Updating

Remixing, updating, tweaking, changing, whatever the word is, is something all of us mixers do when it comes to our recipes, or recipes from others. It's just in our nature to keep tweaking and changing things until we reach that illusive "perfect" mix. I mean think about it, how many times have you've gone back to an old recipe of yours to try and make it "better", only to end up going in a completely different direction that you first intended. I know I do. I have about 400 different Strawberry & Cream recipes where none of them reach the "perfect" flavor I'm looking for. And I don't think I will ever get there. Learning to say "done" was a skill that took me a long time to learn. 

A Variant of PRY4-U

This little recipe is just a variant of my popular (and still one of my favorites) recipes of last year. The original is a pistachio, caramel, cookie, dessert recipe with light notes of tobacco on the end of the vape. The reason I decided to tweak it was because Kate's favorite eliquid is my PRY4-U recipe, and we currently ran out of the ENYAWREKLAW Concentrate, so I needed to whip her up a batch on the scratch. I decided to try and play with the recipe a bit while I had the chance, just to see what else could be done with the profile. The goal was to create the same type of flavor as the original, to please Kate, but add more of a vivid caramel flavor as well as a darker tone with more of a presence of RY4. The pistachio and cookie felt dominate in the original recipe, and in this recipe I wanted to make those flavor profiles as more of an accent. Here's the recipe we landed on. While it's not exactly what we want yet, we seem to be on the right path and we just need to fine tune it a bit.

PRY4-U (rev 2.6) 

Flavor Notes:

So I'm not going to lay out every single detail of this recipe. It's very much like the original so if you want to know the deep science behind this recipe, you can head over there to find out. In this piece I only want to highlight the major players and changes from the original and what it does to the recipe in the mix. 

FW Graham Cracker: This flavoring was used because of how much I enjoy the bland cookie flavor from it. It does a wonderful job of pairing its flavor with the rich caramels and light tobacco. Unfortunately, it's not perfect and I feel a better graham cracker or cookie flavor is out there that can compliment this recipe better. But it's not bad. Not bad at all. 

MF Caramel: One thing we definitely wanted in this version of the recipe was a more vivid caramel. MF Caramel, while not particularly vivid, does do a great job of parlaying that caramel note into the recipe without adding any off-notes. We still feel the caramel is not where we want it. Maybe adding more MF Caramel will do the trick, or maybe a different caramel all together. But this flavoring paired up with HS VBIC does make for a delicious flavor. 

HS VBIC: This flavoring was added to the mix for its more rich flavor. This Vanilla Bean Ice Cream is one that has a deeper richness about it, and isn't too heavy in the recipe. We added it in here to help push that Caramel along down a dessert like, soft crack like, state. It did a great job of doing that, though I wonder if TFA VBIC would've done the same with a better "creaminess" added to the recipe. 

OVERALL: Overall the recipe doesn't quite nail the profile we wanted. We don't really know what we want which is the issue, but this definitely isn't "it." And that's not to say this is a bad recipe. On the contrary, Kate seems to really enjoying this recipe and as do I. We just feel the caramel is not quite right yet, and that seems to be the missing link right now. The balance is also a bit off, though the pistachio does sit in the mix perfectly. Such a great flavoring. Anyway, if you enjoy the original PRY4-U, you can give this a go and see what you think.