Flavour Art Aurora

Setup: Recoil w/ flavor barrel, Dual 15 wrap 26g 3mm Nifethal 70 coils @.17 ohms. 60w power, 450F temp limit. Full Cotton Wicks.

Testing: FA Aurora@ .5%, 60/40 VG/PG, Steeped 7 days.

Flavor Description: Sweet, slightly carbonated limeade with a lot of realistic lime-zest. Authentically bitter, without crossing into astringent. Sweet and relatively dense, with a great overall balance.

Inhale is moderately dense and sweet. Almost a lime candy, but a bit sour and with some zest bitterness. Most citrus inhales have a ton of zest, but this has more zest at the top on the exhale. Bitter note is definitely present in the inhale, but it peaks in the exhale which is cool. Almost a limeade flavor underneath that realistic lime zest. Still fairly sweet in the exhale and dense for a citrus. Some light effervescence, which is awful pleasant. Lingering lime zest and a sticky-sweet mouthfeel.

Off-flavors: Not really, but it's maybe a touch sweeter than you'd expect for something so zest-heavy.

**Throat Hit:**Light, totally manageable for citrus.

Uses & Pairings: This is 95% of the way to a one-shot natural limeade solo. Maybe a tiny bit of INW Cactus or CAP Cucumber for some juiciness, but the sweetenss, carbonation, and depth of flavor is really impressive. Adding some dark berries is going to push this into a berry limeade which is great.

I also like this for cocktail vapes. This has the best zest component of any of the limes I've tried so it works well for a lime twist in a cocktail. The efferesvence and sweetness here are kind of a bonus in that application.

This would also be awesome for a lime candy, adding some realism and zest and making it taste a little less "green" and more like actual fruit was involved at some point.

Seems like a natural fit for the top notes on a key lime pie, because if you don't grate like twice the recommended zest in your lime curd you're doing it wrong.

Notes:

Strong stuff, my tester was mixed at .5% and gives me about all I could ask for. S&V concentration testing, 1 (tiny FA original bottle) drop per 10ml is already noticeable and a nice subltle lime zest. Sweetness and bitterness just ramps from there. Gets too pushy pretty quickly. Maybe a bit too bitter for me as low as 1%. I'd mix this low, like .2-.3% if you're just after the lime zest note here. For that fizzy limeade flavor, try mixing between .5% and 1%, although at 1% you're going to want to have some extra juiciness going on here and that zest is going to be aggressive.

So, this stuff is awesome. I try to avoid editorializing that much, but it's a really solid lime flavor. The zest note is close to perfect. It's bitter without being astringent and it sits perfectly in the exhale. Sweetness is a tiny bit weird, but the effervescence is really nice. Overall pretty great.

Second Opinions:

/u/CheebaSteeba/ and /u/RuntDastardly went over this a bit in the comments for Runt's Glaistig recipe. Cheeba reports on his preliminary tests:

"I have a lot of experimenting to do but it seems like the best purpose for this is like a nice refreshing lime-y finish to a cocktail. My go-to cocktail is ice, gin, limeade, tonic water; It kind of reminds me of that after all the ice has melted and it's gone flat (if that helps you picture it at all). I still have a lot of messing around to do with it, but it seems like a finish to a cocktail recipe is the obvious place to take it. I mixed this solo at 4% to test it out, and it seemed like a nice spot for it solo. It's definitely a lingerer though, and I feel will still stand out in a recipe at much lower %s (.5-2%)."

Cheeba also talks about quinine, juniper and cucumber that I don't quite pick up, probably because my use percentages are quite a bit lower and my tatse buds are just a bit basic. The complexity here just reads as realistic lime zest to me.

/u/StardustCoyote/ posted a Baja Blast recipe that doubled as a FA Aurora love letter. Their notes include:

"FA Aurora - and this, my friends, is the magic. This gets you a lime fizz flavor on the end of a vape. It's brilliant, and it's quickly becoming a favorite of mine. This is NOT any other lime out there- and i wouldn't call it key lime, or regular lime, or anything else. " and "FA Aurora is Magical. If you want a lime fizzy taste, bring this to the table."

Nothing too useful, but nothing insane on ELR notes. People seem to be getting orange or lemon, but this reads as 100% lime to me.

And now, for the ever comedic world of ECX reviews.

DIY_eJuice Flavor Reviews