Liquid Barn Pink Lemonade
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 Pink Lemonade, 4 and 8% @ 1g/ml, 60/40 VG/PG base, Steeped 38 days.
Flavor Description: Instant pink lemonade, sweet and a bit harsh.
The tastes a whole lot more like powdered and reconstituted lemonade mix than anything involving an actual lemon. It's distinctly a lemonade as opposed to sweetened lemon flavor. It's a sharp, tart lemon, but there's no realistic zest and there's a whole bunch of sweetness going on as well. The overall effect is a very lemonade-ish relatively dense body.
Like Blue Raspberry, there isn't much but wild speculation on the internet about what actually makes a pink lemonade flavor pink. It ranges from just more sugar, some kind of actual fruit like strawberries, raspberry, or cranberry, or just straight Red 40. I'm obviously not going to settle this here, but I will say this definitely tastes pink. Gun to my head, I'd say it's a really intensely candied raspberry kind of flavor, but it's blended in almost entirely to the lemonade base. The extra sweetness over a more realistic lemonade probably helps as well. So on a scale of 1 to pink, I'd say it's like a 8. It's noticeably pink.
This is a pretty intensely sweet flavor. At the suggested 8% it's almost like someone added some extra sugar to the pre-sweetened lemonade mix. The actual lemonade flavor doesn't feel as over-concentrated as the sweetness. I'm thinking there's some additional sweetener in here because I'm getting a pretty heavy sugar lips and a bit of coil gore. The heavy sweetness is also feeling just a little bit powdery and I'm getting just a bit of dryness out this.
This is aggressive on throat hit. Something about the combination of the citrus, the sweetness, and the ethyl alcohol in the base is pretty intense.
Off-flavors: Nah. I mean, a whole lot of sugar, but it fits the profile pretty well.
Throat Hit: Harsh. There's a lot of ethyl alcohol, sharp citrus, and sort of a dry heavily sweet note. Even after a long steep it's still pretty intense.
Percentage testing: At 4% I'm actually getting a fairly good amount of lemonade here. It's fairly sharp, tart, and bright. It's sweet at 4%, but not quite overwhelming. The pink here is also a little more subtle and it's less fruity and less candied than at 8%.
At 8% I'm not getting much more lemon, but a whole lot more sugar and pink. Throat hit seems relatively similar to 4%.
Liquid Barn suggests 8%, and that's probably pretty close if you want a single or primary flavor pink lemonade. The sweetness and the pink are the primary thing scaling on percentage. I'd probably be closer to 5% because I'm a joyless DIY scold and it tastes pink enough to recognizable for me a bit lower. I think at lower accent percentage you'll mostly get a tart, sweet lemon accent.
Uses & Pairings: If you're not scared of throat hit, this is a pretty solid solo flavor. I think you definitely get sweet, pink, and lemonade. But add some cooling, because we aren't animals and the it should cut down some of the overwhelming sweetness at the tail end of the exhale.
If you wanted to work on that throat hit a bit, ethyl maltol works pretty well to blunt the edges of it. You could also really play up the pink think and toss in a maltol heavy strawberry like TPA or even LB strawberry. Good base for other berry additions like raspberries, blackcurrant, or even some CAP hibiscus if you really want it sweet.
This would also be a pretty great base for pink lemonade candy flavors. It has a lot of the sweetness to pull off those heavier candy profiles, and a lot of the texturizers will help round out some of the harder edges.
Second Opinions:
Here's the ELR Page. User "jojo" writes: "6% (SnV - tastes like lemonade with a bit of a bitter note. 1 week - this is pretty nice. It’s a sourish lemonade flavor. 2 weeks - same. As far as lemonades go, this one is decent. 2 weeks - same. 3 weeks - same again. Nice lemonade flavor with a bit of a kick. Cranberry I’m guessing. 4 weeks - same.)" User "krzysztofkris" writes: "Almost three weeks steeped still harsh, mixed at 8%, added 3 drops of MTS Vape Wizard to ~45ml of liquid, also 8 drops of EM 10% and 4 drops of CAP Super Sweet. "