In Harmony

We’ve all encountered this before. You look at some new recipes you haven’t seen before, and they seem to contain way too many flavorings within them. You mix it up anyway because maybe it’s balanced well, but you get a pretty subpar experience from it. Or maybe you’re developing a recipe yourself and you’re going after a profile that’s a bit out of your league. You mix it up, and you find some parts of your recipe are lacking so you decide to add a few things in to make up for some of the lacking aspects. You mix that up, and to no avail, your recipe is still muddled and muddied. Or maybe you mix up a recipe with a flavor profile that’s just too crazy, and the end result is something that just tastes muted. These are all examples of recipes that are incohesive. And prime examples as to why cohesion in your recipes is so important

How do I make Cohesive Recipes?

Cohesion is quite a simple concept to understand. It’s all about making sure every flavoring you input into your recipe, works toward creating the best end result possible. Now that end result is up to you. But more simple flavor profiles, are a lot more easy to create a cohesive recipe for. It’s a lot easier to make a Strawberry recipe cohesive, than it is to make a Tobacco Watermelon Banana Pudding Pop. Balancing those intricate flavor profiles is very difficult, and because cohesion directly coincides with how well the flavorings in your recipe are balanced, it’s always recommended to start small. I’m not saying play it safe every time. I’m just letting you know what you’re in for if you go after those kind of profiles.

Now once you’ve chosen your flavor profile, build your blueprint recipe. This will give you a good understanding of the flavorings needed. From there you can further introduce any accents or subtle notes you want, but keep that cohesion in mind. Ultimately, you need to make sure you’re able to pick up that recipe, vape it, and immediately understand what the flavor profile is. If you can, then you have a cohesive recipe. If not, you probably need to head back to the drawing board.

Accents

Where most mixers get in trouble is with accents, subtle flavors, or more obscure notes, in their recipes. This is always encouraged as they give your recipe the character it needs to stand out and be unique. But it also comes with a challenge. That challenge is keeping your recipe balanced and cohesive. When choosing those accents, it’s always best to stay within the genre of flavors of your recipe. Meaning, you’re making a Strawberry recipe. You want to add some accents in there to make the strawberry more unique than all the others. Adding Raspberry is a much easier flavor to balance, and will provide a much more cohesive experience, than choosing something out of its genre, like Grape. And while some of you might see this as obvious, it’s enough of an issue that I created this entire post to this topic. Mainly, this is due to mixers just getting a bit too wild and thinking a bit too out of the box. Keeping cohesion on the forefront of your mind will always reel you back into reality. So keep your flavors congruent, and your recipes will thank you.

Cohesion Example

Now last I want to give an example of how cohesion works between two recipes.

RECIPE A:

RECIPE B:

Now looking at both of these recipes, which do you think has the more vivid flavor? Which do you think has the best vape? Which do you think brings about the more cohesive experience? It’s Recipe A. You might have hear me say this before, but you always want to get to your flavor profile in the least amount of flavorings possible. This always brings the best, most vivid flavor. But it also creates a more cohesive experience. In the first recipe, you taste the bright strawberry finished with a light fluffy cream. It’s simple in idea, but the flavor is delicious and rich. The second on the other hand has far too much going on. There are multiple flavorings in this recipe that distract away from the main profile, creating an incohesive flavor. Now it might not be terrible, but you’re not getting the best experience possible out of the recipe. For one, there is far too much Ethyl Maltol in this recipe. There are multiple Marshmallows which all contain EM, as well as multiple Strawberries. This will completely mute and muddy the flavor. Consolidating those down into maybe two different creams is a better idea. Also their is just too many strawberry flavorings in here, which you’ll see will end up all distracting eachother. It’s an incohesive experience that can be solved just by thinking a bit more simply and clearly. So I challenge you to look at some of your older recipes, or recipes you might’ve gotten a bit too ambitious with, and seeing if there is any consolidation that needs to be done to help create a more cohesive result. I promise you, you’ll end up with much better recipes, much less waste, and overall just a better vape.