Flavor West Glazed Donut
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: FW Glazed Donut, 2 and 4%, 60/40 VG/PG, Steeped 11 days.
Flavor Description: Mostly glaze, very little donut. Glaze note is obviously on the sweet side. Fairly close to a donut glaze, although at lower temperatures it seems to have a bit of earthy maple thing going on around the edges, and at higher temperatures it starts picking up a marzipan cherry. Either way, it's fairly subtle compared to the main glaze note but I feel like it's at least noticeable. Very little donut taste here, and almost no donut texture. Some vagueish donut essence, but the darker outside of the donut without necessarily tasting fried. Like scraping the glaze of the donut and have a couple of crumbs come with it.. i'd use this a generic bakery royal icing type glaze, I don't feel like the little bit of donut is really going to detract too much from another bakery profile. I'd probably crank this up around 7-8%.
Inhale is sweet. Not a dry powdery sugar, pretty true to the "glazed" part of this. At lower temperatures it tastes a bit muddy, with a light earthy note to it an a bit of something that tastes a lot like the maple I was getting off that FW Funnel Cake. What's strange is that when I start to bump up the tempature is starts to pick up some of the same bakery cherry that comes through in INW Marzipan. No real donut or grain though. A little on the airy side, and right on the verge of being cloyingly sweet. Exhale is just a bit more complex. I do get some really light airy donut in the top notes, but I'm still mostly tasting all that glaze. Glaze seems a bit cleaner on the exhale, either maple/cherry notes are still present, but not as pronounced. Texture is fairly close to that sugary glaze. I'm not sure if they tend to add anything beyond sugar to donut glaze, but this seems like a very "glaze" flavored glaze. Finish tastes pretty clean overall, maybe some lingering sugar lips.
Off-flavors: I'm used to the light maple with sugary tasting flavors, but I have no idea where that cherry came from. I picked it up kind of randomly after some prolonged testing, and now I can't untaste it. I'd also say this doesn't really hit the profile for a glazed donut. It's definitely more a donut glaze.
Throat Hit: Light. Not particularly smooth, but nothing unbearable.
Uses & Pairings: Well, you could run with it and just add it to a breadier donut base for the glaze note. Seems like the obvious solution. I think this would probably work well as a royal icing as opposed to frosting note in lighter bakeries. It doesn't have the texture, creaminess, or vanilla of a thicker frosting flavor, but it does manage to capture some of that bizarrely specific glaze character.
Since my mind is on cereal, I could also see this being added to cereal recipes to get a sweeter coating on the cereal. Kind of like the weird way that some breakfast cereal is vaguely shiny from the corn syrup or whatever they spray it with.
Notes:
Concentration testing, 2% is definitely light. Some sweetness here, but really generic and with pretty heavy off notes. 4% fills out quite a bit. Still geting those off-notes but they seem a bit further in the background. No donut to be found, but recognizable as the glaze. 6% is getting pretty cloying, but I feel like that's appropriate to a donut glaze. Off flavors seem less pronounced again. 8% is starting to pick up some dryness for me. That syrupy glaze is starting to take on a thin, unsatisfying meringue character but the off notes are still pretty tame. 10% tastes like spoiled FA Meringue to me with a hint of marzipan. It's a donut glaze, so I'd probably go big, sweet, and dumb at around 7-8% with the expectation that you're going to be filling this out with a lot more body to stand up to that sweet note.
Second Opinions:
It's a new flavor, so not really.
Here's the product page from Flavorwest. No SDS up yet.
Bonus video first test of the FW Funnel Cake, Glazed Donut, and Waffle Cone.