Sasami Sweet Blackberry
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: Sasami Sweet Blackberry, 1 and 2.5%, 60/40 VG/PG, Steeped 19 days.
Flavor Description: Sasami is a flavoring company, auf deutsch! They had a couple flavors available on Chef's when I made my last order and decided to give them a shot. I figured why not give their blackberry a try to see if they were some kind of teutonic flavor wizards who managed to actually do a realistic blackberry flavor right... and the results are pretty meh. Flavor feels pretty disjointed. There's actually a really good, dark, jammy blackberry here but it's fighting with a pretty regrettable floral note that tastes awfully similar to FA Blackberry but markedly less intense (not like it's hard though.) Overall effect is like blackberry jam mixed with perfume. I'd probably skip this one because of that floral note, but if you did want to use this I would aim for about 3%.
Inhale is mostly florals. Very perfumey and slightly bitter. Just enough sweet, jammy blackberry underneath to be frustrating. Moderate density on the base, but that floral note is sharp and thin. Exhale is all sorts of floral in the top notes. Jammy blackberry base comes through a little clearer on the exhale, but it's still taking a backseat to the floral. Very natural jammy sweetness to the blackberry. Moderately harsh, but I feel like it's mostly from the floral notes. Lingering perfume.
Off-flavors: Hella floral. More going on underneath than FA Blackberry, but same kind of perfumey / soapy floral note. The blackberry also has a tendency to get ketchup-ish at higher percentages.
Throat Hit: Moderate. Those florals are pretty harsh.
Uses & Pairings: Eh, I'm not digging it really. I've never found a happy place with that perfumey note. It just tastes bad floral to me. I suppose you could mix with this for a jammy blackberry and steep it for a couple months and hope some of that dies off a bit.
Notes: Concentration testing, I'm not finding a percentage where the off-flavors really work. At 1% it's pretty floral. There is some jammier blackberry, but it's pretty light compared to that full floral perfume. At 2.5% that blackberry is a bit stronger, but that floral note is still dominating for me. It's a shame, because that blackberry really is pretty good. At 4%, I'm starting to get some ketchup-y savoryness to the blackberry, like TPA Sweet Raspberry when you overdo it. Florals are still distractingly strong. Taking some advice from the second opinions, I tried this at 10%. Don't do that. It's moved from blackberry jam with perfume to ketchup with perfume.
Second Opinions: