The Flavor Apprentice Grape Soda
ConcreteRiver
Setup: Recoil w/ flavor barrel, Dual 12 wrap 24g 3.5mm SS316 @.33 ohms. 60w power, 450F temp limit. Full Cotton Wicks.
Testing: TPA Grape Soda, 3% and 6%, others noted, 60/40 VG/PG base, Steeped 17 days.
Flavor Description: An additive to make your grapes more soda-ish as opposed to a full grape soda concentrate.
Very artificial grape base. Flat, thick grape flavor without much vibrancy or juiciness. The grape here can came across as a bit syrupy, but it doesn't have the really intense candy grape flavor of something like LA grape. Feels more like a dimetapp grape rather than grape crush on it's own. Definitely on the purple side of things, I'd call it a concord grape but the implies that flavor occurs anywhere in nature. Grape seems to be taking a back seat to more pronounced artificial soda type notes. Sweet, but not a distressingly high percentage of sucralose sweet, or at least it carries it quite a bit differently than FW Grape Soda.
This is pretty intensely bitter. At lower percentages against the sweetness of the grape, it feels a bit like an aspartame heavy diet grape soda. At higher percentages, those grape notes are little bit more prominent, but the bitterness here gets medicinal. Starts to pull even more towards that dimetapp profile. Actually tastes a bit like leather polish smells. Lower percentages do a decent job of emulating that weird overflavored bitterness in actual grape soda. I'm not getting anything that feels particularly effervescent or fizzy here, but that bitterness does give grapes mixed with it some contrast and somehow makes them feel a bit more mouthwatering and juicy.
Big competition here would probably be FW Grape Soda. While sweet, this isn't as crazy sucralose heavy as the FW. I do feel like the FW Grape Soda has a fuller soda flavor solo, and it's less bitter and medicinal. FW Grape Soda, even with the truly impressive amount of sucralose, is probably a better solo grape soda flavor, but this may work as an accent if you wanted to build your own soda as opposed to FW just acting like a purple sweetener.
Off-flavors: Solo, this has some fairly prominent bitter, medicinal notes. Starts to pick up a leather polish chemical note at higher percentages.
Throat Hit: Light. Nothing really sticks out.
Percentage testing: At 3% the off notes here really stick out. I'm getting dimetapp, basically, with an artificial grape flavor, heavy bitter notes, and almost astringent kind of mouthfeel on top of a syrupy body.
If 3% is dimetapp, then 6% is like someone took just the grape saturated active ingredients back out and served them. Very bitter, with that weird leather goods taste. Probably don't mix this at 6%.
Thinking I was maybe just over-flavoring with this, I started cutting the remainder of the testers. At 1%, the off-flavors were significantly more manageable and actually resembled some of the slightly bitter artificial notes from grape soda. I feel like the grape here isn't a particularly deep flavor and it's taking a back seat to the more aggressive soda-esque or medicinal notes. Works better, but still needs to be filled in.
Just based on these tests, I'd be using this relatively low for a TPA flavor and just as an accent in a fuller grape soda vape. I'd probably start at .5% and work up on top of a fuller grape base.
Uses & Pairings: More of a soda component than a full grape soda. I'd use the distinctly soda notes as an accent and flesh them out quite a bit. I'd probably lean toward a more candied full grape like LA Grape, INW Grapes, or a higher percentage of TPA Grape Juice. If you wanted to go nuts, you could add some FW Pink Champagne for whatever passes for fizz in vaping and some additional brightness.
Outside of a grape soda, this is too artificial for anything realistic, and the off notes are too intense to suggest over other grape flavors for grape candies.
Second Opinions: I'm not sure if this is a reformulated flavor. There are mentions of TPA Grape Soda going back a couple of years, but the TPA spec list for it is still pending, which is usually a sign of a newer flavor. These could very well refer back to an older version of this flavor, so YMMV. I picked this up when it was added to Bull City Flavors within the last couple months.
A couple of notes on ELR. User "MeJuica" writes: "Tastes like crush grape soda really good has a fizz taste to it." User "Pedals4Coffee" adds: "This has a concord grape or florally taste. Grape juicy. the floral flavor has left to be replaced by more grape juice flavor over time. I don't taste soda." Average mixing percentage is 5.6%, which doesn't really match up my testing here.
One review on Chef's. User "Craig C." writes: "Cant go wrong with tfa - mixed 15% - 50/50 with tfa grape juice - excellent. Great mixed with salt water taffy too by flavour west." Again, those percentages seem a bit suspect, at least based on the bottle I have.
And an another suggestion for a 50/50 mix with TPA Grape Juice, this time from a post on TPA Grape Juice from user "magespooks." They suggest starting at 6% and working up. Godspeed.
EDIT: Switched TPA Grape Candy in the Uses & Pairings to TPA Grape Juice. Thanks to ID10-T for pointing that out.