Flavour Art Hypnotic Mist
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 Hypnotic Mist @ 2%, 60/40 VG/PG, Steeped 17 days.
Flavor Description: I'll officially state, up front, that I've found no concrete evidence of what the actual inspiration for this concentrate is. With that said, other people have noted citrus and I'm going to double down on a seville or bitter orange based flavor. Almost like a creamy bergamot without all the heavy zest I get from FA Bergamot. Actual vape is pleasant, with creamy desaturated orange flesh flavor along with some herbaceous undertones and a lingering natural tasting bitterness. Pushes into a creamy earl grey tea.
Inhale is some light lemon or orange zest along with a bitter herbal notes. Moderately dense exhale. Herbal top notes without any kind of vegetal taste. Relatively warm and a little bitter. Reminds me of good black tea. The citrus is underneath that. Creamy, non-dairy, orange flesh. I wouldn't call it juicy, but it's really smooth. Orange note is really similar to the orange note in Aperol. Sweet, but not overwhelmingly so. Exhale tails off into a slightly bitter raw tea flavor.
Off-flavors: Nothing off-putting or aggressively wrong here. I'm not sure what Hypnotic Mist should taste like, but nothing that seems out of place.
Throat Hit: Nope.
Uses & Pairings:
Complex and satisfying enough for a single flavor. Mixing will be a bit difficult, just because of how complex this comes across. It's kind of like a creamsicle in bizarro world where everyone is wearing linen suits.
This already almost just tastes like Earl Grey tea so FA Black Tea or something similar. The herabal notes here will line up well with more tea.
Might be an interesting addition to citrus mixes. You can get a good deal of flesh with some added herbal complexity without taking the harsh zest type of flavor up.
Curacao and Grand Marnier both use bitter oranges heavily, so it may end up being the missing ingredient in a good cocktail vape either as a stand-in for triple sec or a sweetness component in something that apes an italian amaro.
Notes:
S&V concentration testing, I get a dryer herbal flavor at .5 to 1%. That orange is pretty subdued up until 2%. The orange keeps scaling up pretty well, but I lose a lot of the herbal complexity at 3 and 4%. After that it just gets perfumey and bitter in an unpleasant way. I'd recommend staying at 2% on this either solo or as a mix, honestly. It gives you you enough herbal notes to be interesting while still having a good orange flavor. Maybe 3% if you're mostly after that orange and plan on adding something else herbal or floral as a complement. Also of note, this is going to require at least a moderate steep to smooth out the floral/herbal flavors and let some of that creaminess come through.
So the bitter orange thing... this is my theory, researched only with the finest half-assed googling and flailing inferences. Flavor Art is an Italian company. Bitter oranges are a thing in a lot of Mediterranean cuisine and are fairly common in Italy. Neroli, which is the essential oil from the bitter orange peel, traditionally had been used as a hypnotic sedative and still has a devoted following of aromatherapy weirdos. It's definitely a citrus here. I'm saying all the pieces fit and I'm calling that bitter orange is somewhere in here.
All in all, pretty nice.
Second Opinions:
/u/Boogenshizzle had posted up some notes about this previously that weren't linked through the flavor review section. Definitely worth a read