Flavour Art Caramel
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 Caramel @ 2%, 60/40 VG/PG, Steeped 9 days.
Flavor Description:
Gritty caramelized sugar, not really a smooth caramel sauce or full-on caramel candy. Tastes quite a bit like caramel without having anything approaching the kind of mouthfeel you'd expect. Overall a bit thin and sharp, almost approaching unpleasant solo. Definitely a caramel for mixing as opposed to a primary note.
Inhale is sweet, almost raw sugar. Mouthfeel is a bit thin for the actual taste. Strange kind of gritty vibe fitting with the raw sugar thing. Caramel comes out in the exhale. Sugar is moderately caramelized with no real dark, burnt notes. Mouthfeel never really gets smooth, still fairly thin. Really light creamy notes, almost a margarine type of taste in the middle of the exhale. Raw sugar comes back on the tail-end of the exhale with some gritty exhale that lingers.
Off-flavors: A handful of raw sugar that somehow managed to get caramelized without turning into a syrup. So the entire thing? Not bad, just not really a smooth caramel flavor.
Throat Hit: Moderate.
Uses & Pairings: Lower percentage use is basically going to be a sweetener. Creams, custards, darker fruits, nuts, tobaccos. It's too dark of a flavor to blend well with anything particularly bright and you're really going to want to have some cream or density to round the edges and grittiness off.
If you start increasing percentages, you move into more of a candy caramel flavor if not texture. This concentrate has a tendency to sit on top of other flavors when used a bit higher. Casino Pier by /u/enyawreklaw/ uses it up at 3% with a whole lot of cream backup to get a caramel coating on an apple. Would also work well for a caramel sauce with something to clean up that mouthfeel.
Notes:
S&V Concentration testing, this is a warm carmelized type flavor at .5% percent. Sweetness is a bit muted, and the flavor is pretty indistinct, but the effect is nice. 1% starts to get you into that gritty mouthfeel along with a pronounced sweetness. 1.5% has even more grit, and by the time you hit 2% you're definitely going to need something dense or creamy to chill this out a bit. 3% gets pretty intense, with a good caramel flavor but the mouthfeel is pretty distracting. Just seems to dry out after that, with that raw sugar taking on an aggressive sugar-alcohol sweetener note. I'd mix at .5% for a subtle boost to darker flavors. 1% is probably the max you'd want as strictly a sweetener. The use as an actual caramel is going to depend on heavy and creamy your actual recipe is. 2% seems like a good starting point, and then work up seeing just how much of the weird mouthfeel issues your cream base can handle.
Worth noting, I didn't get any real noticeable coil gore solo testing this.
Similar in construction to FLV Caramel, but a lot less roasted. Good middle of the road sweetener, but it's going to need a lot of help with creams to get a smooth caramel.
Second Opinions:
"More like caramel ice-cream topping than a hard-candy flavor. It never tastes burnt or cracker-jacks-like. It is sweet, but less sweet than other brands.It will add rich caramel flavor to tobaccos without transforming the mix into a candy flavor.Mix FA Caramel with FA Butterscotch (and perhaps sweet, creamy flavors) for a candy-like caramel.
Adding nut flavors can produce buttery effects as a mix ages."
"Indulge yourself in the forbidden world of vaping pleasure, but be warned, you might never leave! How can one man give so much pleasure to so many people? This smooth, delicious, creamy Caramel creation oozes onto the palate and languishes shamelessly!" I'm simultaneously a little turned on and scared reading that.
ECX reviews basically say to use it low, it mixes well, and it's a bit dry.