Flavorah Popcorn
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 Popcorn, .25, 1, and 3%, 60/40 VG/PG, Steeped 6 days.
Flavor Description: Sort of top heavy popcorn with a bit of a buttery kettle corn-esque caramel glaze. Almost a light popcorn ball flavor.
Popcorn here tastes like actual popcorn. Lighter flavor, dry texture. Nothing burnt or almost burnt in the flavor.
There is some sweetness, but it stops short of actual kettle corn. Sweetness level is more on par with the microwave "kettle corn" style of popcorn or maybe corn pops cereal at the high end. Definitely has a bit of a buttery caramel note to it, but it doesn't really dominate that popcorn flavor, just kind of settles in around it.
The buttery note feels like it's more in the service of that light carmel than a discrete buttered popcorn application. Not a really heavy movie theater butter taste, but is does a get a bit cheesy as you increase the percentage. There's a bit of a butryic taste at the tail end of the inhale and exhale, but it's on the subtle side and I'd be surprised if it didn't steep out after another week.
Texture overall is a interesting. It's a pretty dry overall, but that almost seems like a fit for the profile. It suffers a bit from Rice Krispies syndrome, where a strongly textured flavor without a stronger taste can get a bit cardboard-y.
Off-flavors: Butryic edge to the butter note, still not steeped out all the way at around a week. Dry texture, with a lighter flavor. Can push toward cardboard, at least solo. Light caramel note, not a bad thing, but it pushes it closer to kettle corn than straight popcorn.
Throat Hit: Definitely on the dry side, it gets weird on the throat.
Percentage testing: At .25%, I'm getting a whole bunch of texture out of this. It's pretty dry overall. Light popcorn top notes, a little bit of sweetness. More like a mouthful of unseasoned, unbuttered but still lightly sweet popcorn at this percentage.
1% is actually a little less dry, strangely enough. Not necessarily getting a stronger popcorn flavor here, but the sweetness is picking up some caramel and it does feel a bit fuller. Little bit of butter showing up too, very light butryic notes here. That dryness is picking up just a little bit of cardboard effect solo. Still a relatively subtle flavor with a full mouthfeel.
At 3% that butryic edge is a bit clearer. More butter, but it needs more steep time. I actually feel like it's less dry here again. Caramel is picking up some chewiness like the softer caramel concentrates like Capella, or the caramel candies. Definitely sweeter as well, but I feel like it's getting a bit too agressive and pushing some of those still light popcorn notes out of the way and there is a light sour tinge to it.
I'm still 100% sure what to do with this, I feel like you're going to get most of the texture out of this at an accent level around .5%. As a primary note, where you're working around this concentrate in a sweeter popcorn profile I'd probably push it up to around 1.5% to start.
Uses & Pairings: This is not a really aggressive flavor, even at higher percentages. It's got a lot of texture, but it doesn't feel all that saturated. It's kind of dry, delicate flavor. I'm not quite sure what to do with that in terms of mixes.
You may be able to add a bit more definition without taking away from the essential "popcorn-ness" of this by adding in some CAP Cereal 27 for that light corn flakes / corn pops note. From there you could play around with some sweetener, caramel, or butterscotch to try to bump up the kettle corn. A light touch with a heavily candied fruit flavor might be able to pull off one of those obnoxiously colored popcorn balls.
Could be useful to dry out and crisp up lighter bakeries, with some biscuit or something in the mix. Should work something like Cereal 27 in that role.
Maybe some use to lighten, sweeten, and crisp up a tobacco flavor? When in doubt, call it a tobacco additive.