Inawera Cherry Concentrate
ConcreteRiver
Setup: Recoil w/ flavor barrel, Dual 15 wrap 26g 3mm Nifethal 70 coils @.18 ohms. 60w power, 450F temp limit. Full Cotton Wicks.
Testing: INW Cherry Concentrate @ %1, 60/40 VG/PG, Steeped 9 days.
Flavor Description: Like vaping wild cherry cough drops with just a hint of the plastic wrapper still on there, which isn't as bad it sounds next to some of the other cherries available. Good, fairly realistic, slight sour note overall but doesn't quite gel with the cherry candy underneath.
Inhale is mostly medicinal. Pretty robutussin-y, moderate density and a light sweetness. Exhale has some bright candy cherry up front. Definitely a bright red, cherry candy kind of maraschino vibe. Bitter eucalyptus cooling top notes up front that get plastic-y toward the back end of the exhale. Definitely lingers and pushes toward full plastic. Good tartness overall though, adding a little bit of nuance to that sweet cherry candy flavor. Not really realistic, but comes closer than most candy cherry flavors.
Off-flavors: Yeah, this still tastes like plastic. It's less pronounced than something like FA Cherry or god forbid, FLV Rainier Cherry, but you get a weird, almost cooling, medicinal eucalyptus with some of that plastic flavor that seems to haunt cherry flavors.
Throat Hit: Initially starts out pretty harsh. Settles in pretty quickly though. I'd still call it a moderate throat hit, seems to be causing a good deal of chest tightness. Hard to take bigger draws.
Uses & Pairings: As a primary note, it's more of a candy cherry. I'm thinking you'll get the best results adding this into a fairly busy juice for that burst of cherry up front, and hoping you've got enough going on in the backend of the juice to hide that plastic, medicinal tinge. Works well with candy texturizers like CAP Jelly Candy and FW Hard Candy. The tartness here would make a good base for a sour cherry candy.
Harder to pair with fruit flavors. I'd stick with flatter, juicier fruits like FA Apricot, Pear, Fuji, or maybe a non-harsh melon flavor. Could work to brighten up syrupy berries like FLV Boysenberry.
I'd stay away from this in creams or bakeries, I've never got anything with that plastic note to really mesh well with anything creamy or particularly dense.
Notes:
S&V concentration testing, .25% seems a bit weak, but there is a nice fairly realistic sweet and sour cherry thing going on with a hint of that medicinal vibe. .5% still isn't saturated, but it's pretty pleasant. .75% is starting to get that plastic taste to it. Cherry is more sour than sweet. 1% starts to bring in some more the sweetness. Medicinal note is getting some cooling to it, and that plastic taste is getting a bit intense. 1.5% is getting plasticy, and that cooling is starting to taste a bit like cloves. 2% is about my maximum for this. I'm getting clove and plastic more than actual cherry. I'd start with this at .75% and work up for a primary cherry candy note. Identifiable in a mix as low as .25% so maybe start there if you want to work in a hint of sour cherry into a fruit mix.
I've got a tester down with INW Cherries, so I'll try that out tomorrow so I can offer a good contrast between the two. It's really damning this with faint praise, but this is one of the better candy cherry concentrates available, that tart note is great and the off-flavors aren't as bad as some of the available options.
Second Opinions:
Pretty solid notes on ELR. Mixed opinions, both saying it's "foul and medicinal" and saying it's better than some of the other options.
More talk on INW Cherry flavors. /u/thewomberchomby says "no medicinal taste at all." I don't really agree, but it's good to know that I might just be overly sensitive to it or tasting this wrong.