Flavorah Persimmon Spice
ConcreteRiver
Setup: Recoil w/ flavor barrel, Dual 15 wrap 26g 3mm Nifethal 70 coils @.15 ohms. 60w power, 450F temp limit. Full Cotton Wicks.
Testing: FLV Persimmon Spice @ 1% and 1 drop per 10 ml (about .25%), 60/40 VG/PG, Steeped 14 days.
Flavor Description: A ginger heavy dry spice mix closer to cocktail bitters than a holiday spice. Breaking down these kind of concentrates is hard (and I'm probably laughably wrong), but I'm mostly getting ginger from this, with some fruity/citrus tartness, maybe some cardamom, and a greener astringent note like rhubarb. Really heavy and moderately harsh, dry body to this, like it's noticeably drying my mouth out as I vape this. Strong, but i find myself go flavor-blind to the spices here fairly quickly. I'd use this as an accent, at .25% or under.
Inhale has sharp green, astringent notes and some ginger spice. Slightly sour but heavy base to this with a whole lot of dryness. Worth noting that this flavor seems really "front-loaded" for lack of a better term. The first drag or two seems to drive off most of the the spice notes from the juice and subsequent drags before redripping are more that flat, dry base. Exhale has spicy ginger up front, with some green cardamom as the exhale goes on. Astringent top notes, like a tart rhubarb or bitter orange. The spice part of this has a bit of a boozy edge to it and some stinging harshness. The body has that same dense, dry mouthfeel from the inhale. This is noticeably drying out my mouth as well. Lingering bitterness from that astringent green top notes and that aforementioned dry mouth.
Off-flavors: Not really an off flavor, but this concentrate has some weird mouthfeel issues. It's pretty intensely dry. It also feels way too heavy for a spice mix.
Throat Hit: Moderate. That spice mix is on the astringent and harsh side.
Uses & Pairings: This is headed in the same direction as INW Shisha Punch but I feel like there are some serious stumbles in execution. I think the potential use would be the same, namely cocktail bitters and more Mediterranean / Persian / or maybe even Scandinavian style bakeries, but the mouthfeel issues and pervasive dryness would probably stop me from choosing to use this over Shisha Punch.
Notes: Concentration testing this was rough. Assuming I was maybe testing this too high, I made a quick dilution and tried this at .1%, and the spice note was pretty linear with the higher percentages. Spice is present, but it was still a bit dry and astringent. .25% has a clearer spice flavor, with a thick dry body. A bit of bitterness here, but it's still pretty pleasant. At .5% the spice note is getting chemical on top of that bitterness and the dryness is just a bit too much for me. 1% isn't a lot of fun, spice note hasn't changed much from .5% but it's drying my mouth out a distracting amount. Testing the "frankenstein" hypothesis and trying this at 3% I just get overwhelming dryness. Like a mouthful of bitter sand. The spice note seems to be really muted here. I'd keep this low at use it under .25%.
Second Opinions:
Lol, no.