Flavour Art Cherry Bee
ConcreteRiver
Setup: Recoil w/ flavor barrel, Dual 15 wrap 26g 3mm Nifethal 70 coils @.13 ohms. 60w power, 450F temp limit. Full Cotton Wicks.
Testing: FA Cherry Bee, 1 and 2.5%, 60/40 VG/PG, Steeped 21 days.
Flavor Description: Another Flavourart UK blend, this time billed as "a long standing favourite with the distinct flavours of Cherry and Brandy blended to give a pleasurable vape." In the grand scheme of lowered expectations with cherry flavors, it's actually a relatively non-medicinal or plastic jammy dark cherry filling. Cherry note is closer to a "red" artificial cherry or at least pretty heavily cooked cherry, without a lot of fresh brightness. The brandy part of this helps to darken this up though, making it seem a bit deeper, warmer, and richer. There's a relatively light spice note toward the back of this although it could just be the brandy pulling out some the dryer, spicier skin notes from the cherry. It almost tastes like a light clove flavor.
Vaping through that weird burst of initial harshness, the inhale is on the high side of medium sweet and a bit sticky. Deeper candy cherry flavor, but a little more cooked than like a medicinal cough drop flavor. Exhale is moderately dense and fairly similar to the inhale. Deeper cooked but still lightly artificial cherry flavor. Some relatively light bitter medicinal top notes, but it's really subdued for a cherry. Deeper brown liquor notes come in on the back half the exhale. Makes the cherry taste more cooked than soaked in booze. Light clove-ish spice right on the tail end. Mouthfeel is actually a bit gelatinous and really smooth. Sweetness level is maybe just a bit undersweet for a cherry filling, but overall it's still on the sweet side. Some harshness on the back end, seems pretty tied into the spice note here.
Off-flavors: A little bit of the usual medicinal carnage with cherries, but it's really light in comparison to straight cherry flavors. It's also less dry than INW Cherries.
Throat Hit: This is fairly harsh, but it seems to settle in pretty quickly. I've set it down and come back to it a couple of times, and the first couple of drags have a kind of dry harshness but it fades to a lighter throat hit after that, mostly on the tail.
Uses & Pairings: The relative lack of the medicinal note is going to make this pretty versatile.
I'd run with the cherry filling thing. Seems like a really good pairing for bakeries in general.
I also want to dump more booze on top of this, either a boozier brandy or some bourbon. The jammy sweetness would go well with even stronger brown liquor notes.
I can also see using this fruit mixes, especially where you're going sweet and jammy. I think this would mix really well with darker berries.
Notes: Concentration testing, this works better at relatively higher percentages for Flavourart. 1% is dry and a bit medicinal. It's also sort of spicy. More like cherry skin than anything else. 2.5% is still a bit dry and that spice note seems too pronounced. That jammier dark cherry filling is starting to come out, but it's still too dry on balance. This really starts coming together at about 3.5%. That jammier cherry moves more to the front and the dryness seems a lot more subdued. 4% is probably my sweet spot, that jammyness is nice, dark, and sweet and you're getting a clearer cooked cherry. Flavor starts to feel a bit blown out at 4.5%. Those medicinal notes start to creep back in. By 5% this feels pretty medicinal.
So theoretically this is just blended flavourart flavors, but I'm not 100% sure how they got here. It tastes a bit more complex than just FA Cherry and FA Brandy. If someone manages to crack the code on this, i think this blend provides some really good clues on making bakery cherry work.
Second Opinions:
Not a lot.