Flavorah Oak Barrel
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 Oak Barrel, .25, 1, and 3%, others noted, 60/40 VG/PG, Steeped 7 days.
Flavor Description: An uncharred oak additive.
This tastes a lot like smelling hardwood. Nothing like cedar or sandalwood. Also nothing resinous or like pine. No char to it either. Basically just clean oak.
This has no body to it solo. It's mostly just a light, dry, astringency with some clean oak top notes.
As an addtive, it adds that clean oak top note, but it also seems to give a tannic dryness to underlying mix. It doesn't seem to have any real effect on sweetness or density, but it does add an extra layer of contrast which makes brighter flavor pop a bit more. It seems to sharpen and tone the mix around it quite a bit.
I'm not getting a distinct change in sweetness, throat hit, or density of the underlying mix.
Off-flavors: Not a solo flavor. It's definitely an additive. It also isn't the charred bourbon oak you'd maybe expect. But yeah, it could conceivably taste like an actual oak barrel.
Throat Hit: Light solo, doesn't seem to be adding too much in the way of throat hit in mixes.
Percentage testing: Solo testing with this was weird.
At .25% solo, I don't pick up much. There is a light dryness here and some uncharred hardwood in the top notes. No body, and not much going on in general.
At 1% solo, there is more of that same uncharred oak. I'm not really picking up more dryness. A little bit of sweetness, but still no real body.
At 3% solo, I'm picking up a tiny hint of char but it's really light. It's more like smelling lumber than the charred oak from a bourbon. Still no real presence, and a overall very light sweetness. I could be hallucinating, but it has a bit of a vanilla vibe as well.
This definitely isn't a solo flavor, so here are some additive tests.
At .5% FLV Oak Barrel and 3% TPA Kentucky Bourbon, this definitely lends some of the missing oak back to Kentucky Bourbon, but it's interesting. It still doesn't really taste charred here. There's maybe something a little bit more smoky here, but i think it's coming from the bourbon itself instead of the oak barrel. I don't think is supposed to be a charred oak flavor, I think it's more of just an oak hardwood flavor.
At 1% FLV Oak Barrel and 2% DIYFS Holy Vanilla, it's pretty clear this isn't a charred oak bourbon flavor. It's adding some more of that hardwood oak flavor. It's mostly in the top notes, but it does add a bit of tannic astringency and dryness through the vape. The darker, spicier parts of the vanilla are a little lost and the contrast with the brighter frosting-type of vanilla is pushing that forward quite a bit. It tastes like eating lucky charms marshmallows in a lumber yard, which is super interesting but probably not something to run with.
I don't really have a good red wine flavor to test with, but .25% FLV Oak Barrel with 2% FLV Sangria is interesting. It's doing some weird things with brightening the fruit and brandy up, but it is sort of taking that flat red wine note in there closer to a cabernet with a woody astringency. I'm pretty comfortable with saying that this is more of a wine oak barrel flavor as opposed to a charred bourbon oak barrel flavor.
Just based on these tests, I feel like this is an addtive flavor, and my suggested use percentage would be fairly low because it seems to show up pretty quickly, despite how mellow this flavor seems as a single test. I'd probably start around .25% and work up.
Uses & Pairings: This seems like a pretty specialized flavor, but it isn't the only oak out there.
Primary competition here would be FA Oak Wood and TPA Red Oak. Red oak has a bit of sourness to me, and it has a definite coconut husk kind of character. There's a light smoke to it as well. I wouldn't say it's fully charred, but it's definitely more charred than FLV Oak Barrel. FA Oakwood is quite a bit sweeter, but doesn't seem to have much char. It has a thinner, watery body to it. I'd say that Oak Barrel is probably the least complex of the concentrates, just bringing in that oak aged taste without any real extra body or sweetness. For what it's worth, it isn't markedly different, just a bit more targeted. It may not end up being essential if you already have an oak flavor you dig, but conversely, it's an interesting switchup if you want to go further down that rabbit hole. Based on the same percentages in a mix, FLV Oak Barrel seems to be stronger than the oak note in FA Oak Wood and TPA Red Oak.
Oakwood and Red Oak are used pretty extensively as tobacco additives, and this would do largely the same in a mix. I'd go so far as to say Oak Barrel will work a bit better if you just want an oak enhancer / additive without bringing in the baggage from the (fairly minimal) body present in those two.
I think Red Oak still probably has the edge in custards and creams. That coconut in there is going to work to boost and richen up the creamy, heavier body.
Oak wood may still be the choice for liquor, as that sweetness tends to fill out dark liquors. If you want a charred oak note, like you'd get in a bourbon, FLV Bourbon has a very aggressive charred oak that comes through clearly at low accent percentages.
I'd use FLV Oak Barrel like an oak barrel for wine type flavors. Seems to do a good job emulating the oak in a cabernet-ish wine and I feel like it would work similarly with a white wine to push it towards chardonnay. It did seem to add some contrast with fruitier flavors, so I'd either embrace that or get ready to mix around it. Good excuse to try to barrel age those cocktail mixes you've been working on.