Capella Fig
ConcreteRiver
Setup: Recoil w/ flavor barrel, Dual 15 wrap 26g 3mm Nifethal 70 coils @.17 ohms. 60w power, 450F temp limit. Full Cotton Wicks.
Testing: CAP Fig @ 3%, 60/40 VG/PG, Steeped 8 days.
Flavor Description: A dark berry flavor. Skews close to prune, with flashes of a more vibrant grape. Some subtle dark mustiness. Syrupy as opposed to juicy, with a nice round sweetness.
Inhale is dark and sweet. Moderately dense sugary plum. Exhale has some bright realistic grape top notes over that dark sweet prune base. Maybe picking up some syrupy raspberry there as well. Full exhale without being too dense. Sweetness tastes natural if a bit heavy and syrupy. Slight funk in there, more realistic fruit than any kind of dusty flavor.
Off-flavors: Nothing weird. A tiny bit bright, but everything fits well.
Throat Hit: Moderate. Warm harshness when vaped solo.
Uses & Pairings: My frame of reference here is pretty narrow. I've had fig newtons, and cooked mission figs. This steers closer to the fig newton side of things, but the actual figs I've had have been doused in some sort of pork fat so YMMV.
The prune and grape thing makes me think about using this to add another dimension to grape flavors, as those tend to skew pretty bright and candy-ish. 2% of this should bring back in a deeper, richer natural grape flavor. Or take it up a bit further and really cook those grapes and end up with something a lot more like grape jelly or jam. It would also help to darken up your berry mixes without adding that obnoxious generic mixed-berry note.
Should work well with brandy concentrates, brightening those up a bit and reinforcing the fermented grape note there. Also in wine/champagne concentrates to bring in some deeper red wine notes.
The dark and syrupy sweetness of the concentrate is a fit for panettone (sexy, sexy italian fruitcake) type of bakeries with dried fruits and roasted nuts.
Notes:
S&V concentration testing, this is super linear. 1% is a little light and perfumey. 2% brings in more of that dark sweetness. Starts to border on syrupy at 3%. 4% is starting to get a bit floral and that bright grape is a little obtrusive. A steep will help considerably here. I'm not enjoying this at 5% and over, as those perfume notes get a bit too intense. I'd mix with this at 2% to just punch up a grape, and go up to 3 or 4% for some full-on syrupy sweetness.
This is missing some of the richer date notes I'd expect from a cooked fig, but overall this is pretty great. I don't understand figs well enough to call it accurate or not, but it is damn tasty and seems pretty versatile.
Second Opinions:
"The fig - Everything I've read pretty much crowns FA Fig as the best, but I decided to go with what I already had. Capella's Fig is surprisingly delicious, as I'm not a big fan of most of their fruity flavors I've tried. I've never tasted a fresh fig, so I can't compare. But I can say that this flavor is very sweet and pretty bold. Almost has a dark berry kind of taste to it. It's quite floral, but in a good way. At the percentage I used, it is the dominant flavor in the recipe. It's not overbearing (at least to my tastebuds), but the sweet and floral notes are definitely prevalent."