Real Flavors Tomato 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 Tomato @ 2% and 4%, 60/40 VG/PG, Steeped 21 days.
Flavor Description: Fruit or not, this tastes all kinds of odd. All the kinds of tomato crammed into one tomato concentrate. Starts off with a darker, almost cooked tomato paste flavor, thins out to a raw, fresh tomato flavor, and finishes with some really funky overripe almost fishy tomato flavor. I think that darker cooked tomato flavor and the strange aftertaste really limits the utility here if you were looking for a raw, fresh tomato or even tomato juice flavor. If you do want to mess with this, I probably wouldn't go much above 2%, or those off notes become really aggressive.
Inhale isn't too bad. Sharp, slightly acidic bright tomato. Not really ketchupy or too dark, but it lacking some of the brighter raw tomato I'd want to make this about as palatable as a tomato concentrate is going to get. Maybe a bit sweet though. The sweetness kind of brings in that reduced tomato paste kind of flavor. Exhale is.... complex. There's a bunch of darker tomato flavor up front. Along with that sweetness, it's straight tomato paste. It thins out a bit, and you get more of that green, raw, bright tomato. That part's pretty okay. The tail end of the exhale gets even weirder. I start to get some fishy, overripe notes out of this. In my video first take I talk about how fish food smells... and I still don't think that that's far off. It's almost like an anchovy paste flavor. Like the tail end of Worcestershire sauce or homemade Caesar dressing. It's less than fun, and it sticks around for a while.
Off-flavors: Assuming you want just a raw tomato, the cooked stuff up front and whatever is going on in the backend definitely detract from that.
Throat Hit: Light to moderate. It's not too bad, a bit acidic and harsh, especially on the inhale.
Uses & Pairings: This. You should totally make this recipe and then get to back to me. I want video.
No, seriously though, finding a use for a good tomato would be fairly hard. I'd think maybe pretty neutral fruit pairings like apple or pear might work, and anything to bring in some juicyness would be a good idea.
Unfortunately, I'm not really feeling this because of that tomato paste and weird anchovy note on the back end. I think with how savory this flavor ends up being, I can't think of much I want to do with it.
Notes: Concentration testing, this is light at 1%. Probably a good thing, but you don't get too much tomato. Mostly just a cooked, dark, sweet tomato-esque accent. If you want to use this in a savory mix, that wouldn't a bad place to start. 2% I'm getting some more of that raw tomato in there, which is nice. That back end is definitely present and pretty gnarly though. It gets worse at 3%. More tomato, more cooked flavor up front, and more of that off flavor. At 4% it's just too heavy on the off-flavors.
Second Opinions:
Lol, no.
H/T to /u/ID10-T/ for the suggestion.
I did my initial test of this (along with RF SC Carrot, and RF SC Sriracha) as part of an almost unbearably awkward youtube video located here. My assessment of the flavor hasn't really changed.