The Flavor Apprentice Cranberry Sauce
ConcreteRiver
Setup: Recoil w/ flavor barrel, Dual 15 wrap 26g 3mm Nifethal 70 coils @.14 ohms. 60w power, 450F temp limit. Full Cotton Wicks.
Testing: TPA Cranberry Sauce, 2 and 5%, 60/40 VG/PG, Steeped 7 days.
Flavor Description: Interesting, but closer to Swedish Fish than to cranberry sauce.
There are some tarter cranberry top notes in here, but the body doesn't really seem like much like a cranberry flavor. There's a sweeter, almost candied lingonberry or red currant type of flavor. Tastes more IKEA than thanksgiving, if that makes any sense at all. The body of the flavor really does push toward that bright red swedish fish kind of taste. The tartness takes it away from a candy raspberry, but it doesn't really have the thinner body of a raw cranberry, or the warmer sweeter body of a cooked cranberry or cranberry juice.
Texture here pushes toward the gummy swedish fish thing as well. It has some of the stickiness you'd expect from a cranberry sauce, but it's too thin and not really jammy. It has some light chewiness which, along with the red candy thing, is hitting more of the candy profile. This is also fairly sweet, which just reinforces the candy thing.
I pick up a light to moderate red licorice off of this, which has a bit of cherry edge. The cherryish flavor here gets a bit plastic and odd at higher percentages.
This isn't an ethyl alcohol bomb like straight TPA Cranberry, but it also don't really taste like cranberry. On their product page, TPA pitches this as a non-flammable alternative to their cranberry flavor: A rich, full cranberry flavor. This is also a great, non-flammable alternative to our original Cranberry Flavor!"
Off-flavors: Most of it. I don't really get cranberries here. It also has some harsher plastic red candy notes that get unpleasant at higher percentages.
Throat Hit: Moderate. Not as harsh as TPA Cranberry but it still has a pretty sizable throat hit.
Percentage testing: At 2%, I get a red candy accent. Some tartness, but mostly just tastes "red." Pretty heavily sweet, without much mouthfeel.
At 5% this is quite a bit more intense. I get an overblown, tart swedish fish without as much texture as I'd like. More gummy than jammy. Starting to pick up some plastic off notes.
I'd mix with this a tarter accent around 1-2% and a primary flavor between 3-4%. Gets harsh and unpleasantly artificial above that.
Uses & Pairings: I'd pretty much just ditch the cranberry thing. While it could add some cranberry-esque tartness I don't think it has much of a cranberry flavor.
I'd probably use it red candy flavors, seems like a good base for red sour patch kids if you don't want to go full blown malic acid sour additive.
I can also see it being used to bend red licorice or swedish fish flavors into something a bit more interesting and tart.
Second Opinions: I can't find much here.