Inawera Peanuts
ConcreteRiver
Setup: Recoil w/ flavor barrel, Dual 15 wrap 26g 3mm Nifethal 70 coils @.19 ohms. 60w power, 400F temp limit. Full Cotton Wicks.
Testing: INW Peanuts @ 3%, 60/40 VG/PG, Steeped 10 days.
Flavor Description: Tastes like the peanuts in cracker jacks, or more accurately like the top notes of peanuts in cracker jacks. Fairly rich top-end with almost honey-roasted peanuts. Sweeter than straight peanuts. This seems to be lacking a savory "base" though. None of the thicker, gritty lower flavors you'd want from a peanut butter, but not crisp or grainy enough to really read as straight peanuts.
Inhale is fairly neutral. Maybe a little tart with a deep nuttiness, but it's hard to pick out. Some base sweetness with a moderate density. Exhale has sweet peanuts right up front. Pretty mellow kind of peanut, almost tastes a bit baked or cooked. Tastes like it has a really light kind of brittle topping, like cracker-jacks or even a sweeter honey roast. Sweetness level is on the high side. Not cloying but definitely a commerical kind of sweetness. Flavor is extremely top heavy, with a metallic kind of emptyness on the bottom end where I want the deeper, thicker notes of a peanut butter or the drier, grainier base of an actual peanut.
Off-flavors: The tail end of this tastes metallic for me. I picked up that same kind of metallic hit on FA Hazelnut as well, and was about to chalk it up to some fairly well-used coils. These coils have been in for like 2 days, and I'm still getting that solid metallic aftertaste. Maybe it's just me, but I guess nut flavors have a metallic aftertaste? Or it's a reaction with the nifethal... but it seems similar in a stainless or kanthal build. Maybe it's trying for a salty note or something? It just tastes like a handful of pennies to me.
Throat Hit: Not really at 1.5-2%. It can get a bit sharp up higher, but used fairly low there isn't much throat hit.
Uses & Pairings: This desperately needs some Acetyl Pyrazine. .25% AP improves the texture on this dramatically, getting you closer to a discrete peanut taste.
As it stands, this is a pretty good tool for getting a sweeter, candy kind of peanut flavor into something without messing with the texture that much. Should work well in bakeries for like peanut butter cookies. If you can keep that metallic note in check (or you don't get it at all) seems like a good fit for creams or custards. The lack of body here isn't going to mess with your underlying textures.
Notes: Concentration testing, this isn't nearly as strong as I'd expect a nut from Inawera to be. This is my third run-up to testing this. I started at .5%, and it was just too weak. I got mostly VG out of it. Next step was 1.5%, and that honey-roasted peanut kind of taste was there, but really top heavy. At 3% this is still nowhere close to overwhelming. The top notes are getting a little sharp and the metallic taste in the backend has really picked up from 1.5%. I'm thinking there just isn't a real base to this flavor. I'd recommend starting with this at 2% as an accent flavor or additive to another nut. I don't think you're going to get the body out of this to work as a real primary note.
So I bought this from Gremlin as "Peanut", but I'm fairly sure it's INW Peanuts. It looks like INW just has "Peanuts" and a Peanut Tobacco flavor. If I'm wrong, please correct me... but I can't find a reference to two seperate non-tobacco peanut flavors.
Second Opinions:
"A combination of TFA Peanut Butter + INW Peanuts does it for me. Little dry though so it helps to add some TFA Marshmallow or FA Vienna Cream to make it a little wetter/fuller."
...but they probably knew that already.
So here's a post on ECF. User "Jimi D." provides a quick take:
"It's very good. Tastes like salty peanuts. Don't mix too high though. It gets very dry, and the salt note becomes acidic feeling. I enjoy it at 1%."
I don't get salt out of the weird metallic note, but I at least sort of get where he is coming from with it.