Flavorah Sugar Orchid
ConcreteRiver
This is 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 @.14 ohms. 60w power, 450F temp limit. Full Cotton Wicks.
Testing: FLV Sugar Orchid, .25, 1, and 3%, others noted, 60/40 VG/PG, Steeped 7 days.
Flavor Description: This is interesting, and I'm still not 100% sure what's going on here. My best guess is that this is almost a floral vanilla sweetener with some cherry notes. Tastes a whole lot like a cherry blossom flavor.
Inhale is mostly sweet. I get something that feels a bit like a light cherry blossom with a tiny bit of leafy green accent. Dryer but still relatively soft mouthfeel. It's fairly sweet. At higher percentages it starts to pick up a swedish fish type of artificial red berry fruitiness.
Exhale has a something that almost tastes like a vanilla up front. Almost tastes like just the floral and fruity part of FLV Smooth Vanilla. Light cherry accent at a lower percentage. Back end of the exhale has some greener notes, but it doesn't taste overwhelmingly floral or perfumey. Lighter mouthfeel with a bit of an astringency at the back end. Still decidedly sweet, almost to the point of cloying solo.
I had initially thought I had mixed up my testers of their Cherry Blossom and Sugar Orchid, because if you told me this was a cherry blossom I'd totally believe you. FWIW, this definitely came out of the sugar orchid bottle. I'll review the Cherry Blossom tomorrow, so maybe this will all make sense. Just doing some preliminary comparison with TPA Cherry Blossom both the FLV Sugar Orchid and FLV Cherry Blosson seem to share some similarities. So I'm just fairly stumped.
Off-flavors: Not 100% sure what should and shouldn't be here, but this could conceivably be from an orchid with that vanilla, and it's sweet. I do pick up some cherry weirdness at higher percentages.
Throat Hit: Light, really nothing major.
Percentage testing: At .25% this is is fairly light. Mostly feels like a lightly fruity, lightly floral sweetener.
At 1% that light fruitiness is going fairly red. Cherryish flavor is coming through on top of that dryer floral vanilla. There's a bit of green around the edges, but it's not overwhelmingly floral or perfume.
At 3% I'm getting some harsher, plasticy cherry off notes. Body is a bit thicker, and dry. This really feels like a cherry blossom flavor up this high.
Just based on these tests, I'd keep this one low, probably sub .5% unless you really want a heavy dose of sweetness and an artificial character to the red fruit in here.
Uses & Pairings: That's a lot of review to say that I'm still not 100% on how this works and what to do with it.
As it is, I'm guessing this could be used a lot like a cherry blossom flavor in mixes. I'd pair with other fruits like plum, cherry, or melon. I could see it working as an interesting accent with lighter creams or candies.
This would also be an interesting way to work in a floral vanilla and cherry note into aromatic tobacco mixes.
My primary use would probably be a light, delicate floral sweetener. I could see it pairing fairly well something greener like FA Jasmine, or in green tea. Maybe gin, if you're feeling bold.