Flavourart

I had a rant a while back about how, for me, mixology had become a bit of a disappointment.

Having gathered together a large collection of concentrates from The Flavour Apprentice / Perfumers Apprentice, Capella, with a few Flavour West thrown in for good measure, I was all set up to make a whole host of amazing recipes I’d gathered from the interweb.

I made them. I steeped them. I toked them. They were shit.

Well, some were shit. Some were acceptable. Virtually NONE were fabulous. How crestfallen was I.

So I started buying the “one-shot” concentrates and have been quite a happy bunny since. I get to toke my way through juices that range from good to superb for minimal cost. BUT I still had the hankering to mix my own recipes.

I’d been reading a lot of threads on VAPINGUNDERGROUND.COM, in particular threads by a contributor called Headinclouds ( HIC ). The recipes HIC was posting were right up my street, but were made with a brand I’d not invested in. Flavourart. They were more expensive than the ones I’d been buying ( £3.20 vs £1.99 on average ), and TFA and Capella were more popular on recipe websites, so I’d sort of passed them by.

Yet I couldn’t help coming back to these Flavourart recipes, reading how good they were. Could it be true? Could recipes using Flavourart concentrates make any difference?

Feck it… I’ll just spend MORE money and give them a try.

Thank chuff I did. Flavourart concentrates are worth every penny! For a start they are much more concentrated. 1-3% of Flavourart concentrate will make as much juice as up to 15% of TFA/PA or Capella. You basically get more end product for your money. Also the usage of each flavour is relatively consistent percentage wise ( 1-4% ), whereas other brands can wildly vary from 1% up to 15% depending on each individual flavour, and a lot of experimentation is need to get it right.

Most importantly the flavours are really very good. The Lemon sicilty is a lovely tart and tangy limoncello flavour, the caramel really is a soft sweet authentic caramel, the cookie tastes like a soft baked cookie. What you expect from a flavour you get. No chemical aftertastes, no ‘odd’ or ‘off’ notes. Just accurate flavouring.

Maybe I’ve been lucky in the flavours I’ve collected so far, but I’m happy with nearly all of them. There are just a couple that I have issues with, but it’s for very specific and personal taste reasons, and likely most other people will love them. Below is a list of what I have so far and what I think.

Blackcurrant

This is a realistic blackcurrant that certainly doesn’t taste confectionery-like or Ribena-like. It is very much ‘juice from a pressed blackcurrant’. Problem is, for me, it doesn’t translate into a pleasurable vape. It dominates mixes and has a slight ‘curried’ flavour to it sometimes, much like in Aerovape Black Purps. Maybe need to use it in smaller amounts to support other more dominant fruit flavours.

Caramel

Soft and a little creamy, this caramel is like the centre of a Rolo, or the caramel in a Mars bar. It refuses to be a key stand-out flavour in a mix, happier to be part of a choir rather than shine as a soloist. I enjoying adding 2-3% to a custard juice to make custard with a caramel undertone.

Catalan Cream

Catalan cream is described as a creme brulee flavour and I can see why. The creaminess is of a richer tone, with a subtle spicy ( cinnamon/nutmeg? ) note and a slight lemony hint. There’s even a hint of brown sugar or caramel in there somewhere. Complex for a cream, makes for a lovely addition to bakery/pudding blends.

Chocolate

Flavourart chocolate is your confectionery chocolate flavour that is quite realistic both to smell and taste, but has a slight alcoholic liqueur hint to it as well. This is more like chocolate flavoured sauce than sauce made of real chocolate ( if than makes sense ). Personally though, I’m not finding the taste when vaping this enjoyable, maybe as I vape at high wattage and apparently this and cocoa ‘burn’ if too much heat is applied across the coil. Need to experiment more…

Cocoa

Where Chocolate ( above) is a confectionery flavour, cocoa is the dry, dark powdered sibling used in baking and hot chocolate drinks. Again despite being realistic in both smell and taste, as with Chocolate above, cocoa isn’t a flavour for me at the moment for the same vaping reasons… tastes a little odd when too much heat applied.

Mix both Chocolate and Cocoa together to create different types of chocolate effect.

Cookie

Wow. The reason I bought ANY Flavourart concentrates. Cookie is a spot-on soft-baked, no added extras cookie flavour. Well I say cookie. it could also be perceived as a ‘bakery’ effect and, combined with other bakery flavours, potentially create bakery and pudding products as well.

Think of any type of cookie you like, find a few flavours that fit ‘the profile’ of your ideal cookie and shake em together. BAM, you got a good cookie juice! Want a strawberry shortcake biscuit? Try 3% cookie with 2% strawberry and a hint of vanilla ( I use 2% TFA vanilla swirl until I get some FA Vanillas ). Add 1% Catalan Cream to make it a Strawberry Shortcake Cream. Piece of piss.  Cookie is such a good, flexible concentrate!

Custard

NOT your regular ‘vanilla custard’ flavour! Forget what you know. This is custard Italian style! Proper egg-made custard infused with a little lemon and a hint of vanilla. creamy but not bold. I’ve vaped this standalone and while it’s nice after a little steep, and the lemon has almost gone, it is obvious FA custard needs to be part of a mix. Mix Custard with Cookie as a start to a ‘cake’ style creation. Nice when mixed with strawberry on a 1:1 ratio for example as a change to Strawberries n Cream!

Fresh Cream

It is what it says in the name. Fresh cream. No hint of anything. It’s uses are fairly obvious, to make something taste creamier in a dairy sense. What I have noticed is that Fresh Cream seems to suck sweetness out of a mix, so some re-balancing and tweaking may be required when using this to compensate. When mixed fresh, I get a bit of a butyric acid hit but that fades over a few days steeping.

Fuji Apple

Blimey, Fuji Apple is strong! It has a clean and clear fresh apple flavour. This isn’t the sort of apple I’d use in an apple bakery recipe at all. It’s just not soft and mellow enough! Fuji Apple is strong and punchy, and so far I’m finding it hard to create any sort of enjoyable recipe. Currently trying a toffee apple mix using this and caramel with a bit of cream and vanilla but so far the apple seems too prominent. Hoping that steeping may calm it sown somewhat.

Lemon Sicily

Holy heck this is zingy at first! Tastes like limoncello and is a great bright flavour when freshly mixed. Calms down quite quickly though to a soft lemon flavour. Have noticed can taste a little perfumy in certain mixes and need to learn what NOT to mix with it or what percent of this NOT to use to avoid this. I imagine FA Lime cold pressed or tahiti added to this would prolong the zestiness if required. Nice with FA cookie to make a lemon biscuit, or FA cookie and FA catalan cream and a little vanilla to make a lemon cream shortbread.

Meringue

Basically there are dry, crumbly underbaked white meringues a la pavlova, or soft, caramalised slightly gooey meringues a la Lemon Meringue Pie. FA Meringue is the latter. Adds a slight sweetness to mixes along with a little ‘fluffiness’ and a hint of burnt sugar. If ever there was a flavour suited to a Lemon Meringue Pie mix… then (duh!) this is it. Useful in other mixes as well, such as cereal vapes.

Strawberry

A natural strawberry flavour that doesn’t quite reach the heights of ‘realness’ as TPA Ripe strawberry. BUT it comes a close second and is very nice indeed. Not a confectionery/artificial strawberry, is really nice with bakery/creamy mixes. One of the better strawberry flavours I’ve had.

Tiramisu

Fook me this is a super strong concentrate! where most of the Flavourart range can be used at 1 to 3% on average, more if needed, Tiramisu would blow your cock off above 3%! Tiramisu, like Catalan Cream, is almost a blend in itself. If you use some stand alone at about 2% and steep it, you will get tastes of cream, coffee, chocolate and cake. Mix this with something like catalan cream and with just two concentrates you can create a quite complex juice with very little effort! Try 1% Tiramisu with 1-2% catalan and 1-2% vienna cream or fresh cream and steep for a few days for something simple yet delectable. Honest, try it.

Vienna Cream

Where Fresh cream is a simple plain cream with no frills, Vienna Cream adds a little richness, sweetness and thickness to the cream. It also comes along with a little vanilla flavouring. Basically you’d pour FA Fresh Cream over a pudding, but you’d pipe FA Vienna Cream into or over a cake.

FINAL THOUGHTS

So there we have it. My mini-reviews of the flavours I’ve bought so far from Flavourart. Oh I am indeed impressed. It has restored my mixology faith. I HAVE made VERY GOOD juices.

Inevitably there are flavours that I personally aren’t that arsed about or don’t impress me. It’s not to say they aren’t good… they just aren’t doing it for me. Take FA Blackcurrant for example. I really like blackcurrant as a flavour. And If I smell or taste a little of this on my finger I get, yup, proper blackcurrant fruit. It just doesn’t taste as I’d like in a vape. I may yet find a way to wriggle this into a recipe and learn to deal with it, but that’s part of the fun I suppose.

At the end of the day you can chuck two or three of their concentrates together, and providing you don’t push the percentage of each too high ( usually 3-4% max in mixes ), the quality of the liquids will usually shine through and reward you with a very acceptable end product indeed.

Worth every penny I paid and will be expanding my range very soon!

( I will be adding to this list of reviews as and when I buy more flavours )

PEEGOREVAPES RATING : 

Cheers, Peegore

I bought them here – Chefs Vapour