Super Concentrated Raspberry

Setup: Recoil w/ flavor barrel, Dual 15 wrap 26g 3mm Nifethal 70 coils @.17 ohms. 60w power, 450F temp limit. Full Cotton Wicks.

Testing: SC Raspberry, .5 and 2%, 60/40 VG/PG, Steeped 7 days.

Flavor Description: Candy raspberry with a heavy, bitter, floral edge. At low percentages, tastes more like an aggressively artificial lychee flavor. Raspberry hard candy comes in with a heavier hand, but it's a very artificial. No real fleshiness, juiciness, or nuance. A flat, warm, sweet raspberry. Sweetness level is very high. It manages to taste like a sugar sweetness instead of sucralose, but it's all very sweet and cloying. I'm coming up a bit dry on uses for this when other raspberries out there are better and can easily be made into candy flavors, but if you are using it, I'd go for about 2-2.5%. It's intensely sweet at that level, but it seems to be required to get a distinct raspberry out of this.

Inhale is sharp and a bit chemical with all of those bitter artificial florals just smacking you right in the face. Heavy floral lychee note. Deep, warm, sugary sweetness building up underneath that. I just keeps getting sweeter and sweeter. Moderate density to the inhale, although it's a bit hard to taste much underneath that floral note. Exhale is a little more complex. Very flat candy raspberry up front, with those same aggressive floral top notes. Again, nothing realistic, juicy, or fleshy here. Just straight candy. Intensely sweet base with a chemical, bitter edge. Lingering sweetness and perfumey lychee notes.

Off-flavors: Very aggressive. Heavy artificial bitter floral edge like a bad lychee flavor, some of that plastic-y lychee to it as well. Weird generic fruitiness, especially noticeable at lower percentages.

Throat Hit: Moderate fresh, settles down pretty quickly with a steep but still has a weird bitterness that has a bite.

Uses & Pairings: This is a bit hard to recommend. It does a candy raspberry okay, but those off flavors are pretty aggressive and it's actually sweet to the point that, personally, it's a bit offensive. This may be a candidate for using with the RF SC Candy Base and RF SC Taffy Base. I feel like the way they beat up on flavors might actually help mellow this down to the point where it's a bit more pleasant.

Notes: Concentration testing, this is pretty interesting. There is a lot of flavor down at .25%, but it doesn't taste much like a raspberry. It almost tastes like a generic fruit candy base. It's fruity, but damn if I can nail down what it actually tastes like right now. It's a chemical candy taste with a bitter edge, kind of a juicy fruit gum flavor. .5% tastes a little more like a berry, but that generic fruit candy sweetness is still pretty distracting. Almost taking on a lychee flavor, with a sort of bitter, perfurmey edge on top of that candy sweetness. 1% is where I start to get something feels more like a raspberry. Still has that perfumey edge to it, but the generic fruit taste has come together a bit and I'm getting some clear berry flavor. Kind of hard to pin down which berry, but I'll believe raspberry. At 1.5%, clearer raspberry. Still tastes artificial, but at least it tastes like an artificial raspberry. 2% has a full candy raspberry, still with that bitter, artificial edge. 3% has that artificial edge become medicinal and really aggressive, and by 4% this is actually bitter to point where it's hard to vape. I'd probably stick to 2-2.5%, but you aren't getting anything but aggressively artificial raspberry candy.

This seems to change noticeably based on a steep. It's probably not right to call it "fading" per se, but it seems to lose a lot of the brighter raspberry notes and turn into a flatter candy flavor even within a week. Those generic sort of juicy fruit flavors seems to catch up to whatever brighter recognizable raspberry is in here.

Second Opinions:

Pretty thin documentation.

I got this off BCF as Super Concentrates, but apparently is the same flavoring sold on Vaping Zone as VZ SC flavoring. A couple of reviews on that site, all on the positive side. User "Shane Bappe" decided to review it twice. The first review: "Pretty good raspberry flavor but start very very low with this one. Even like .5%. It has a tendency to stick to wicks too. It is a very dominating flavor which is good, but not always what I'm looking for in raspberry. If you start extra weak, you should be fine." The second is a little less qualified: "This is the best raspberry flavoring I have found thus far. It does have a slight chemically (if that's what you'd call it) taste but it seems to have steeped out after only about 12 hours. It's not even a bad taste, I kind of like it initially with the other flavors I have it mixed with. It gives it a kick. But it does seem to go away after a few hours and give me the true raspberry flavor." User GD calls it a "great Raspberry flavor, but be careful, it's strong. I used 1% in 5ml, and after 4 weeks (I stay ahead of myself) it was perfect."

User /u/skettios/ (from 3 years ago) says: "Vaping Zone Raspberry super concentrate definitely tastes like a raspberry, it's got kind of a harsh odor though, my wife says it smells like chili peppers. Tastes good to me though."

Hey guys, in 2012 user "glassmanoak" on ECF said it was one of the best of the best DIY flavorings and "a drop or 2 goes in any fruit." So there's that.

DIY_eJuice Flavor Reviews

I let /u/IDI0-T make me do things. I need to acknowledge my responsibility in these flavor choices.

Also, part of a bonus video review with some other SC Fruits.