Flavour Art Raspberry
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 Raspberry @ 2%. 60/40 VG/PG, steeped 10 days.
Flavor Description: A pretty full raspberry. Relatively good balance between top notes, slight tartness, and darker candy sweetness. No single part of this concentrate is fantastic, but the balance here helps to make it slightly better than the sum of it's parts. I like this more than some people, so I guess check the second opinions out here.
Inhale has some sharper floral top notes, with a pretty accurate but slightly syrupy deeper sweetness. Moderately dense, and a little warmer than you'd expect. Exhale has the same kind of floral top notes. Those top notes are relatively balanced and don't call too much attention to themselves until the tail end of the exhale where they linger and turn a bit perfumey and bitter. Slightly candy raspberry base flavor, with a pretty spot-on sweetness. Manages to avoid going full-on syrupy but definitely skirts the line there. Pretty restrained tartness here as well. Moderately dense overall, not quite as warm as INW Raspberry, but definitely warmer than you'd expect from a straight fruit.
Off-flavors: A bit floral. It's pretty well done up until the end where it falls apart.
Throat Hit: Light to Moderate. Pretty classic harshness on the exhale type, both from the fruit and the florals here.
Uses & Pairings: I'll just get this out of the way right off the bat, I love this stuff with INW Rhubarb. If you're looking for a good rhubarb pairing, this stuff right here is magic.
It's a better raspberry for pairing with other fruits. At lower percentages, good to add some vibrancy and realism to more syrupy berries. Mixes relatively well with brighter citrus.
It's a bit tricky with bakeries and creams. It's hard to get a nice, bright raspberry note without letting in too many of those florals. I'd go for a heavier cream base like Ice Cream or Custard, as those floral notes will overwhelm lighter and more delicate creams.
Notes: So right up front, I like this heavier than the consensus opinion, so as always YMMV. S&V concentration testing, at .25% this is pretty light. Really just a hint of raspberry. At .5%, It still seems a bit weak to me. Good raspberry accent, but not really punchy enough for a main note. 1% is actually pretty good, I'm getting a slightly syrupy raspberry with a little bit of tartness and light florals. 1.5% is where to florals really start to show up, and just kind of build from there. This gets a bit bitter and perfumey for me at 2.5% and I don't think the actual raspberry gets a whole lot better. I'd mix with this as a supporting note at .75-1% and a primary note at 1.5-2% depending on your thoughts on the florals here.
I tried to keep my rampant fanboy-ism in check on this flavor but I really do go through a ton of this stuff. I can't taste strawberry worth a damn, so this stuff is my go to for a brighter berry flavor. Just personally, it's my favorite raspberry by miles. The florals are fairly balanced, it doesn't have that kind of slobbery wetness I get from INW Raspberry, or the ketchupy vibe that I get from TFA Sweet Raspberry.
Second Opinions:
"This is a little stronger than most FA flavors, and it tends to make itself noticed in recipes, so go light with it. Even 0.5% can stand out in a recipe with mild flavors, and 2% will overwhelm most recipes. This is a natural berry flavor with mostly sweet and a little fresh-tart flavor. It is not candy-sweet, but it’s easily made into candy flavors when used with sweeter flavors. A really excellent pairing for fresh berry flavor is FA Blackcurrant. Equal amounts of the two make the beginning of popular European candies."
Some talk on using this to make a full raspberry flavor.
VU seems to agree that I may be over-flavoring with this
Mostly positive reviews on BCF, although there is one that says this tastes fermented. Again, mostly positive reviews on ECX but the negative reviews are super-negative.
I'm starting to think this concentrate is pretty polarizing.