Super Concentrated Seven
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 Seven, 3%, 60/40 VG/PG, Steeped 7 days.
Flavor Description: Cigarette paper, with some woody and floral accents and a relatively light citrus tartness. Not a heavy tobacco, and no noticeable ash note. Reminds me a lot of TPA Western, as it seems to have that same kind of dry cigarette paper note. Top notes have a floralish lightness to them, shoutout to "Kinnickinnick" in the second opinions for calling sandalwood or cedar, because after reading that it seems to fit. Maybe a little too light and airy to really read as sandalwood to me, but it has some of the same characteristics. There's a lemon tartness in here too, but that seems to be fairly common with the SC flavors I've tried so that might just be the carrier getting weird. There's a light chocolate-y note here that starts off just a bit nutty but comes together as a bit fuller at 2% and up. Light sweetness that can get just a tiny bit of a caramel edge at higher temperatures. Overall, relatively smooth but on the dry side. I've done a lot overdripping because it kind of feels like my wicks are drying out even when they are saturated. Seems to suffer from the same kind of fall-off I was experiencing with the SC Fruits. If you are going to use it, I'd stick with 2.5-3% in relatively simple mixes using short-steeping flavors and planning to use the bottle within the week.
Inhale is dry and tart, with some floral bordering on woody flavor. Smooth but definitely on the airy side. There's some building sweetness that picks up just a little bit of caramel and has a dry semi-sweet chocolate kind of edge to it. Exhale has that chocolate right up front, with a drier cigarette paper-esque taste and mouthfeel taking over shortly after. Slightly bitter thin lemon and woodspice in the top notes. It's airy enough that it feels more floral than anything else. Not a whole lot of more solid base flavor to exhale. I pick up a bit of a dry tobacco leaf, but it's pretty subtle and a bit lost in everything else going on here. Mouthfeel is pretty intensely dry overall though. I wouldn't call it harsh, but it's a little weird on the throat and It seems to dry my mouth out quite a bit and that dryness lingers after the exhale.
Off-flavors: Always hard to decide what counts off as off-flavor in tobaccos. The lemony tartness doesn't seem to fit particularly well, and that floral/woody has some of that cleaning product / dryer sheet vibe.
Throat Hit: Not really harsh for a tobacco, but you'll know it's there. It gets a bit dry overall and that doesn't really help the situation.
Uses & Pairings: I'll probably be ranting about it for the rest of the week, but whatever is going on with these flavors, they seem to fade out very quickly. Tasting this at 3 and 7 days, it's pretty severe. They mellow a bit and lose some of the sharp edges, but they also lose a lot of the fullness and vibrancy. It's extremely noticeable with fruits but it seems to be happening with the couple of other Super Concentrate flavors I've tried as well. Just in terms of recipe balancing, I'd probably stick with Super Concentrate flavoring only mixes, maybe throwing in some flavors by different manufacturers that don't require much of a steep.
For this specifically, I feel like the tobacco note could be a lot more aggressive, and so I'd probably look at mixing this with more robust tobacco flavorings that are decent straight off a shake. It looks like SC should have a couple of these, but you may also be able to get away with using some FLV Tobaccos and just giving up on the idea of keeping a bottle around for more than a week.
This already has a bit of cigarette paper kind of vibe to it, I think a slightly ashy, strong tobacco could drag this more into a full-on tobacco mix. I think if you're trying to accentuate some of the chocolate or nuttiness here, you're going to end up running into a situation where it will take long enough for those flavors to steep that you'll lose a lot of what's going in this concentrate.
Again, limited tobacco experience, but that kind of cigarette wrapper note hasn't ever blended particularly well with fruits or creams, although I suppose you could go nuts and start dragging in brighter citrus accents.
Notes: Concentration testing, at 1% this is just kind of dull and nutty. Some of that floral note in there, although the fresh alcohol based flavor might be pushing that to the front a bit and that tartness seems pretty pronounced. At 2%, still not getting anything too close to a tobacco. Still feels light, thin, and airy. That floral note is getting more woody and that nuttiness is getting closer to chocolately. At 3% there's a lot more to like about this. The chocolate note is filling in quite a bit, and it starts to resemble a tobacco quite a bit more. Those woody floral notes and tartness are still there, but they are better balanced by that deeper tobacco. At 4% I feel like it's losing some of that balance again. That chocolatey note is getting a bit weird, and the top notes are picking up some bitterness. 5% just seems to move a bit further off the rails. For all the weird issues with these flavors, they do at least seem to be fairly consistent and all of them work the best right at that 2.5-3% level.
Second Opinions: Not much out there. Check out /u/Baphomet 's take in the comments.
Shoutout to Baphomet, and also /u/Baphomet/ who wanted my opinion on some SC and Hangsen Tobaccos.
Youtube first test of SC Seven, Cohiba, Caramel Candy, and Milk Chocolate.