The Flavor Apprentice Sweet Cereal Flakes
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 Sweet Cereal Flakes, 3% and 6%, 60/40 VG/PG base, Steeped 19 days.
Flavor Description: Wet, lightly frosted bran flakes. The second opinions on this are substantially more positive than mine, so make sure to check those.
TPA's description for this is "A sugary corn flake cereal." So conceivably this is modeled after frosted flakes. I'm getting more raisin bran, without the raisins. It's a dryer, duller multigrain cereal base that doesn't really have the sweetness or warmth of corn flakes. Really slight multigrain type of earthiness here with something like a hot iron type of flavor on the extreme tail end. The cereal is a bit bland and has some of that cardboard effect with a dense mouthfeel but not much flavor saturation.
I do get some powdered sugar type sweetness that could pass as the frosted part of a frosted flake, and it actually does taste a bit separated from the cereal base. Flavor is right, but it doesn't seem super frosted. I'd give it about a 3 out of 10 on the frosted scale.
Texture here is a bit strange. It's a very dense vape, but it doesn't really have the grainier mouthfeel you'd expect from a cereal. Doesn't seem to have any kind of harder AP crunch to it. Mouthfeel is still very full and thick, but the cereal feels pre-sogged.
The only other corn cereal flavor I've tried is CAP Cereal 27, and this is fairly different. Cereal 27 is a bit less dense, but it's crunchier and warmer. Even with the frosted part, I think CAP Cereal 27 is a bit sweeter. Cereal 27 reminds me more an actual corn flake than TPA Sweet Cereal Flakes.
Off-flavors: Dense, but not much flavor saturation. Solo, comes off a bit cardboardish. Tastes more like bran than corn. Something kind of metallic on the back end of the flavor.
Throat Hit: No real bite, but dense enough it's a bit hard to take a deep inhale with it, at least solo.
Percentage testing: At 3%, this is probably as close as this is going to get to a corn flake flavor. I don't get much frosting, and it's still too dark for a corn base. Dense flavor, but not uncomfortably so. Very mild cardboard.
At 6%, this is quite a bit denser but still not crispy. Frosted part is coming through a bit more clearly, but this feels even darker and branish.
Just based on these tests, I'd be using this an accent flavor between 2-3% if you wanted anything but a daker cereal flavor. If you did want to go that way, I'd probably go for about 5% as a primary flavor.
Uses & Pairings: I'm not sure this is going to work as a solo or primary frosted flakes flavor. You could get some crunch and sweetness to this by adding in Cereal 27 or straight AP, but the duller bran flavor here is going to pull it off a profile a bit.
But, if you needed a bran flavor the frosted part of this isn't going to stick out when mixed. Maybe use this to add some depth to a a muffin or bread base.
Or hey, raisin bran.
Second Opinions: Here's the ELR Page. User "Silhouette" writes: "Great Frosted Flakes flavor, not as convincing or unique as Speckled Flakes, but still wonderful." User "Outlaw" also seems to dig this: "This smells like Frosted flakes, like tony the tiger ain't got shit on these... So i made stand alone at 5% taste like frosted flakes right away will have to see what time does. so far im happy with this one."
One review up on BCF. User "Amber M" wrote a review titled "Frosted Awesome" : "I'm giving 5, even though this flavor could stand to be a little more potent than what I expect from TPA. It is a really nice, grainy cereal with hints of Frosted sweetness, although it really could use a little more Frosted sugar finish. It's actually not as grainy or potent as TPA Rice Crunchies, which does make it a little more versatile. It can easily be used to add a little crunch to a cereal or cheesecake recipe. I was hoping this would be similar to Speckled Flakes OOO, sadly it's lacking about a quarter of the potency of Speckled Flakes. It's not really too AP heavy, making it very easy to blend with a multitude of flavors. I usually have to use between 2-4% to get a nice grain from this in a mix. It is a splendid flavor though, just light."