Flavour Art Jasmine
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 Jasmine @ 2% Solo, 60/40 VG/PG, Steeped 7 days.
Flavor Description: Does what it says on the box, jasmine. It's a hard flavor to break down much more. Overall it's a thin flavor, mostly top notes. Definitely fragrant, but manages to avoid going just straight bitter perfume. Slightly tart vaped solo, but that seems to be a theme with florals. Closer to a rose type of leafy flavor than a more astringent and aggresive lavender.
Inhale is tart and thin. Some bitter perfume notes show up as the heat builds. Exhale is light, with smooth jasmine as a fairly mellow top note. Some minimal leafy and tart body but overall not too astringent or sour. Mildly green, but in a nonobtrusive way. Delicate sweetness offset by a light green bitterness. Overall effect is strangely balanced and reassuring. Probably an association with green tea.
Off-flavors: Nah.
Throat Hit: No real throat hit. Super thin, so it's weird to be missing something thicker and smoother down low.
Uses & Pairings: A whole lot green and white teas use some jasmine, and this does an admirable job of simulating that. Almost herbaceous green flavor will mix with and complement a more floral tea very well. Pairs well with citrus in general, so go to town on juicier citrus and jasmine in your non-black teas.
Fruit pairings are going to be pretty subjective. I think, in general, this goes well with deeper juicier fruits like Apple, Guava, Pear, and Mango. Isn't bad with brighter berries like raspberries but tends to make fruit flavors a bit too floral for general consumption.
A little green and weird for me when it comes to mixing with creams. Herbaceous flavors and creams just have never worked for me, always tasting just a bit strange.
It's a specialized case, but I've found this is really good for fleshing out and giving body to a citrus rind note. Most citrus has plenty of zest, but no real rind to speak of. This simulates the pith of citrus remarkably well. Ruthless self-promotion, but I've used this in my Terrorhawk recipe to bring the lightly fragant and slightly papery pith back into a ruby red grapefruit. It feels more like you've got an entire segment of citrus as opposed to just the juice. I've experimented with orange and lemon it does largely the same thing across the citrus spectrum.
Notes:
Seems to be pretty easy-going for a floral. S&V concentration testing, definitely noticeable at .5%. You get most of the floral notes down low. The actual green note comes through after at around 1% and scales pretty linearly to 3%. Gets too green after that. I'd start mixing this at .25% if you want just a light hint of "something" in a mix. It's going to fairly hard to identify, but distinct enough to be interesting. Mixing with fruits, I would start at .5% and work up. It's a weird flavor note and kind of hard to "untaste" if it jumps out at you in the mix. The green notes here work really well in that green tea application, so I'd start at 1.5% for that profile. I use it a 2% for the citrus pith effect.
Random notes, as of a couple of months ago this got weirdly expensive at BCF. ECX still has it for what seems like a more normal price. Also, as far as I can tell Jasmine and Jasmine Natural are the same thing. This concentrates separates quite a bit, so that shaking prior to use is really essential.
Second Opinions:
/u/HocusKrokus continues to make these walls of text look silly:
"FA Jasmine: Very bright and lush jasmine flavor. Fairly floral, and a bit more forgiving. Good up to 2.5 or 3% in a mix, or around 3-4% standalone. Doesn't need as much sweetening. Works excellently with tea, candies (I really enjoy it with FW Swedish Fish), and is probably one of the best to add to bakeries like light pastry or pies. Better with heavier creams like bavarian or custard than Lavender, and works well with vanilla also."
Pretty much obligatory HIC notes: "Jasmine is right at home with FA Black Tea. Use 2-3 parts of tea to 1 part Jasmine."