Liquid Barn Dew Mountain
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 @.14 ohms. 60w power, 450F temp limit. Full Cotton Wicks.
Testing: Liquid Barn Dew Mountain, 5 and 9%, 60/40 VG/PG base, Steeped 17 days.
Flavor Description: A softer mountain dew flavor, with a duller waxy orange and less bright citrus than you'd expect.
This sort of tastes like drinking the melted ice left over in a fountain mountain dew. While it has a lot of the flavors you'd expect, it's all too soft and a bit watery. Out of the citrus mix, I'm mostly getting a light, sort of waxy orange flavor. The wax is a little weird and I'm not quite getting from the vibrancy I'd expect from the profile.
There's also some sharper lemon and lime accents here. I get more lime than lemon, which sort of fits for whatever mountain dew is supposed to taste like. While there is an initial tart burst from the lime, it doesn't really have the body to carry that part of the flavor and feels softer and muted.
Sweetness level is probably a fit for a soda profile. Not really that delicious velvety kind of HFCS feel, but that's mostly on the mouthfeel. The top notes here are sort of dry while at the the same time the base is a bit on the watery and thin side. Doesn't feel especially soda-esque and I'm not getting anything that feels like carbonation out of this.
You also taste a bit of a metallic flavor, like you could get from drinking soda out of a warm can. It's sort of mineral tang on the actual vape, but the lingering taste is strangely metallic.
This also proved wholly inadequate at dissolving mouse carcasses.
Off-flavors: The orange flavor here has a warm waxiness that doesn't seem like a fit for a beverage profile. Metallic tang in here as well. Beyond that, nothing that tastes particularly off or chemical, but it doesn't quite have the vibrancy of a mountain dew flavor.
Throat Hit: Moderate. Not especially harsh, but it's still a citrus.
Percentage testing: At 5% this feels fairly watery. I'm getting some brighter lime accents but the orange body is really thin and undersweet.
At 9% this still feels a bit on the watery side. More of that orange is coming through, but it's more waxy than juicy. Lime is fairly clear and I'm getting some more subtle lemon in there as well.
Just based on these tests, I'd be around Liquid Barn's suggested 9% on this. This is a bit too soft to really work well as an accent flavor, I think you pretty much have to use it as a primary.
Uses & Pairings: Mountain dew is such a weird flavor that I don't quite know how to sort of bolster and fill this out without taking it away from classic mountain dew. I'd say maybe a bit of a mandarin-ish flavor without wax like FA Blood Orange or FW Tangerine could help. You could probably boost the lime and some of the sparkling soda effect with some FA Lime Distilled. You could also try filling it out with your lemonade of choice.
Beyond that, you may be able to take this into a more orange heavy direction for something like Livewire, or some candy grape for pitch black. I'd skip the cherry thing entirely. A non-terrible code red is probably an impossible dream at this point. My knowledge of specialty mountain dew flavors is pretty limited after that.
Second Opinions:
Here's the ELR Page. User "jojo" writes: "8% SnV - can’t put my finger on this. It is a little of a citrus/mt dew but also has a bit of a chemically taste to it. 1 week - same. 2 weeks - same. Maybe the chem taste is supposed to be a caffeine kinda taste? I don’t know. 3 weeks - what a difference a week can make. Pretty much tastes like mt dew now. Still a bit of that chem taste but not awful now. 4 weeks - not bad. Kinda tastes like a mt dew." User "Travapor" writes "Made this at 10% standalone to test it out the Mountain Dew is there but with an insane metal taste to it." User "bminor" writes: "a bit sweet and lemon-limish. not very strong, even at 9% S&V."