Unless latakia doesn't taste the same to you as it does to everyone else.... jealous..
When I went for something similar to what others say latakia tasted like to them, I had to go with a Dark Fire Cured Burley to get that dark smokey campfire flavor. Unfortunately MyVapeJuice was the only place I knew of that made a juice from it which now leaves doing a DIY extract as the only option unless someone else has started making it also that I'm unaware of.
I'd put Burley up with Turkish tobacco flavors... not better/worse... but about the same medium to medium dark full flavor but typically a little sweeter and maybe a little more woodsy than the Turkish which I felt was a little more on the slightly fruity side.
I feel that fire-cured tobaccos are actually probably a better smokey experience than Latakia in some ways. Not only do they consistently taste like the parent tobacco, but you're not contending with the flavors imparted from the highly aromatic wood & herb smoke used to cure Latakia.
I recall raving about Latakia time and again, but I really wonder if my experience with it is typical.
In retrospect, remembering my first experience with Latakia (W2V's London) I thought it smelled/tasted like a tire fire. I literally could not get past the flavor and couldn't figure out what it was.
Around two years later I tried Clay's take on Latakia, I was able to figure out pretty quickly what that strong taste was & had to walk away from it and come back to it several times. However, his seemed different to me, especially after a steep.
Latakia is weird in that it never tastes the same to me because I don't vape it constantly, and when I come back to it it tastes savory, or aromatic, slightly bacony & woodsy, but with what I can only call a "singed" character that carries that campfire-y note somewhere inside of it. When I lose sensitivity to the flavor I still enjoy the throat-feel it provides, but need to switch to a lighter tobacco just to make sure I don't tune out the flavor further... I never really got "jammy" from it... but my taste buds probably need checked by a professional.
Now, Big & Burley- I can't taste the Latakia in it if I vape it for more than a couple of tanks. However, I can still taste the Burley's nutty character.
I didn't forget about you guys. Got my mixes made up; got frustrated with cotton; encountered a hurricane and received my lifetime supply of rayon a few days later; then of course Nic River has to have a site-wide sale and flavors I've never tried before nearly immediately after that. After having to replace groceries despite the bags of ice holding up in the freezer, mixing up some artibaccos actually did me some good in that they reminded me of how much I enjoy NETs...
Again, though, RY4 is what I come back to or think of often as a frame of reference for dessert-type tobaccos, but I think it doesn't need to be as sweet as a few I've tried.
I forget if I mentioned my speculation on it previously, but I'm now almost completely certain that the old RBFS Count Caramel used FlavourArt Caramel. I really couldn't get past enjoying that full, caramel taste that snuck out after it steeped to look for what notes I was enjoying in the tobacco to be entirely honest.
Going to have to try some fresh mixes in this rayon I picked up. My thinking is lower % of flavor should work if it's not all getting trapped in the wicks, and in turn less coil gunk to deal with anyways. Perhaps my Latakia experience will also change accordingly, or it may turn into more of a complex relationship involving more Burley & Perique.
So far, it's working very well with custards and other things I would normally expect to darken wicks very quickly- the wicks are staying light to off-white and the coils are darkening. There are some wicking method adjustments (length & size of tails and amount in coil) that needed to be made, but the payoff is impressive so far.
I'll try to actually get these testers mixed up tonight so I won't have any excuses. I think I may have some Frenchy's left, so I can play around with using some of that with the caramel... will probably put it in plastic so I can shorten the steep.
