Real Flavors Blue Moon Ice Cream SC
ConcreteRiver
Setup: Recoil w/ flavor barrel, Dual 15 wrap 26g 3mm Nifethal 70 coils @.15 ohms. 60w power, 450F temp limit. Full Cotton Wicks.
Testing: RF SC Blue Moon Ice Cream @ 1% and 2.5%, 60/40 VG/PG, Steeped 10 days.
Flavor Description: "Blue" Ice Cream. Tastes like a really commercial take on almost a blueberry sherbet with an almost marshmallow-y vanilla and fluffiness. Apparently blue moon ice cream is an [actual thing.](https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Blue_Moon_(ice_cream) Based on the fact these blends are usually pretty secretive, I'd say this definitely tastes blue and probably hits the realism mark well enough. I'd recommend this either as a primary/almost solo flavor at 3.5-4.5%, and bump it down to about 2.5-3% if you want some more room for additional fruits or creams.
Inhale is sweet and fluffy. Not a lot of density, with a candy blueberry type of flavor. No syrupy edge to this, it's a drier candy blueberry, almost like a blueberry pixie stick. Exhale has a slightly rounder blueberry flavor, still sweet, commerical, and "blue" but with a bit more depth to it. I get some light floral bitterness and a softer vanilla in the top notes. Solid, fluffy base, but doesn't have much dairy to it. More like a marshmallow than ice cream. If this is indeed an ice cream, I'd peg it closer to a sherbet than anything else. Some lingering artificial tasting bitterness, actually pretty accurate to something pretty heavily dyed.
Off-flavors: There's a bit of a bitter chemical edge to the blueberry in here. FWIW, it seems to largely steep out, but you may be looking at 3-4 weeks to get rid of it entirely. Some incredibly haphazard tests in a microwave seem to bear that out.
Throat Hit: Light. That blueberry tastes a bit chemical and the dryness at higher percentages is a bit rough.
Uses & Pairings: As an accent, seems like a good way to add some commercial blueberry sweetness to creams and bakeries. it's technically an ice cream, but it's not really super rich and eggy, so it should sort of add a blue tint to whatever you're adding it to.
Used as a primary flavor, obviously this could be used for a blueberry ice cream. I'd want to add a richer ice cream behind it, like your VBIC of choice or HS Ice Cream. I think it would also do a good job of working as a blueberry milkshake base, with more realistic blueberry concentrates filling in some of that "blue" noise.
Notes: Concentration testing, this is kind of chemical and underflavored at 1%. 2% is a bit more solid, with more of a "blue" marshmallow kind of feel to it overall. Not a lot of richness down this low, but it's usuable as an accent flavor. 3% is starting to come together pretty nicely, with the ice cream part of this filing out a bit and the "blue" part sweet but not overwhelming. 4% is just a bit heavier overall. Hasn't really gotten any richer, but it's heavier and a clearer flavor. 5% is a bit intense and dry. I'm getting some chemical bitterness up this high, and it's a bit sweet for me.
Second Opinions:
I can't find anything on the SC version of this, so these are all for the VG Version. YMMV, of course.
META: I'm now officially diving into the stuff suggested for review from the list generated that one time I whored myself out for Dogma recipe pack sales. H/T of the day goes to /u/ID10-T (as if he needed more recognition) for suggesting this one. My testing procedure for the Real Flavors Super Concentrate stuff is going to be largely identical to everything else, but I'm using the bounds of the mixing range specified on the bottle as my mixing range. i suspect some of these will be pretty low after trying a couple, but for the first batch I'm kind of locked into these percentages for the steeped samples. I'll try to provide a general usage guideline like usual though.