Real Flavors Carrot Cake SC
ConcreteRiver
Setup: Recoil w/ flavor barrel, Dual 15 wrap 26g 3mm Nifethal 70 coils @.13 ohms. 60w power, 450F temp limit. Full Cotton Wicks.
Testing: RF SC Carrot Cake @ 1% and 2.5%, 60/40 VG/PG, Steeped 15 days.
Flavor Description: Just right off the bat, I feel like the flavor isn't mechanically working like I'd expect. It fades for me after the first couple of drags, and it fades hard leaving a kind of flat solid bakery note, without much going besides some lighter spice notes. This would be normally be the part where I'd point to the second opinions but I can't find any.
Spice heavy carrot cake, with a frosting waxiness to the tail end of it. I get a pretty clear sweetness from the carrot, and a darker cake base, more of a spice cake than yellow cake. Spice note has a clear nutmeg taste with a bit of cinnamon spice to it. I don't taste a lot of frosting here, but I can definitely feel i towards the back end. I think this flavor needs a higher percentage to really come through, and even then everything but the spice note seems to be really fleeting and fade out quickly. I'd sparingly accent this with some kind of nut and maybe a bit of frosting, but this is a pretty full concentrate when you're tasting all of it. I'd recommend starting with this all the way up at 5% as a primary note.
Inhale has a load of sharper nutmeg right up front in the top notes, with a flatter neutral bakery base. Exhale has a really nice daker sugar and carrot sweetness up front, with that nutmeg heavy spice in the top notes with just a bit of a cinnamon kind of bite to it. You get the cake part of this on the back half of the exhale, with a bit more of a fluffy rather than dense texture. I can feel the frosting towards the back, more of a waxy mouthfeel, rather than a clear frosting note. Clean finish overall. That's all based on the first couple drags of a redrip though. The cake base seems to hollow and the sweetness tapers off pretty quickly, leaving (for me at least) a kind of cardboard base with a light nutmeg to it.
Off-flavors: Once you can find the carrot cake here, not really. It's pretty well hidden until you hit high percentages and even then it's pretty front-loaded and kind of elusive.
Throat Hit: No.
Uses & Pairings: So the flavor here tastes okay, but it doesn't seem to work all that well for vaping. That front-loaded thing is kind of strange, and definitely limits the usefulness of this concentrate in mixing. I know nothing about chemistry, so this is probably wrong, but it feels like the volatiles here are too volatile. Either that, or this is just burning out my palate super fast.
If I'm completely off-base, and this is just an issue with the way I'm tasting this, this is pretty close to a solo concentrate. From what I'm tasting, I don't really think this needs anything to read as a carrot cake. You've got cake, spice, carrot, and frosting all in there and I'm not sure what you'd want in here to accent the existing flavors. I think maybe this could use a bit of nuttiness, so maybe some walnut, FA Hazelnut, or TPA toasted almond, but that's about it. You could also stand to accent the frosting a bit, either with some meringue for a lighter body or FLV Frosting for a more duncan-hines commercial frosting note.
Notes: Concentration testing, this seems super weak to me given the suggested 1-2.5% mixing range on the bottle. I basically can't taste it at 1-2%. I get some waxy frosting mouthfeel and a couple smaller bursts of spice, but there doesn't seem to be much here. 3% has a bit of a cake body to it, but it fades pretty quick, just a heavy lightly spiced volume after the first couple drags. 4% starts to pick up some carrot sweetness, and maybe more of a recognizable heavier cake flavor, but it's still definitely on the light side. 5% tastes okay for the first couple drags, with a darker spice cake base and some noticeable carrot and a more of a frosting mouthfeel than actual taste. It does disappear on you really quick though, like the flavor is driven off during those first couple drags and then you're left with a really vague, heavy body. 6-8% tastes largely the same, maybe a bit more definition but still really fleeting in terms of flavor. 10% seems like too much, with a bitter chemical taste lingering way longer than the actual flavor. If you are going to be mixing with this, I'd go heavy, probably starting around 5% up to 8%.
Second Opinions:
H/T to /u/ID10-T for the suggestion.