Super Concentrated Caramel Candy
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: SC Caramel Candy, 3%, 60/40 VG/PG, Steeped 8 days.
Flavor Description: Nope. This tastes nothing like caramel candy. Burnt Popcorn / Over-roasted coffee beans up front with a sour overripe banana finish. Something went terribly wrong with this flavor. Compounding my bafflement, this is probably the least sweet of all the SC flavors I've tried so far. There is some kind of mouthfeel sort of like a softer caramel and a bit of butteryness in here, but the concentrate just doesn't seem to have any sort of grasp on what caramel, candy, or even food in general tastes like. There is no percentage at which this works, although the mouthfeel does get better as you crank up the concentration with the benefit of a sour vomit taste. Still seems to be fading out rapidly, but I'm okay with that in this case. I don't have a suggested use for this. Either I got a bad batch of this, or a flavorist was huffing glue when they put this together.
Inhale is thin and sour, with a warm banana tinged sweetness that slowly builds. Burnt top notes a lot like the bad part of coffee concentrates. Exhale is burnt popcorn up front with a bracing, bitterness. Sour, acidic top notes and some rotten fruitiness in the top notes. The concentrate taunts you with some richer buttery mouthfeel after that burnt popcorn note fades a bit, but then a bunch of random banana and that buttery taste gets weird and rancid with that acidity. Lingering pangs of regret and existential cris as you wonder what on earth brought you to this point.
Comparing this at 3 and 8 days, there is substantial fall off in flavor. The sourness is maybe less pronounced but it's just giving way to vaguely rancid edge on the back end and that banana off flavor seems to get stronger. Burnt popcorn seems largely unchanged.
Off-flavors: There is not a single flavor in here that I would associate with a caramel candy. It has just a bit of a mouthfeel in there that could conceivably pass as vaguely soft caramelish, but the flavors here have almost no relation to caramel candy, and none of them are pleasant.
Throat Hit: Light, I guess? It's not overtly harsh.
Uses & Pairings: This does exactly one thing right, and it's some of the mouthfeel in the middle of the exhale. Everything around it is downright unsettling, though. I personally don't think there would be a use where this isn't going to be off-putting.
Notes: Concentration testing, at 1% this extremely thin and sour with heavy burnt note to it. 3% is a little thicker, but I'm getting a lot of overripe banana in that thicker mouthfeel. The sourness does not play well with what little caramel I'm getting out of this. 5% is starting to get a rancid dairy note to the back end, and that sourness is getting watery. At 8% it's pretty fundamentally wrong. It tastes like watery sour milk and dark roast coffee.
Second Opinions: The whole "your mileage may vary" thing is implied with flavor reviews, but I'm honestly lost at how people are using this.
A hearty "nope" to ID10-T for suggesting this for review.
Youtube first test of SC Seven, Cohiba, Caramel Candy, and Milk Chocolate.