Tutorial Tuesday - Development of a Recipe

by /u/isuamadog

Dear Community,

I made a commitment to myself to continue to try to put out some posts this year. Doing this weekly is a burden I surely can’t maintain. So, if you like what you read, go ahead and comment. I’m not running a giveaway (unless you want to win your very own chance at writing a post!!! -- pm me for details) so you don’t win anything but being an active member and being a part of the course of vaping history. Well, ok, maybe it’s not that serious to you, but it is for me.

Before I begin, do consider doing a few things:

1. Check out the Recipe of the Year thread - you can make a nomination of a recipe found in this sub reddit, or our official Discord (where you can also find much more real time conversation and more than a fair share of stupid jokes). Or you could, i don’t know… exercise your inalienable right to vote? Or better yet, mix up a recipe from 2020 and see what others are mixing?
2. Check out the oft overlooked January Monthly Recipe thread. It’s always a slow month, but that doesn’t mean there aren’t great recipes there.
3. Check out u/Odiedoodah’s new amazing single flavor test thingy-ma-bob. A true unsung hero who makes things happen for us, show your support for the massive amount of work that went into that by simply sharing what you know or tried and possibly win a prize!

Today, Dear Reader, I am going to tell a tale about recipe development. I am going to use an example of something that has evolved for me and somewhat evolved into a bit of a dragon chase. If there’s a moral here, you’d be making it up. This is how the story goes…

What now feels like a million years ago, I picked up FLV Creme de Menthe. A new mixer, I had hardly ever had the experience of trying a flavor and thinking to myself immediately, “OMG this is it! This will make a great X.” In this case, the X factor was a Thin Mint Girl Scout Cookie. But, at that time I was just realizing that I preferred tobaccos and was at the very caboose of the Abuela/Hinterlander/Abuela/Cardinal discovery train. So my first attempts to use it were much in that vein and can be seen here:

1. Coco Mint Puff 1.0 - was an attempt to use the Coco de Leche coconut combo to get a coconut bacco going. Little did I know then, that I was weird about coconut I never did like LdC and probably because of that.
2. Coco Mint Puff 1.1 - was an attempt to use the coconut layer to play off the nuttiness of RB and the spice notes of CT Shade, layer in that CdM and you get a chocolate boost to the cocoa notes in RB and CT Shade. The mix I don’t remember being very good looking back now, it was likely both the coconut and the tpa western that weren’t the right choices.
3. Coco Mint Puff 1.0.1 - is just me being a n00b and thinking throwing MOAR at something will fix it. It doesn’t work. It never did. It never does. Perhaps, you are thinking the moral will be: Less is MOAR. I wish it were that simple, dear reader…

At the same time, I was a doe eyed member of Mixer’s Club in january of 2019, and had it set in my head I would try my hand at a Thin Mint recipe. Heavily influenced by the earlier version of what later became this gem of an article on Batch Testing Tutorial Tuesday by u/mLnikon, I tried my hand at batch developing what I thought at the time was a good approach. I sent in the best submission I could make at that time and got my first feedback that was more positive than I thought it would be. u/ID10-T, god bless his back-as-night soul, gave me some direction, waited patiently for me to throw in the towel and then suggested I try u/jbird’s Skinny Mint. Spoiler Alert: It is perfection.

While I was sad that I “couldn’t figure it out” myself, I was happy that I was halfway on the right track to trusting my tastes: FA Cookie, CdM, some kind of dark molassesey caramel type, bit of chocolate, some kind of custard or cream… I just didn’t have the right moving parts. Perhaps now you think: “Let this be thy lesson! Do thine research”, yet also “To Thine Own Self Be True!” Perhaps, yet the nuts and bolts learning lesson was that CdM and Choc Deutch are brothers in arms. They deliver. That, and, I wanted to give up. How was I ever going to make such wonderful finished mixes such as this, ever? And: Has Everything Great already been made?

One year later, I volunteer to do Noted Ep. 151 'Murica Fuck Yeah! At that time I was deep in tobacco blends and experimenting with creating tobacco heavy RY4 from scratch and mint tobacco as a side experiment. The common thread with those flavors was that hint of chocolate, sometimes more than a hint. It drove me nuts. I really wasn’t expecting it and it was a series of tests that simply were not enjoyable to me. I ended up begrudgingly promoting the Mom and Pops because it had a licorice note yet, in retrospect, it wasn’t an exceptionally good licorice note, it just was. That alone made me like it more than the others after the wonky ass flavors I tried before it. So, here’s the thing. Were the flavors good/bad objectively? Or was it simply not what I was expecting? I never wanted to return to those flavors, except maybe TPA Western for this reason, some lingering resentment towards their failure to be other than weird tobacco blends with chocolate off notes.

***Quick note about TPA Western: I like it. It’s not for everyone. Leather. No other flavor does it as well or even at all. If you want to hear the yang to my yin, just ask u/Foment_life to talk about that flavor :) ***

Ok, where were we? Oh yes, I was telling a story of a recipe. But, dear readers, it was not ONE recipe. This is a story of three recipes. At least, at the end of this, there is a battle that rages deep in the heart of Mordor, unseen by the physical brutal standard war machines of men. I digress…

I tried Flavor Monks Mint Tobacco. At first taste, it was the mint tobacco flavor I had always been wanting. No thought involved. Mix and done. However, ID10-T is right in his review on Noted Ep. 177 Peppermint that the flavor could use a little help from some other tobacco to match the lighter notes that it carries and goes on to list a bazillion options and combinations. More on this in a minute.

I’d already mentioned (if you perhaps remember, dear reader, or have you slowly nodded off after donning your pajamas and sliding into your cozy slippers) that I had been pursuing mint tobacco. A basic tobacco blend and add mint. Very simple. I tried a few: FLV cool menthol, FA Arctic Winter, FW Extreme Ice, INW Natural Mint, INW Mix Mint, and many more. Some worked a bit, some not as well. Nothing could capture the essence of what I truly wanted. Until I tried LB White Chocolate Peppermint. And like, u/mLnikon says, this flavor is a clear case of “the sum is better than the parts”. It’s a strange flavor that tastes both excellent on it’s own and fairly incomplete at the same time. It’s mostly peppermint with a dash of white chocolate and a whole lotta “What do you do with a flavor you don’t know what to do with?” As u/ID10-T always reminds me, we add it to a tobacco. Which is exactly what I set out to do.

I started with trying to accent aspects of the WCPM in some weird ways and hit a combo I just loved. With no clear single tobacco flavor in it, I wanted a weird mix of off notes that would play under the blanket of mint and December 26th was born. In retrospect, I should have known it was incomplete and there was a space for that missing ingredient, that perfect tobacco. I would have thought something pipe-y but I just never felt the need to pursue it, so I felt it was good enough to share. I’d vape it and be happy so, fuck it. Until…one day, I accidentally one day dripped some of my Frank's Vanilla Cohiba on top. F’sVC was built just to accent the Cohiba and make it bold and shine. I was missing a true cigar flavor that hit the gritty bold mouthfeel that I want from a cigar. But when I had mixed the two recipes together? It was ridiculous. I had to look down at my mod. Eureka! Screaming naked down the streets like Archimedes, this was the secret to displacement. I knew this needed to happen.

Dear Reader, have we lost you? Have you gone to the fridge to get some water, as your throat has become scratchy from anticipation? Sadly, our tall tale is long from over. Perhaps you should walk the dog, or kiss your kids gently goodnight. Our story is at the climax and you want to be ready to follow the action towards the resolution phase undisturbed. See? We have stretched the legs and contemplated unfurling the yoga mat, surely knowing better than to pigeon pose at this hour.

The month of December became the month of weird chocolates in Mixer’s Club. Thank u/wolfwheeler. The race to the moon began. On the one hand, we had the WCPM route. Let’s add some real bacco with Cohiba, ditch the Vanilla for Pipe, choose FE over TPA RY4, and mash it all up into a cigar with a splash of the Deutch and Diciembre veinte seis was born. On the other hand, I tried to follow the Faulknerian stream of consciousness flavor babble of u/ID10-T on Noted and batch mixed several versions. God, do I despise HS Australian Chocolate. And, I did not enjoy MB USA Mix (Do you remember our discussion of America, Fuck Yeah! ?). A few versions of this and a short chat with the head chef and Sous Chef was born. At the time of writing this, the results are not quite in. And it wasn’t a fair race since I definitely couldn’t pull off the vision in his mind.

At this point you are exhausted, Dear Reader. And frankly speaking, I am too. It is late in the night and the kids have all gone to bed. The dear wife is sleeping, gently breathing beside your bespectacled silhouette as you hunch over your device longing for the denouement. You want to know whodunit as do I. In fact, the star of the show was a sleeper bottle in the background.

On a whim, I decided to marry them both in tandem towards the goal of reaching the moon. For the sake of simplicity, we airlift the Chocolate Deutch/Creme de Menthe combo to fuel the flight. At the helm, we have the two captains: Mint and Cohiba. Simple, and elegant. All three recipes are different and good in their own ways. Are they ‘done’? At least, for now. Rest your weary eyes, before sleep overtakes you, and dream of the moon.

La Luna

So Dear Reader, is the moral of the story really less is more? Or is it that feel-good trope of the 'journey is the destination'? Is it that stick with what you know and like? Or that we evolve and nothing is static? In the end, Does it really matter?

I'll let u/Apexified flair this. It's over my pay grade.

keep mixing, keep sharing

- i