Flavorah Pink Guava

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 Pink Guava @ .5 and 2%, 60/40 VG/PG, Steeped 6 days.

Flavor Description: This flavor is one of those rorshach test flavors, it's pretty easy to pick whatever you want out of this. Tasting this solo, it falls somewhere between cascadia and citra hops, but without a lot of the pine-y notes you'd expect. With more wattage and heat I start to pick up some distinct tropical fruit sweetness, somewhere between the top notes from a pineapple or dragonfruit and a guava sweetness. I've spent a lot of time describing this as a grapefruit flavor, but coming back to it I'm thinking it's more nuanced than that. There's definitely some grapefruit to this, and it complements grapefruit flavors extremely well. It has that a sort of funky, realistic grapefruit ripeness that you get off really ripe guava. There's an interesting musky bitterness that tends to enhance that flavor in grapefruit. It's actually not too dissimilar to something like TPA Guava, just a whole lot better balanced and doesn't make the room smell like cat piss. I'd recommend using this an accent note with raspberries, citrus, and tropical fruits at 1% and under. If you want to really play up the grapefruit, I'd pair it with another grapefruit at closer to 2%.

Inahle is slightly bitter, with a pineapple by way of white grape sweetness. Tart grapefruit peel in the top notes along with that sort ill-defined tropical musk. Moderately dense, getting quite a bit thicker as you crank the heat up. Exhale opens up with a strong grapefruit hoppiness, with some higher bitter but not quite pine-y hop top notes. Tropical fruit really comes through on the back half of the exhale. Deep sweetness bordering on syrupy. Fairly harsh overall, with some lingering hoppy bitterness.

Off-flavors: This doesn't taste like guava nectar. While I'm a huge fan of that weird hoppy bitterness and musk, it's nowhere close to CAP Sweet Guava.

Throat Hit: Fairly harsh. It's not like FLV Persimmon or TPA Juicy Peach harsh, but there's a definite bite to this even down low. Some EM helps immensely, as do pairing with smoother flavors like INW Cactus or INW Dragonfruit, or bringing in concentrates with some maltol.

Uses & Pairings: This is one of my favorite solo flavors at 3%, albiet with just a bit of EM (like .25%) to round out some of the harshness and just a bit of koolada to keep everything crisp. If the whole non-piney hops thing appeals to you at all give it a shot solo.

I'm admittedly a fan of this stuff, but I use this in a suprising number of places. At low percentages, this stuff is good pairing for tropcial fruits, including other guava flavors, pineapples, cherimoya, and mangos. I'm not nearly smart to actually understand what's going on, but whatever aroma volatiles they are using seem to share some characteristics with other tropcial fruits and seem to do a good job of reinforcing them and adding some mouth watering bitterness. It also works really with lychees, adding some volume and sweetness to lychee flavors that end up being fairly floral. It does tend to bitter up lychee up a bit, so you general need something else going on to tame that. I keep on meaning to pick up the LA Guava to try Botboy's "Pink Panther, so I can't vouch for the overall recipe but that Lychee, Pink Guava, and Raspberry combo is awesome.

It also plays really well citrus in general, sweetening and filling out those citruses and turning zest heavy flavors into something more like a full citrus peel while making the inside taste a bit fleshier. I fully recommend exploiting the grapefruit-ish cascadia hop thing and the sweetness by pairing with FW Ruby Red Grapefruit. It's the basis for a stupid realistic ruby red grapefruit. It tends to drag orange flavors into something more like a blood orange, and manages to sweeten up and contrast really well with limes, like in Manson's "Guava Lime Candy."

I haven't tried to fold this into a bakery recipe, but it doesn't seem like it'd be a particulary good fit. Using this with heavier creams with a buttery or eggy note gets really weird fast. If you do want to bring in a "cream" component, it helps to stay away from realistic dairy flavors. I've had good success with vanillas like INW Shisha Vanilla, TPA Vanilla Swirl, and even DIYFS Holy Vanilla in small amounts. It works pretty well coconuts, which can give you a creamy mouthfeel without any of those dairy notes.

If that hop thing gets you going, this also pairs really well FLV Yakima Hops for a fuller hops experience.

Notes: Concentration testing, this is noticeable but a thin down at .25% and .5%. It's got a very grapefruit peel note that leans more toward tart than bitter. At 1% the hops thing really starts to show. The bitterness comes out in the concentrate, and you get some mouth-watering effect from this. Still more citrus than tropical fruit solo, but you also start to taste some of that deep sweetness. 2% is sweeter and fuller, and I'm definitely getting some pineapple / tropical sweetness start to come through. It's getting a bit harsh though. 3% is getting more tropical, especially with more heat. The hops, and and the citrus is still there but it's definitely tasting sweeter and more candied. 4% is pushing it for me, the bitterness is starting to get more floral and overall it's unpleasantly harsh.

Second Opinions:

A really good post on how to make FLV Pink Guava play nicely with other flavors. I take the point, it does tend to domineer a bit... I just don't mind it.

Here's the ELR Page, pretty positive overall. It shows up a couple times, so I'm not sure who to credit, but someone called it "this isn’t a guava flavor. If you are looking for that tropical fruit flavor, you are going to be disappointed. That being said, FLV Pink Guava is an excellent citrus flavor, that sways more toward a mix between pink grapefruit, lychee (real lychee, not candied lychee flavoring), and tart white grapes than anything tropical." User "chewy" adds: "As has been noted this has a grapefruit taste to it, not quite a fresh sour grapefruit but not far off. There is another level to this which might be guava ? But regardless it is becoming a firm favourite with myself and it pairs well with cactus and strawberry." I'm not even the first person with the hops thing, "redruffensore"'s notes are quoted as: "Aggressive grapefruit/citrus and cascade hop terpi-ness. Terpenes dance just on the edge of fusel oil flavor. Low sweet fruity flavors balance high notes with guava and mango in the exhale. Pleasantly bitter finish"

Here's the product page from Flavorah. Their take: "A tropical delight, this pink guava flavor really transports us south with its sweet and fruity taste. It's like your own personal spider monkey climbed to the top of a tree and pulled it down, just for you. Vape it all day long, this one does not get old." So... now there is a spider monkey involved I guess. 4 5-star reviews on there as well. Grapefruit tendencies, tropical and citrus pairings, and FLV Lychee affinity are all mentioned.

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