Flavour Art Hazelnut/Hazel Grove
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 Hazelnut @ %1, 60/40 VG/PG, Steeped 14 days.
Flavor Description: Nutty raw hazelnuts with a bit of a praline sweetness and a light metallic twinge on the backend. The nut flavor is actually surprisingly dead on to hazelnuts, giving you that almost nutella thing, as opposed to the creamy, maltier FW Hazelnut. Super strong, but useful as a mixer to bolster other nuts or a sort of non-specific raw nut at a lower percentage.
Inhale is fairly dense and nutty. Definitely leans towards a "greener" tasting kind of nut like raw almonds or hazelnuts. A little sweeter than you'd expect for raw nuts, but the sweetness fits pretty well. Kind of a cream sweetness, without any of the dairy. Sweetness kind of builds and takes over on the inhale, getting a bit metallic toward the end. Exhale has a pretty dead-on hazelnut up-front, with that praline sweetness comes through on the back half of the exhale. I can taste just a bit of buttery richness in there along with the sweetness. If you told me this was a praline flavor, I'd totally believe you at 1%. Sweetness isn't overbearing, but it's there. Again, moderately dense. Most of the nuttiness here is front-loaded. Tail end of the exhale picks up a bit of a metallic taste, almost like smelling change.
Off-flavors: Gets a bit metallic on the inhale and towards the very back of the exhale. Not a deal-breaker or anything, but it's there.
Throat Hit: Light. That praline sweetness is just a bit sharp.
Uses & Pairings: I like using this for a bakeries as a truer nut flavor. It tends to layer well with a drier base, sitting on top. I used it in my Dogma recipe for exactly that purpose, simulating a slivered almond.
My other personal favorite pairing with this is FLV Red Burley. It really seems to pop the drier cocoa notes in tobaccos and get downright chocolately with bringing in any waxy mouthfeel. Should work well any non-ashy tobaccos to reinforce nutty character and add some pretty mellow cocoa notes for more a dessert tobacco vape.
This is also damn near perfect for mixing with a deeper chocolate to give you more a nutella vibe. Mixes well with lighter creams. My favorite is FLV Cream. Gives it a lightly sour note and plays well with the light spice to give you a fairly realistic fresh milk flavor.
I'm not a huge fan of mixing this with fruits solo, the flavors just don't blend all the way
Notes: S&V Concentration testing, this is potent stuff. I get a pretty neutral but pronounced nuttiness at .25%. Fairly non-specific this low, but it definitely reads as nutty. I've used the relative dryness and distinct nutty taste here to layer in a discrete almond sliver. .5% is ramping it up a bit, and the nuttiness is starting to come in clear as hazelnut. .75% is getting sweeter, with that praline kind of note coming in pretty strong. 1% is starting to be dominated by that praline sweetness, and by 1.5% this concentrate just seems too strong and blown out. I'd recommend starting with this at .25% and working up for most applications. Maybe in a heavier chocolate application something like .5%. I don't see a ton of use for this above 1%.
The biggest question here is how the compares to the more widely used FW Hazelnut, and honestly they don't have a lot of overlap. FW Hazelnut is great, but it doesn't do a great job of actually evoking discrete halzelnuts. It's more a hazelnut cream. This is definitely a nut, and as such is pretty interesting. The off-notes get a little weird at anything above .5%, but under that it's a pretty useful ingredient that will give you a sweeter type of raw nut flavor without pushing the rest of your mix around too much.
Second Opinions:
Here are your HIC notes, farily solid this time:
"In my opinion, this is the single most accurate nut flavor that any manufacturer produces. It's the flavor of hazelnuts without the papery brown skin. This is an excellent flavor to add to your chocolate candy bar recipes.FA Hazelnut carefully mixed with acetyl pyrazine (plus Caramel and other accents) can give the impression of peanut butter.In dessert and coffee recipes, even 0.25% can add sufficient hazelnut flavor for most vapers. It's excellent for hazelnut coffee.If you're looking to add nutty notes to tobacco, you might prefer FA Nut Mix instead of this distinctive hazelnut flavor."
Some quick mentions on the sub [here](https://www.reddit.com/r/DIY_eJuice/comments/363efr/fa_hazelnut_replacement_by_fw_hazelnut/. Mostly in relation to the difference between FA and FW.) and here. General consensus is is nutty, strong, and accurate.