Flavour Monks Red Gin
ConcreteRiver
Setup: Recoil w/ flavor barrel, Dual 15 wrap 26g 3mm Nifethal 70 coils @.17 ohms. 60w power, 450F temp limit. Full Cotton Wicks.
Testing: FM Red Gin @ %3, 60/40 VG/PG, Steeped 17 days.
Flavor Description: Gin and cherries. Flavormonks website says dark cherries, but I get a lot more of a bright red candy cherry flavor, more cherry cough drop than actual fruit. Cherry itself is very sweet, but that gin base helps to clean up the exhale and keeps some of the stickiness on the toungue instead of your sinuses.
Inhale has some faint juniper top notes, and a full cherry sweetness. Exhale opens up into cherry candy with the same kind of light juniper top notes. Herbal parts on the gin come in on the back half of the exhale, drying out the exhale a bit and adding some bitter complexity to that sweet cherry candy flavor. Gin notes linger in the sinuses, while you get a sweeter almost sticky mouthfeel on the toungue. Overall effect is moderately dense, and on the sweet side but complex enough to avoid being cloying.
Off-flavors: That cherry is more than a touch artifical tasting, with the herbal components of the gin bringing in a bit of medicinal character. Not bad, but it definitely doesn't taste like real cherry juice mixed with gin.
Throat Hit: Light, mostly from the cherry.
Uses & Pairings: So it may be a bit of a reach, but this tastes a lot like a slightly candy version of Maraschino Liqueur (like the good, luxardo stuff.) The Cherry note here is definitely on the sweet side, but the juniper is relatively sedate and the herbal notes kind of play into the whole bitter-sweet complex thing that maraschino liqueur has going on. I'd mix with this like a maraschino stand-in. Just a shake and vape I'm getting a pretty acceptable Blood and Sand riff by using some FA Whisky, FM Red Gin, and a bit of JF Juicy Lemon. Also getting a fairly decent Aviation with some extra FM Pure Gin, FM Red Gin, Juicy Lemon, and a bit of FA Violet. Looks like Sejouced on ELR already beat me to the punch here. I think has serious legs as a cocktail vape mixer.
I can also see this as a background note in a fruit vape, to give some more vibrancy and sweetness to a mix. I'd pair with apples, raspberries, or even grapefruit but it'll probably work with just about anything if you're after some of those more herbal notes.
Notes: S&V concentration testing, seems to work a lot like the other FM gins. Light fruit flavor at 1% and 2%. Juniper and gin notes start to come toward the front at 3% and get more pronounced after that. Syrupy sweetness gets a little more round after 3%, pushing towards straight robotussin by 5% or 6%. I'd mix with this at 4% for a maraschino liquer type of effect, and maybe 2% for adding an extra dimension to a fruit mix.
The artificiality of the cherry note bothers me less than the mixed berry note in OMGin. Cherry is quite a bit harder to do in general, and I feel like the bitter notes add up to an interesting concentrate. Cherry note here is actually pretty solid for a candy cherry.
Second Opinions:
I'm not finding anything, so please share your experience with the concentrate if you have it.