Flavour Art Whisky
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 @ Whisky %2, 60/40 VG/PG, Steeped 10 days.
Flavor Description: Sweet scotch whisky. I'm retired from the real stuff, so I can't do a side-by-side, but it reminds me a lot of Glenmorangie. Almost a syrupy calvados kind of apple/pear note with some lighter peat on the exhale.
Inhale is warm, thick baked apple/pear without some of the richness you'd expect from the butter and stuff traditionally used for that. Medium, fruity sweetness and fairly dense. Exhale starts with more of that fruit with some floral cherry blossom top notes. Peat comes in on the back half, relatively light and competing with all that fruit and sweetness. No raw alcohol notes, but a definite warmth to the entire thing. Dense, but with just a hint of astringency from the peat and the floral top notes. Definitely gets pretty syrupy, especially with extended use. Finish is mostly peat with some residual sugary mouthfeel.
Off-flavors: Come in expecting scotch, and not too much. Pronounced fruit and sweetness, but not really off from the profile. Just a sweeter scotch.
Throat Hit: Not really. Very smooth, all things considered.
Uses & Pairings: Cocktails are the obvious one. Complex enough to work for a single flavor, but should blend well in an application where you can get away with a sweeter scotch.
Warmth and apple/pear/cherry kind of vibe will have some use in bakery applications where people are using TFA Kentucky Bourbon. Not particularly aggressive peat, so it shouldn't stand out too much.
Should pair well at a low percentage in fruit mixes and creams/custards that involve apple, pear or even stone fruit like plums and non-floral peaches. Peat note is indistinct enough to blend in, while letting you use that syrupy fruit and warmth.
Lots of talk about mixing this with FA Oakwood or TFA Red Oak to enhance the barrel aged kind of note you'd get from a more aggressively oaked or traditional whiskey. It should work, but I think it may be missing what makes this special. I'd just use FLV Bourbon if I wanted oak char, and leave this stuff alone.
Notes:
S&V concentration, .5% is a bit thin for me. 1% seems to add a noticeable warmth and thickness while keeping the sweetness in check. 1.5% has some of the more defined sweet fruit taste, and by 2% you're getting that peat nuance. 2.5% is a bit more aggressive on both the sweetness and the peat. 3% seems to be a good maximum on this, as the vape seems pretty well saturated but a little sharp. Balance falls apart after that, with the fruit reading as white grape juice and the peat having a distracting sharpness. I'd recommend this at 1% for mixing for either warmth or body, and 2.5% as a strong primary note.
I was ready to write this off as a cheaper blended whiskey flavor, and I've been using it as such. Actually digging in and single flavor testing it, I'm a lot more impressed by some of the nuance here. This stuff is tasty. Blew through my entire tester fairly quick, and I'm going to start giving this some serious consideration in the future. I'm having some flashbacks to being snowed in with a bottle of Glenmorangie and enjoying the hell out of this, so YMMV but It's worth a shot if you're into the profile.
Second Opinions:
"Tastes like Irish whisky, not sweet like American bourbon. This has quite a kick, especially immediately after mixing. It does mellow substantially as it steeps. Add a little FA Oak Wood if you want a barrel-aged effect. A really tasty accent for many fruit mixes, whether you add just enough for interest, or more for a cocktail flavor."
ECX reviews catch some scotch, they know what's up.
Flavour Art's website copy, seems pretty legit. I'd throw fruity in there instead of rich: "Rich, flavorful with a hint of peat note on the background."
Edit: Noticed I spelled peat like a jackass a couple of times.