Flavorah Morning Mimosa
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.
Steep Time: 3 days
Percentages Tested: .25%, 1%, 3%
Flavor Description: Champagne and oranges. Seems to start off a bit disjointed with sort of an off-putting overripe flavor, like smelling a moldy orange or prison wine. It settles in surprisingly quickly though and I get a clearer separation between the champagne and the orange flavors.
That initial burst of orange zest mellows out and actually seems to sweeten up to something doing a pretty passable job of orange juice, although there's a lot going on in the champagne side of things and maybe gets a bit lost.
Champagne note here does seem to have a bit of fermented funk and maybe something like a bitter mineral tang that makes this it a bit rough solo, but seems pretty accurate to a something like Cook's. Not great champagne, but at least recognizable as champagne. Decent effervescence-ish effect, especially at higher percentages, but that champagne note starts to taste astringent and too aggressive pretty quickly.
Sweetness level maybe leans towards a heavier pour on the orange juice, but the champagne flavor is in the drivers seat, which is a bit odd. Almost like you made a mimosa with an aggressively flavored prosecco. I'm not incredibly sensitive to throat hit, but this does have some pretty standard throatiness to it.
Concentration testing: At .25%, the lightness of the flavor actually works pretty well to sell a sense of a lighter mimosa. I'm not getting much in the way of orange down here, but there is some of the sweetness you'd expect. Champagne funk is relatively mellow, but I'm also not getting much underlying flavor from it. Seems a bit too light.
At 1%, I'm struggling a bit with that weirdness from the champagne. It's already starting to taste a little bit astringent and over bearing. Almost has a carrot-skin, rhubarb kind of vibe to it. Beyond that pretty aggressive note up front, the rest of this is actually still pretty pleasant and mild. Decent carbonation. Orange is a bit clearer. That weirdness does settle in a bit, but probably still a bit too intense, at least solo. I've noticed it's weirder after a fresh drip, so maybe I'm just getting too much flavor at once out of this.
At 3%, that goes straight bitter vegetable peel on the top notes. A little harsher. Orange underneath this is still good, and I'm getting more of that mineral tang from the champagne. I'd like to be able to mix this high, but I have no idea how to get around that funk.
I'd probably use this as an accent around .5-.75% percent, maybe increasing it up to 1-1.5% if the flavor around it works well enough with the weirdness here.
Pairings & Uses? I'm having issues getting enough flavor out of the base of this while still trying to keep that funk in control. I think I'm going to use this primarily as an additive to citrus cocktail mixes, and basically crank it up as far as the surrounding flavors will let me. This might be "mimosa-ish" enough to use it as a bridge flavor to tie together another champagne flavor and maybe FA Blood and/or Royal Orange into a fuller mimosa. I'd also want to add some cooling, because cold things should probably be cold.
I could also see this working as a base for a citrus punch flavor or even like a mountain dew flavor. Carbonation is about as there as it ever is, and maybe some more aggressive citrus will clean up that funk.
That funkier flavor should either blend, or at least not call to much attention to itself alongside a bunch of gin, so cocktails. All of the cocktails. Good excuse to use up some of the Flavormonks gins if you have them.