Inawera Shisha Punch
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: INW Shisha Punch @ 1%, 60/40 VG/PG, Steeped 18 days.
Flavor Description: A warm mulled or cooked spice blend. It's really hard to pull this flavor apart, but I get orange zest, cardamom, cinnamon, star anise, and clove. A really warm spice mix, without those sharp raw spice notes that you'd get from holiday spice. Straight victorian silver bowl punch spices bordering on cocktail bitters.
Inhale is slightly sour with some sharp citrus and heavy non-bakery cinnamon. Exhale starts off with a brief flash of cardamom, moving into star anise and finishes on a lingering warm clove. Citrus sourness throughout especially noticeable on the back end. Light baseline sweetness without tasting sweetened at all. Very warm flavor, leaves your mouth a bit numb like heavy clove will.
Off-flavors: Nope. All sorts of spice flavors but nothing unexpected.
Throat Hit: No, not really. It's an aggressive flavor but it doesn't have any real throat hit.
Uses & Pairings:
So, my mind goes straight to punch. And again, when I say punch I'm not talking about whatever jungle juice abomination they serve at high school parties. The traditional rum punch recipe is 1 of sour, 2 of Sweet, 3 of Strong, and 4 of weak. So I'd build one of those, and use this for a spicy bitters note. Just spitballing, but I'd figure out a lime with some serious zest, use FA Hypnotic Mist and FLV Orange Citrus for a Curacao stand-in, FA Jamaican Rum and a bit of FA Liquid Amber for the strong, and take it from there, cutting it back with whatever juicy citrus or pineapple works.
Taking advantage of the bitters vibe, you've got all sorts of cocktail options.
This would an interesting more realistic mulled wine or spiced apple cider flavor.
I've also used this in a warm spice cake type of recipe, just taking advantage of the fact that this tastes cooked and a little more complex than normal holiday spice flavors.
This also seems like a fit for mixing with a dryer, straight forward tobacco both as a way to add some volume and light sweetness while giving you a warmer spice flavors that should work with the warmer character of tobaccos. You'd have to watch the sourness, though.
Notes: So this is strong, like 1 drop per 10ml strong. It's assertive, but not super sharp so you have some leeway here. Start off low and work up from there until you hit the right spice note. Fairly sharp as a S&V, so give it a steep before you judge how much spice you need. I couldn't imagine needing more than .5% in a mix.
I picked this up after checking this recipe out. User criticalvape describes this flavor as "A grossly under-appreciated flavoring that is pretty tasty on it's own around 0.5%. With notes of cinnamon, clove, cardamom, nutmeg, star-anise, and then some. Shisha Punch stands in for the quintessential aromatic bitters." That's a really solid description and the more I vape this the more dead on it seems. Thank you criticalvape, you have enriched my life substantially.
Second Opinions:
Not too much here, besides that ATF use.
Couple good notes on ELR, talking about the spice mix and using this low.