Flavor West Grapeberry Ice

Setup: Recoil w/ flavor barrel, Dual 15 wrap 26g 3mm Nifethal 70 coils @.16 ohms. 60w power, 450F temp limit. Full Cotton Wicks.

Testing: FW Grapeberry Ice, 3 and 6%, 60/40 VG/PG, Steeped 6 days.

Flavor Description: Candy grape and a whole lot of cooling. I'm definitely getting the grape loud and clear here, although I'm searching a bit for the "berry" part of it. There might be a tiny bit of a mixed berry thing going on, but it's damn hard to tell past the cooling. The cooling is pretty intense. Tastes like more of a heavy dose of Koolada than a menthol. Ice might be an understatement. It's more a glacier of koolada. This has a thicker heavy mouthfeel, but it definitely has that cardboard edge that shows up when overflavoring with Koolada. Not terribly complex stuff, but it does the job well enough. The cooling here is a bit much for use as a single flavor, but you could cut it down with some additional fruit and come up with something perfectly vapable, if not really interesting. I'd probably mix with this at around 3% solo, and a bit lower to taste with a fruit mix.

Inhale is candy grape. There's a sweeter, grape base here although the cooling comes across really sharp and builds through the inhale. The candy grape base is actually pretty well done, although it's hard to taste much nuance as that cooling ramps up. Exhale is just dominated by the cooling. It basically starts from your sinuses and just builds from the beginning of the exhale. Some candy warm, flat candy grape up front. That warmth almost has a bit of a candy raspberry richness to it. Not a lot of nuance, but nothing really wrong with it either. Koolada on the back half, with a thick mouthfeel and intense cooling. There's some patented koolada cardboard on the tail end, and at higher percentages there's a bit of a bitter aftertaste.

Off-flavors: Feels like a lot of koolada, and the off flavors are most due to the cooling getting weird at a relatively high percentage. Cardboard edge to it, and some chemical bitterness.

Throat Hit: Not much sting to it, but a pretty solid koolada icy throat hit. Probably a feature and not a bug with that level of cooling.

Uses & Pairings: If FW Grape Soda is grape-flavored sucralose, this is grape flavored koolada. The balance is a bit better than Grape Soda, and the base candy grape comes through fairly well through the cooling. I could see using it as the base for an easy fruit mix, adding some strawberry, kiwi, or something else bright.

This could also be used in a grape candy or bubblegum recipe at a low percentage. Some cooling tends to help those flavors pop a bit and cleans up the exhale so they don't get too sticky or cloying.

It's also not a bad solo flavor if you're into candy grape and a lot of cooling.

Slushes are so June, but this does have a pretty impressive thicker mouthfeel if you can get around how flat this feels on the end of the exhale.

The amount of cooling here and the cardboard tendency would probably get more pronounced when mixed with anything creamy, so maybe avoid those.

Not really a compelling reason to pick this up instead of getting a grape and some cooling separately, but what's here isn't bad.

Notes:

Concentration testing, this is going to be pretty intensely personal and it's all about how much cooling you can take. At 1%, this feels about equivalent to .5% TPA Koolada in terms of cooling. Grape flavor is pretty light at this percentage. At 3% the grape is actually coming through pretty clear. Decently sweet and full, the cooling feels a bit too aggressive for me though. The grape flavor is just fine at 6%, but it doesn't seem like that much of an improvement over 3%. There is substantially more cooling though, and it's a bit disconcertingly thick and tastes like cardboard on the end of the exhale. 10% is uncomfortably cold, and it's tasting bitter and chemical. Everything is subjective, but cooling is extra subjective. I can't see going above 3% with this, but this tastes largely fine higher around 5-6%.

Second Opinions:

Here's the ELR Page. Percentage suggestions are closer to 10%. User "HighPlainsVaper" writes: "Grape flavor with Koolada. Not overly sweet. I add 1-2% sweetener.. Really good with sweet cream, or vanilla bean gelato, or Greek yogurt for a cool, fruity, creamy good vape." I don't like this level of koolada with cream, but to each their own. User "BandWheels" adds: "Good flavor for grape candy lovers, has a mild menthol kinda taste too. nice change from the norm...." Mild isn't how I would describe it.

Mixed reviews on BCF. An unknown user: "The flavor was really good, but way too much ice. I can't use it. It really hurts the lungs." User "GBH" is more positive: "What can I say except for some reason I'm really I n love with this dumb flavor lol. Tastes like juicy grape candy with a slight cooling effect. Swear the vapor produced looks extra blue too. Tried it alone at 10% with 65% VG and I really enjoy it. No weird fake berry tastes just a nice grape candy vape without the sugar. Maybe a slight berry candy lpixie stick sort of flavor in there too."

DIY_eJuice Flavor Reviews

H/T to ID10-T for suggesting this for review.

Bonus first test video for FW Grape Soda, Grapeberry Ice, Raspberry, and Blue Raspberry.