Nature's Flavors Ginger
ConcreteRiver
Setup: Recoil w/ flavor barrel, Dual 12 wrap 24g 3.5mm SS316 @.33 ohms. 60w power, 450F temp limit. Full Cotton Wicks.
Testing: Nature's Flavors Ginger, 1% and 3%, 60/40 VG/PG base, Steeped 30 days.
Flavor Description: Just ginger, moderately sweetened.
Aggressive ginger flavor. Nothing else really going on here. Its a bold, spicy,accurate ginger. Doesn't feel dryer like a bakery ginger, and it's not a mellow ginger ale type flavor. Really light earthiness, but it adds to the accuracy.
Solid body to this. Thick enough to avoid going astringent or thin, but nothing creamy or candied in the texture. It's sweetened a bit off a raw ginger profile, but it isn't too cloying. Solo, tastes maybe a bit more like a ginger candy, but not sweet enough to pull an entire mix that way.
The available gingers are probably more alike than similar, but this might be the truest to something like a raw ginger, even with the sweetness. It's less dry than HS, spicier than FLV, and more vibrant and brighter than FW. Overall not a bad choice if you were going to pick up one ginger, aside from availability.
Off-Flavors: Sweeter than eating actual raw ginger, but otherwise nothing.
Throat Hit: Yeah, but it's ginger. Pretty accurate spice to it.
Percentage testing: At 1%, this is still pretty intense. Lightly sweet, fairly spicy. Just tastes like ginger.
At 3%, this isn't really that much spicier. I mean, at least not 3 times as spicy. A bit bit more body, and a good deal more sweetness. Fairly harsh, but that's the point.
I've also tried this in a couple of mixes at lower percentages and it seems to work pretty well. I'd say suggested percentage is entirely up to how much ginger you want. Noticeable as low as .25% in a mix, but vapeable up to at least 3% if you're really into ginger.
Uses & Pairings: Pretty standard ginger, so all of those profiles basically.
Not just a bakery ginger, but should work fine in bakeries at a lower percentage an an accent. I'd start at .25% and work up. Should probably stay in that accent role at lower percentages with creams, fruit mixes, and tobaccos.
I'd bump it up to around 1% for beverage type profiles like adding some spice to cocktails.
For a primary flavor, I'd just lean into the ginger and mix around 2%.
Second Opinions: Another day, another HIC review on BCF. They write: "This is one of the very best flavorings you'll ever find, regardless of brand. In my opinion, it's NF's very best. By itself it tastes like crushed gingerroot. As a sub-1% addition to other spice flavors, it gives you a bakery-type ginger flavor. Add caramel/butterscotch for ginger syrup. With creative mixing, it can taste like crystallized ginger, ginger ale, or any other ginger-type flavor you can imagine. No other ginger flavoring is as realistic or as versatile as this one."
There's a ton of slightly vintage posts advocating for this, but no actual descriptions, besides HIC telling people to buy it.