Flavorah Amaretto Sour
ConcreteRiver
This a a pre-release flavor, which was provided to me solely for the purposes of review.
Setup: Recoil w/ flavor barrel, Dual 15 wrap 26g 3mm Nifethal 70 coils @.16 ohms. 60w power, 450F temp limit. Full Cotton Wicks.
Testing: FLV Amaretto Sour, .25, 1, and 3%, others noted, 60/40 VG/PG, Steeped 6 days.
Flavor Description: Sweet, heavy cherry-inflected amaretto with a citrus hit when mixed fresh. Steeped, pushes toward a sweeter black or maraschino cherry liqueur type flavor with a little bit of cooling.
Mixed fresh, you do pick up a little bit of the almond from amaretto. It's interesting, because I wouldn't really call this or amaretto exactly nutty. I think amaretto is generally made with bitter almonds or other stone fruit pits, which have that same kind of cherry note that you get in almond extract and stuff like marzipan. So it's more of a bitter almond liqueur, than the nuttier taste you'd expect just by saying almonds. It's almost a maraschino cherry note, which actually works pretty well with sour mix here and kind of evokes a splash of that bright red maraschino cherry liquid in with the cocktail. There doesn't seem to be any heavy medicinal or plastic off-notes with the cherry-ish flavor in here, so that's a positive.
The amaretto here feels like it's being taken even further in a cherry direction by that sour mix component, especially after a steep. The kind of sour mix that's usually used in amaretto sours is a bit of a misnomer, it's much more of a lemon-lime sweetener and this is pretty accurate to that sweet, comes in a big plastic bottle, kind of bar sour mix. Fresh, you do get some separate lemon and lime notes but there's still a pretty aggressive syrupy sweetness. After a steep, those more distinct citrus notes just fold themselves into that more cohesive sweet cherry-ish flavor.
This is fairly true to the profile, in that there isn't much booze here. A real amaretto sour is basically a hangover in a glass without too high of an alcohol content. This seems to bear that out. Fresh, I do get something that tastes like a lighter, dark liqueur booze towards the back, but it fades out on a bit on the steep.
There's some noticeable cooling in this. Feels like a bit of a koolada-ish edge, If I had to ballpark it, feels like about a .15% kind of Koolada hit. It's light, and nowhere close to icy, but it's definitely in there. There's a warmth here as well, and that contrast is interesting.
Sweeter, syrupy texture to this. I wouldn't call it juicy, but it actually fairly wet. It's a bit on the cloying side for me, but amaretto sours are crazy cloying, so you can't really knock it there I guess.
My biggest concern with this is that it seems to flatten out noticeably on the steep. I like this quite a bit more fresh off the shake than I do after a week steep. It's quite a bit more vibrant, and it has a bit more of an edge to it, doing a better job of capturing the modest amount of alcohol in an actual amaretto sour. I don't think the overall flavor gets too light, but it loses the light alcoholic bite and that citrus is less interesting.
Off-flavors: Not really? Amaretto sours are intensely sweet and profoundly odd tasting, and I think mostly hits the profile, at least freshly mixed. I do have those concerns about this flattening out after a steep, but nothing really tastes out of place or chemical even after that.
Throat Hit: Feels fairly light and smooth to me, but this seems like one of those flavors that is going to end up on the harsh side for people that have major throat hit issues with cherry volatiles.
Percentage testing: These are all my steeped samples, I've already noted the changes between fresh and steeped above.
At .25%, the flavors there, but it's a bit light, thin, and throaty. I don't really pick up the cooling in here, but it does have a sticky warmth to it. Mostly a warm, almost bakery cherry flavor down here.
At 1%, this is a lot more present. Sticky sweet, and that cooling is starting to come in a bit more. Flavor is quite a bit bolder, but I'm still not getting anything like booze. This is feeling a lot like cheap maraschino cherry syrup with just a bit more a caramel sweetness.
At 3%, this is heavy, smooth, and really sweet. A whole lot of darked cooked cherry, light almond, and some subtle lighter and brighter citrus accents. Fairly cloying, but nothing off on the profile. The cooling on the back end helps clean it up a bit, but it's a distinct cooling note up this high.
This is interesting, I think it could be used as an additive sub 1%, and closer to 2-3% as a primary note.
Uses & Pairings: Hey, you could pull the bar trick and mix this with cola for something fairly close to a dr. pepper. Sweetness here would fit in a soda profile well, and steeped there isn't enough booze to really distract from a straight soda profile. With another, brighter cherry on top you may even be able to go towards something like a cherry coke.
I've used marzipan to try to boost up bakery cherry notes. I think this would well for that, but with a texture that's a bit more conducive to a filling. The light cooling in here gives me some pause, but it doesn't seem to be all that prominent at lower accent percentages.
You could probably mix this with a TPA Kentucky Bourbon to get some non-specific alcohol bite on the back end, or an oakier bourbon for an old fashioned, with a heavy hit of orange. Or hey, use this a stand-in for cherry heering in a blood and sand with FA Whisky.
This is a surprisingly solid, sweet S&V solo at 3%. It actually does a better job of being an amaretto sour before a steep.