Purilum Grapefruit Mojito
ConcreteRiver
Setup: Recoil w/ flavor barrel, Dual 15 wrap 26g 3mm Nifethal 70 coils @.16 ohms. 60w power, 450F temp limit. Full Cotton Wicks.
Testing: Purilium Grapefruit Mojito, 3 and 8%, 60/40 VG/PG, Steeped 5 days.
Flavor Description: Nicotine River calls this "A beautiful blend of citrus and happiness. A great beverage and a necessity for a nice summers day vape!" The citrus note here feels a lot like a ruby red grapefruit juice type of flavor. Not much in the way of zest or something like a white grapefruit tartness. Grapefruit is definitely present, but feels a bit sweet, subtle, and one dimensional next to the mint. The mint here is doing a pretty convincing job of tasting like a mint muddled with sugar. Definitely a spearmint as opposed to peppermint flavor. Mint leaf flavor is taking a bit of a backseat to the pretty heavy white sugar sweetness note. Mouthfeel is a bit dry to me, and I'm getting some grittiness that along with the heavy white sugar note is kind of reminding me of a mojito made with granulated sugar that hasn't quite been stirred enough. No rum in sight. Very light cooling here, more tied into the spearmint flavor than a full beverage cooling. It's a good start on the profile, but it gets a lot better with some added cooling, and I could see adding in some TPA Champagne to kind of thin this out and pull it closer to a beverage profile. I'd use this a primary flavor around 5%.
Inhale is warm and sweet. I get mostly white sugar from the inhale. Lighter mint top notes, manages to avoid going too toothpaste-ish which is a going concern mixing citrus with spearmint. Some lighter slightly bitter grapefruit as the inhale builds. Exhale has grapefruit up front. Sweet, kind of flat ruby red grapefruit juice flavor. This concentrate vapes a little warm overall and it kind of washes out the more delicate parts of the grapefruit. No real zest, but there is some grapefruit bitterness in the top notes. That grapefruit gets pushed around by the spearmint and sugar on the back half of the exhale. A little bit of a spearmint leaf flavor, but the base tastes like pretty straight white sugar. Dryer mouthfeel on the back half of the exhale, with a bit of a gritty white sugar feeling. Some very light cooling on the end of the exhale, but it's still a bit distractingly warm overall solo. Lingering sugar lips, sweet spearmint, and a bit of dryness.
Off-flavors: Nah, maybe a bit oversweet, warm, and sugary for what I'd expect for a mojito.
**Throat Hit:**Light, more from the dryness than the citrus.
Uses & Pairings: This vapes warmer than you'd expect for a beverage profile. Mixing this with a cooling agent should help considerably. I've been screwing around with some ws-23, but the pre-existing mint in here is a good excuse to bust out the straight menthol. Seems to help thin out some the sugary base and cools this down for more of a cocktail effect.
I could see bolstering the grapefruit here with some FW Ruby Red Grapefruit to bring in some of the zest notes missing from an actual muddled grapefruit. I could also see adding some INW White Grapefruit for some of the missing tartness. The sweeter grapefruit note here would also stand up pretty well to a brighter, realistic lime like FA Lime Distilled.
If you want to go further down the rabbit hole, I could see TPA Champagne working really well here to further water this down and at least attempt to add some bite to this. I'd stay away from adding a rum flavor, as most of those tend to be closer to a spiced rum without much booziness, and you need a white rum for a mojito.
Notes: Concentration testing, 3% actually has a pretty good balance of citrus and mint. Mouthfeel isn't too dry and the sweetness level isn't overwhelming. 5% tastes a bit more solid, and the sugar on the mint note is coming through quite a bit clearer. Grapefruit feels like more a background player, but I'm getting some light bitterness which helps the profile. At 7% this is getting fairly dry to me, and it's maybe pushing a bit too sweet. Grapefruit is even more in the background here. At 9% this is even dryer, and even sweeter. Admirable job of tasting like white sugar, there's just too much of it. I'd mix this at 5%, with some added cooling to help that warm, dry sugar note.
Second Opinions: