Solub Arome Speculoos
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: Solubarome Speculos @ 3 and 6%, 60/40 VG/PG, Steeped 17 days.
Flavor Description: Speculos cookies are somewhere around a darker, richer, crispier animal cracker with a bit of spice. Solo, this doesn't really capture that. I get mostly a soft, underflavored fluffy texture with a really light cook. I'd say this is closer to just a straight ahead sugar cookie. Definitely a bakery, but pretty bland pushing that weird cardboard note you get a concentrate with texture but no strong flavor. Sugar cookie sweet, but light overall. More like smelling sugar cookies. Almost reminds me of the rice note from a lighter horchata flavor, bordering on a rice cake. It's fairly unobtrusive and would probably fit in lot of profiles, but it doesn't really bring much to the table and feels pretty inessential to me. If you are using this, I'd start at around 7% and work up.
Inhale is mostly just bakery sweetness. Very blond bakery note. Might be a tiny bit of vanilla and maybe cinnamon in there, but it's a slightly airy, sweet but insubstantial inhale. Exhale is pretty similar. Fluffy, but no real texture or grain. Prominent, but really fleeting insubstantial sweetness. Some more interesting spice and vanilla in the top notes, but that's pretty subtle. Tail end of the exhale is like sweet cardboard. Any flavor here fades out hard. Some light harshness, and a distractingly clean finish.
Off-flavors: Some kind of cardboard or maybe rice cake vibe to this. Texture without much taste.
Throat Hit: Light, the solubarome bakeries I've tried get a bit harsh on the exhale. This one is on the smoother side of that admittedly limited sample size, but the throat hit is there.
Uses & Pairings: Solo, I feel like this is lacking the crunch, body, and spice note to really pull off a speculos cookie. I think you could probably get there by adding INW/JF Biscuit, either CAP Gingerbread or FLV Ginger Snap, and maybe a little bit of extra spice. It runs dangerously close to the point where this concentrate is a bit superflous if you have to accent it that much.
As it stands, more of a bland sugar cookie flavor than anything else... and that sugar cookie niche is pretty well serviced by CAP, FW, and RF. Maybe look in this direction if those aren't working for you for whatever reason.
I could also see taking advantage of the non-descript bakery note here and going in the direction of rice krispies treats.
It's definitely a niche application, but seems like a good fit for fluffing up a tobacco recipe with dark, heavy pipe tobacco flavors.
Notes: Concentration testing, this is going to require a fairly high percentage to get whatever it is this flavor has to offer. 3% is just straight texture without much flavor. Basically just sweet cardboard. 6% is a bit better, still cardobard on the back end, but that generic bakery sweetness has at least a little definition. 9% is a bit too dry to be pleasant. Largely the same as the 6%, but that dryness is getting gnarly. 12% is just very sweet cardboard.
Second Opinions:
281 reviews with a 3.9/5 average on this site, so obviously somebody likes this stuff.
Shoutout to /u/ID10-T for the suggestion.