Liquid Barn Crème Brulee
ConcreteRiver
Disclaimer: I didn't pay for these, they were sent to me by Liquid Barn. Shout out to Liquid Barn
Setup: Recoil w/ flavor barrel, Dual 15 wrap 26g 3mm Nifethal 70 coils @.17 ohms. 60w power, 450F temp limit. Full Cotton Wicks.
Testing: Liquid Barn Creme Brulee, 6 and 11% @ 1g/ml, 60/40 VG/PG base, Steeped 29 days.
Flavor Description: Somewhere between an eggy caramel custard and an actual creme brulee, definitely on the sweet side.
The custard base is fairly rich. There's a heavy eggy note in here. Some dairy in here behind that egg, but it seems more heavily balanced towards the egg than anything too buttery or creamy. Maybe a really light bakery vanilla, but not all that prominent. Overall though, recognizably a custard.
The brulee here sort of straddles the line between caramel sauce and an actual brulee. It's kind of medium-dark caramel taste but it seems to have some of the cardboardy issues you get with softer caramel flavors, although not nearly as bad as those can get in a flavor like CAP Caramel. Quite a bit of caramel sweetness in here. Doesn't quite have that really hard caramel crunchiness you'd expect from a creme brulee, but it's still working pretty well.
The caramel here dries this out substantially. I'm not getting much in the way of separation between the caramel and custard, so while you can definitely taste the brulee component, it doesn't really feel like a creme brulee. The dryness and the heavy caramel note almost remind of a heavy butterscotch custard. The overall mouthfeel is decently rich, but that dryness starts to be a bit much, at least solo. This feels like it has some kind of sweetener in here. It works well on fresh cotton but tends to make your wicks and a bit crunchy and the flavor starts to get a bit muddy and dry with extended vaping. Not catastrophic or anything, just watch out for adding sweetener.
Comparing this some of the creme brulee flavors, this works quite a bit better as a full creme brulee than FLV Brulee. The caramel in FLV Brulee is a bit darker but it has a bit of more of a cardboard edge to it, and it's firmly in the bring your own custard territory. INW Creme Brulee is still probably a better creme brulee though. The custard in INW Creme Brulee feels like it has a richer base to it with a bit better balance between the eggs and dairy, and the caramelized sugar note there feels a bit more crisp and has more of a separation with the custard base.
Off-flavors: Caramel is tricky, but this does fairly well with limiting some of that weird cardboard note they can pick up.
Throat Hit: Light to moderate, the dryness here can get a bit harsh, especially with a bit more heat.
Percentage testing: At 6% this doesn't seem to really be clicking as a creme brulee flavor. I'm getting mostly soft caramel with a bit of richer eggy notes in the background. Overall the flavor doesn't have much definition and kind of just feels like a caramel sauce.
At 11% the custard component here is more pronounced. Clear eggy custard flavor with a pretty intense and medium dark dry caramel. Feels like most of the component of a brulee are there but feel a bit jumbled up and the texture isn't quite working for me. Also heavily sweet.
Liquid barn suggests mixing this at 11% and it seems just a bit aggressive for me. Just based on these tests, I'd probably be around 4% of this as an accent or 8% as a primary flavor.
Uses & Pairings: The caramel here is pretty aggressive, and this could be used a caramel accent flavor with other cream bases. It's not quite rich enough to be a butterscotch, but it should have some of that same affect. This is less aggressively cardboardy than CAP Caramel and a whole lot less murderous on wicks than FW or TPA Caramel Candy, so it may be pretty useful.
As a primary flavor, I'm thinking it needs a softer custard flavor to sort of flesh out the base a bit and move it away from that drier caramel note. A relatively low percentage of INW Custard or CAP Vanilla Custard would probably work without steamrolling that caramel.
Not a bad creme brulee base if you wanted to add in some strawberries or something similar and give another element to focus on here so the texture thing isn't as distracting.
Second Opinions:
Here's the ELR Page. User "jojo" writes: "8% (SnV - what I’d imagine creme brûlée would taste like. Kind of an eggy custard. 1 week - same. Not quite as strong as the Inawera, but I like it. 2 weeks - same. 3 weeks - same. Less eggy than before, but very nice. 4 weeks - same.)" User "The Vaporizer" writes "Has serious potential for a relatively unknown flavor. Very light vanilla and caramel with a medium strength eggy background." User "KatelynCakes91" didn't dig it: "Tastes like bad milk. It might just need to steep for a lot longer than 3 weeks."