Flavour Art Passion Fruit
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 Passionfruit @ 1%, 60/40 VG/PG, Steeped 31 days.
Flavor Description: A super bright and fairly acidic passionfruit. Tastes an awful lot like a vaguely tropical version of FA White Peach to me. After vaping about 5ml at 1% this flavor starts to mellow out for me, with those peachy kind of notes really starting to push toward the front.
Inhale tastes like sour white peaches. Relatively thin, floral, sharp, and fairly harsh. Sweetness level is good, but overall it's pretty acidic. Exhale has a burst of peach and strawberry top notes right up front, with a natural tasting sweet and sour base. Flavor separates on the exhale, with floral peach top notes, a tart green sourness, and that a deeply sweet base. The sour acidity is the defining characteristic for me, although those high peach notes linger and turn a bit bitter. Overall effect is fairly soapy while being moderately dense.
Off-flavors: So, the few times I've had passionfruit in a less-processed form it actually does fairly soapy. It's not really off from the profile, taste but I don't find it pleasant. Its like a coating of the original blue Dawn on your rda. It's odd.
Throat Hit: I'm not going to quite call it razor blades, but it's pretty harsh solo. Something about the acidity and the thin soapiness gets hard to handle, especially on the inhale. It also feels acidic enough that it tears my mouth up a bit.
Uses & Pairings: This stuff makes a good stand-in for a "sour" flavor in fruit mixes. It's less destructive than something like straight malic acid, but it still has that bracing sour note that will complement brighter fruits.
Good mixer for tropical fruits, strawberries, peaches, and melons at a lower percentage.
Notes:
S&V Concentration testing, I get a lighter, floral sour peach flavor at .25%. Still some throat hit, but that green sour flavor is pretty well balanced. at .5% I'm getting quite a bit more of that sourness, and that floral peach is about the same as it was at .25%. At .75%, the sweetness and juiciness is starting to show up, although I'm getting a distinct sour vibe that hasn't gone full acidic. 1% is starting to soapy as those floral notes get bitter. 1.5% is getting acidic and harsh for me, and by 2% most of what I'm getting is harsh, sour, sweetness. Personally, I'd mix with this as a supporting flavor at .75% and call it good.
I picked this flavor up a while ago, and promptly written it off due to that throat hit. Chapel's Deep Passion made me take another look at this flavor. Because, like most other people, I know everything ever and I couldn't imagine how that recipe was working with 2.5% of passionfruit right up front. So I tried, and by god it works. I still feel like the mix leans a bit harsh but the CAP Fig and FA Caramel do a great job of balancing out the bright astringency from this concentrate. It's great stuff, and I think it illustrates the way forward using this as a primary note.
Second Opinions:
ELR Notes are mostly copies of HIC notes:
"If you like tropical fruit flavors, you need this one. It’s sweet and exotic, and it combines well with all of FA’s tropical fruits. If you already have tropical fruit blends without this flavor, use 0.5-1% Passion Fruit in place of part of your other tropical fruits for an almost guaranteed improvement.
Passion Fruit is excellent with Papaya. If you use Passion Fruit as a main flavor, consider an accent of Black Currant. If you have a citrus recipe in need of something special, try adding 1% or less Passion Fruit. It’s good with most citrus, especially tasty with orange and peach flavors."
I know I linked it already, but take a look at the notes on passionfruit in Chapel's Deep Passion. They seem to be finding a lot more utility with this than I can.
"Not a ton of mixers use this flavor, but it is incredibly versatile, blending well with teas, creams, and lots of other fruits. An Exotic fruit, it is bright and sweet but has a bit of an acidic edge."
I'm not getting the cream thing, and I think it's a bit sour for a tea with any kind of citrus involved, but it's worth noting that this is probably a lot more versatile than I give it credit for.
So at the very least, there is some agreement that this is strong stuff.