Flavour Art Blackberry
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: FA Blackberry @ 1 drop per 10ml / about .2%, 60/40 VG/PG, Steeped 43 days.
Flavor Description: I can't get this to work as anything beyond a floral mess. Most of this information is readily available, we just didn't have an official entry in the flavor review wiki.
Inhale has high floral notes right up front with some deeper blackberry sweetness hidden behind that floral punch. Moderately dense, even at .2%. Exhale is mostly just florals to me. Top notes, and the base are just full of the weird florals that flavoring companies apparently think work as a realistic berry note. There again, is some deeper, almost syrupy, blackberry sweeteness... but it's fairly hard to pick out and short-lived overall. Those florals just linger and turn a bit bitter. The sweetness here defintitely coats your mouth, but it's all just ruined by those florals.
Off-flavors: Soapy florals. All the way.
Throat Hit: Moderate, both from the florals and the underlying berry sweetness.
Uses & Pairings: I personally don't have any. I can't make this work in a reasonable fashion. The underlying blackberry is actually pretty good, but it's entombed by an avalanche of florals. They make creams weird and they just dominate other fruit notes.
Notes:
So this was steeped over a month at the lowest percentage I could make without doing a dilution. I'm just going to write this off without doing the usual S&V concentration thing. If you are bound and determined to use this, I can't figure out a way this would be palatable over .5%. I've tried it that high in recipes and those florals just completely dominate over other fruits and creams.
Second Opinions:
HIC Notes, because of course its a positive review:
"(less than)1% !! warning, strong flavor!FlavourArt states this one of their strongest flavors. 1% standalone is very strong. This is a deep, full, complex, rich blackberry flavor. It is not especially sweet, not like pie filling. The background flavor is musky, like wild blackberries. If it tastes like soap or perfume to you, you are using too much. Consider making a 10% dilution to use as your flavoring - this makes it easy to use very small amounts.Fresh Cream is excellent to lighten the flavor, and plenty of other, sweeter flavors in a recipe will give the best results. Fans of berry tobacco might enjoy a tiny (0.1-0.25%) touch of Blackberry in the background for the dark, deep berry flavor."