Flavorah Berry Cheesecake
ConcreteRiver
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 Berry Cheesecake @ 1% and 1 drop per 10 ml (about .25%), 60/40 VG/PG, Steeped 11 days.
Flavor Description: Sweet cheesecake filling with some tarter, floral berries and just a trace of crust towards the end. Filling is pretty dominant here, without having a ton of nuance. Berry flavor has some realistic tartness but takes a back seat to the cheesecake filling. Also has a floral edge that doesn't quite blend with the sweeter, fluffier cheesecake filling. Lacking in the crust department. Not quite satisfying enough for a single flavor, but seems to be a pretty good base to build off of or use for a tart berry cheesecake flavor with something else going on.
Inhale is dense and berry forward. Tarter, dark berries somewhere between a tarter blackberry and and a sweeter blueberry. Not a lot of cheesecake on the inhale, more just a sweet fluffy density. Exhale is definitely cheesecake filling forward. On the sweeter side, almost a cream cheese frosting without a lot of cheesy richness. The berries on the exhale are still fairly tart, with pronounced floral top notes. Just a hint of a grainier crust on the tail end of the exhale more in the mouthfeel than an actual taste. Overall, dense and on the sweeter side, although the tartness and the sharpness of the florals keeps it from getting too one note. Fairly clean finish, although the vapor has a pretty strong cheesecake smell so that complicates things a bit.
Off Flavors: Berry component is a bit floral. The cheesecake here gets weird and artificial over 2%.
Throat Hit: Nah, not really.
Uses & Pairings: These complex flavors that aren't quite a one-shot are a bit hard to mix with. They seem to act best as a "bridge" type of flavor to hang other concentrates from to fill out the intended profile of the initial concentrate. If you want a more complete Berry Cheesecake it's going to take some reinforcements. Here, I'd lean toward adding another cheesecake, like TFA Cheesecake (Graham Crust), to really fill out the cream and give a more solid base for the crust. I'd also go for something a little grainier with some AP (like your favorite graham cracker, cookie, or like flavorah suggests FLV Biscotti) to get a heavier, grainy crust. And the berries here need some help from a sweeter, jammier berry like FLV Boysenberry or even FLV Berry Mix. I think the best thing this concentrate will be doing in a mix like that is helping to join everything together and give a cohesive, smooth mix.
As a discrete flavor, this probably has enough going on to add a "berry cheesecake" component to a mix like an ice cream or milkshake.
Notes: S&V Concentration, .25% and .5% are on the weak side. Hard to pick out the actual components of the flavor. 1% is pretty solid, with the tartness of the berries starting to show up and the cheesecake filling tasting like a separate component. At 1.5%, separation is a bit better and the sweetness level is a bit more intense. At 2%, the berries are seeming a bit too floral. At 3% the cheesecake isn't really getting cheesy so much as tasting a little to artificial and getting just a hint of that weird playdough note. I'd recommend starting with this at 1% for a bridge flavor to build a cheesecake around. If you're more interested in using this a discrete berry cheesecake component I'd start at 1.5% and work up.
Second Opinions: