes, apparently that is a lot to ask. TRASH 1

Orange Dream Bar

Odd flavor. The orange part tastes more natural and a bit zesty - it seems like if you want a creamsicle you’d be hoping for a more artificial, kool-aid/popsicle sort of orange. The cream part is fairly thin, more like cool whip than the more substantial dream bar cream. Fluffier, or you might say airier, and not especially flavorful or vanilla-y, though it does land on a very sweet finish. This might be a good start for an orange julius if it had a bit more milky cream and vanilla and if it were blended up, but there’s a clear separation to the orange and cream that does make it more like an orange creamsicle. The end result is something that isn’t terrible but doesn’t do a super-great job of emulating what it’s supposed to. Average throat for an orange - quite noticeable, but not excessive. TRASH 2

Peach

That is gross. It’s sweet and syrupy and peachy but tastes like a horribly overripe peach, bordering right up on rotten. The rottenness is hits me first, then the peach, following with a sweet and less punchy finish, but that rotten and slightly perfumy taste lingers in the aftertaste. I could see this being useful much lower than the 3% I tried it at, especially in a cooked peach profile, since it’s not a far leap from overripe to cooked, but by itself it’s actually kind of sickening. I will say I get zero irritation from this one, it’s totally smooth, but I’d rather the razors than the rot. TRASH 3

Peach Tobacco

The peach top note is good enough I guess, pretty candied and a little throaty, but good enough. It’s mostly that candy peach. I don’t really get any tobacco at all, which is a shame because peach tobacco is a great pairing, but maybe not a shame because FW seems to do tobacco so terribly. It seems like you could “fix” it by adding a tobacco, but there are better peaches for that anyway so it’s useless to me. TRASH 4

Peanut Butter

Has a horrible off flavor that’s hard to nail down description wise but tastes a bit like throwing spoiled butter on a tire fire. It’s mostly a sweet, rich, creamy peanut butter flavor, but the creaminess is a bit on the sour dairy side, buttery but not in a good way, but tastes a little sour and puky, and has lingering burnt chemical off note. TRASH 5

Peanut Butter Cup

It’s not a spot-on peanut butter cup. It kinda tastes like what would happen if a Reese’s were made out of a very thin layer of Tootsie Roll instead of a thicker layer of milk chocolate. There’s nothing wrong with the peanut butter in here and it’s mostly sweet creamy peanut butter. The off note is in the way the light bit of chocolate doesn’t actually taste like chocolate, it tastes like fake chocolate-flavored something. If that could be covered up or doctored up into a mix, there’s a solid smooth creamy peanut butter. Weird chocolate flavor mostly comes in at the end of the vape though, so it would have to be covered by something that finishes strong. This is not a particularly potent flavor, either. 6% seems to be a bit low for a mouth full of peanut butter. It’s possible going higher ramps up the PB more than it ramps up the weird fake chocolate. If it does, and the weird fake chocolate could be covered up with better chocolate, it could be a winner, but I didn’t see any recipes that appeared to be doing that and I hate that fake chocolate taste too much to be the one to try and make it work. TRASH 6

Pear

This is a badly underrated flavor, I think. It tastes like a pear, not the sweetest, juiciest, most perfect pear, but it’s a sweet, and somewhat juicy pear. It’s a little flat, not exactly thin but just a bit one-dimensional. It seems like it could get lost in a mix, as it’s not a very bold flavor. It does not have that real pear mealy body. But it tastes like a reasonably natural pear without off notes. I got a slightly floral edge at 4% but about the same amount of flavor without that at 3%. I’ve tried it in a recipe or two where it worked well, and it might be just right for adding some sweetness and a little juiciness to a pear layer. If you’re working with pears, might not want to overlook this one.

I’m sadly missing the Delosi Pear I would need to try the best-looking use of FW Pear I could find: Ap-pear-antly. I’m sure it’s awesome but I’m not in the buying more flavors business here.

I will, however, be mixing some Duess, just with a lot less than the whopping 1.5% Super Sweet listed in the recipe. Maybe I’ll just sub the same amount of FW Sweetener. That would be considerably less sucralose but still a lot of it. TASK 3

Pecan

Pretty strong, so not a lot is needed, but isn’t terrible in the 2 to 3% range. It tastes slightly roasted and has an almost creamy, buttery richness to it. Not like it has butter on it, but like the way nuts might be described as having a buttery feel to them after they’re chewed up a bit. Like it captures the fat content of the nut. Really solid pecan flavor that I’d use to push the pecan forward in a mix before trying TFA Pecan, it is way better than that one. It tastes like a pecan but has a similar feel to it as FW Hazelnut, which really makes me wonder whether this might work in some of the more creative applications that people have used FW Hazelnut for. Certainly seems like it would be worth playing around with to see what a little of it does to fruits, milkshakes, and things like that.

I need it for my Tedious Tobacco recipe that I wouldn’t mind mixing some more of. TASK 4

Pie Crust

It’s a richer, more buttery tasting pie crust than FA Apple Pie. It’s also softer, less dry, maybe less “baked,” less crunchy. It’s also less identifiable as a pie crust, but it is what a pie crust is, just a nondescript bakery note. It’s sweeter, and the sweetness in it tastes a little brown sugary, which is nice if you want that in a recipe.

Can you believe I’ve never tried Obsidian? I’ll do that now, with JF Cookie in for FA. TASK 5

Ditto for the Obsidian-based Yak Gak TASK 6

Pina Colada

Pineapple-Coconut hard candy, without all the plastic removed. No rum. The pineapple is complete candy, like a hard candy, like a pineapple jolly rancher. The coconut also tastes like a candy coconut flavor, like jelly belly coconut jelly bean. There’s a bit of a plasticky off note hanging around pineapple part, maybe that’s supposed to be the rum. Candy sweet finish. TRASH 7

Pink Champagne

Also known as Pink Bubbly. Has a sort of damp powdery thing going on around the edges that’s maybe kinda sorta like a very light effervescent effect or at least a nod to that, but doesn’t really taste boozy or champagne-like, more like mostly but not entirely flat nonalcoholic sparkling white grape juice, only pink. And the thing that makes it pink isn’t so much like an actual pink champagne or blush wine, it’s more like an added candy strawberry-ish flavor. It’s very very sweet. I actually find it pretty enjoyable just as an interesting candy grape strawberry-ish flavor, but it’s not a great champagne. Seems like it would fit really well in a sweet-tarts type situation because what doesn’t really do bubbles that well seems like it would do very well as a sugary-type candy texture. Also, can have a role as an additive for the body in something like a slushy or snow cone.

I need it for Blue Frost Revisited TASK 7

And 1 2 3 Poinsettia. TASK 8

Alan’s Orange is already on my to-mix list. Now Raspburrant Chamtouchar by the same mixer will be as well. TASK 9

So is Hydration, which is a strap-on recipe. TASK 10

And another Blueberry Kiwi mix TASK 11

Pistachio

Terrible. It tastes like spicy, woodsy cologne with a strong dose of plastic nightmare cherry off note. I can’t see this being useful in anything, there’s nothing here you couldn’t recreate with FLV Wood Spice, one of the oak flavors, and any number of bad cherry flavors. I tried it again at around 2% (down from 4%) to see if I’d just overused it, and it was more tolerable and oddly sweeter, but still pretty much the same thing. Quite a bit less cologne-tasting, but still like wood and bad cherry and not at all a pistachio or even a nut. TRASH 8

Plum

Grape cereal. It tastes like someone mixed a candy grape flavor with a light, sweet, puffy, dry cereal flavor. It’s not unpleasant, but it’s not a plum, it’s just weird. I don’t know what the deal is with some of the supposedly plum flavors having a cereal or toasted meringue type of note in them but that is a thing, apparently. TRASH 9

Pomberry

Contains sugar and is not worth it to me. Tastes like strawberry/grape with a little cranberry and a hint of cherry. Nothing bad, but nothing you couldn’t do without the sugar, really. It is indeed very sweet, and more fruit juicy than candy. Could be a sweetener for a grape juice recipe or grape strawberry mix for someone, but not for me. TRASH 10

Pumpkin Spice

Flavorah Pumpkin Spice wins the pumpkin spice war as far as I’m concerned, but if you can’t get that one for some reason, Flavor West Pumpkin Spice is well beyond just being serviceable, and a lot cheaper than FLV. I found it actually pleasant to vape all by itself at 0.75%. I can’t really pick out the ginger that should be there, and it’s a little heavier on the cinnamon than it should be, but I didn’t really get any off-notes and it certainly tastes like pumpkin spice. Nutmeg comes in nicely and clearly behind the cinnamon. The clove is present but very subdued which was a nice break from quite a few too clove-heavy pumpkiny flavors. It’s notably dry and a little woody upfront which is normal for a spice but there’s a creamy, full base to it. No actual pumpkin flavor at all, but a heavy creamy almost butteriness to it that would fit in well just about anywhere where you want to use a pumpkin spice flavor. I want to add some ginger and some people will try to bump up the clove a bit, but it’s pretty freaking good already.

At the rate I’m going on these tasks it’ll be fall before I get around to mixing and trying these, which is perfect.

Pumpkin Churro Remix TASK 12

Pumpkin Eggnog Cheesecake TASK 13

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Just a brief edition this week, too busy with all the Christmas crap. Plus on Friday my dog died and nothing productive was accomplished that day. If anyone knows how to make that not still feel like a hammer to the sternum, I'd love to hear it. No wonder this experience has become a country-song cliché, it fucking hurts. She was the best dog ever and I miss my daddy's girl fur baby so much. Fuck cancer.

New Flavor Count: 2,634