Charlie Noble recipes + notes (with permission from Matt)

[ShowMeTwice]

I am posting discontinued Charlie Noble recipes as developed by Matthew Topolski (director of research and development of Walker Trading Company). These are being posted with his very kind permission.

Matt started posting Charlie Noble discontinued recipes back in October of 2016. His flavor notes and usage of EM and other additives are indispensable. It's funny how I hear many people saying "all the commercial e-juice companies use tons of flavor and sweetener" or "they are using ingredients we don't have access to". His recipes prove otherwise.

He has been a guest on Wayne's "InTheMix with" the DIY or DIE YouTube channel. Here:



Also DIY or DIE vaping site - search for "The One With Charlie Noble - A Master Of His Craft" - it's a really good 2 ½ hour talk on mixing and the ejuice industry. Matt starts at the 6:40 mark. Here: The One With Charlie Noble – DIY OR DIE Vaping

I highly recommend both of the above because there are many, many DIY gold nuggets in both! Also Wayne of DIY or DIE = props and awesome stuff as always.

There are many great people in the DIY community who freely share information and there simply are not enough thanks to go around (I try).

When I first started vaping I had problems finding juice I enjoyed which led me down the DIY path from the start. At the time I got a lot of help from a friend and his wife who were very seriously into DIY. I didn't give up entirely on retail juice and one day I found CN Commodore Pearry which was my favorite retail juice. When Matt posted this recipe I whipped up a batch pronto.

Special thanks to Matt - you are super man!!!

I believe these recipes and notes to be very valuable to the DIY community for folks just getting started and veterans alike. Matt's notes alone will be very helpful to those new to DIY and to all.

Here we go...

 

[ShowMeTwice]

Charlie Noble PB Cereal was the first recipe released on Oct 20, 2016

Thoughts from Charlie

The Not--so discontinued Series: PB Cereal

It's time…to release the recipe!

A few months ago, we had to make some hard choices. August 8th was bearing down on us, we moved our liquids to 60mL bottles with a new label design, and we were in the middle of launching a new line -‐ Ten Buck Juice. Unfortunately, we weren’t able to bring every flavor into the new lineup. These were very difficult choices to make, so we chose to make the decision the only fair way...by locking our staff in a conference room with a selection of sharp implements and having them duke it out, Thunderdome style. Two liquids enter, one liquid leaves. Once we finally got the stains out of the carpeting, I realized that instead of just discontinuing the liquids, we could release the recipes! So here is the first in an occasional series, and a chance to discuss how I developed some of our flavors.

Anyone that knows me in real life knows that I am a bit of a cereal fanatic. If I say I’m going to have a bowl of cereal, my wife often replies ‘...you mean a BOX of cereal?’. I will admit that there is quite a bit of truth there...so it was only natural that we had wanted to release a cereal flavor for the Charlie Noble line. Fruity cereal vapes had gotten a lot of attention in the months leading up to releasing the Admiral’s Reserve line, and in the spirit of full disclosure, I do not care for fruit-‐flavored cereal AT ALL. I’m a graham/chocolate/honey nut/peanut butter/rolled oat/marshmallow cereal kind of guy, so that’s what we were going to make for our cereal vape. I had been disappointed by the majority of peanut butter vapes on the market, so I said ‘hey, cereal is pretty tough to get right, so why don’t I just double down on the difficulty and make a peanut butter cereal flavor? Brilliant!’

TPA Peanut Butter - 8.50%
CAP Sugar Cookie - 5.50%
CAP Vanilla Custard V2 - 3.5%
TPA Malted Milk - 1.5%
FW Bavarian Cream - 0.50%
FW Cotton Candy OR Ethyl Maltol - 0.50%
Saline Solution - 1d/10ml
Acetyl Pyrizine - 1d/10ml

TPA Peanut Butter – you want peanut butter? Use this. The trick is to find the right background flavors to balance it out. Use too much, or don’t have a strong enough background to stand up against it, and it will just overpower everything, or develop a distinct burnt taste. Here we are going to use a bakery and a few creams to stand on the other side of the see-‐saw, and keep everything playing nicely together. The DX variant did not exist when we made this liquid, but it can be used with quite nice results.

CAP Sugar Cookie V2– there are better choices to use for the bakery note in a cereal recipe now, and even some really nice cereal bases [I’m looking at you, CAP Cereal 27], but in 2014? Not so much. I needed a sweet, full bakery note that wouldn’t get totally lost behind peanut butter. This fit in quite nicely, and is a solid choice for any mix that needs some sugary roundness to fill in behind the accents.

CAP Vanilla Custard V2 – simple truth time, everyone...this is the standard for vanilla custards or creams. I know there are other custards and creams that work better for specific applications, but CAP VC V2 is a workhorse. You can use it to accent, you can use it to cover, you can use it to blend. I use it here to take the edge off of the peanut butter, turning it towards a creamy peanut butter flavor, and making sure that the burnt peanut flavor won’t rear its ugly head whilst I’m enjoying my vape. It also plays a part in the ‘milk in the bottom of the bowl’ portion of the liquid. We use DX, V2, & diketone-‐free formulas wherever possible in our production liquids, but if I’m mixing this up for myself...I may use some V1 instead. Maybe.

TPA Malted Milk – say what? Yeah, Malted Milk. See, I didn’t want fresh milk, I wanted that milk left over in the bowl after you just crushed most of the box. Malted Milk is a tricky flavor, and can get really weird, really quickly. I feel that you need to use it in conjunction with two other cream notes, and keep it under 3%. In this application, it’s playing off of the grain undertones in the peanut butter and the cookie, and the sweeter cream part is working with the custard to make that sweetened milk flavor that I was searching for, along with...

FW Bavarian Cream – strictly here to be a sweet dairy note. It’s the third part of the dairy trifecta, and is only here to fill out the missing portion of that milky note I needed. You can try subbing this out with different dairy flavors that you enjoy, just remember that it’s supposed to be in the background.

Cotton Candy/Ethyl Maltol – this is not here for sweetness! Please, can we all just take a minute and set down the EM and sucralose? If you need to add multiple percentages of a sweetener, then you need to revise that recipe. Ok, done preaching. EM is amazing when used for its real purpose – rounding off rough edges. It can make flavors layer together, or can make that one sharp accent drop down a notch or two. Half a percent is just about perfect for that purpose.

Saline Solution – yeah. Salt. Peanut butter is salty. Salt makes things taste more like...well, more like whatever they are. There’s a reason that salt is added into almost every recipe I can think of, both savory and sweet. Occasionally, when you’re working on a bakery recipe that is almost there, but is just missing that little bit of ‘pop’, saline may be that missing bit of sparkle. Sterile saline solution, get it at a drugstore, or make your own with some distilled water. Just a touch, though. We don’t want to actually taste salt, we want to use it to enhance and accent the flavors that are already there.

Acetyl Pyrizine – another accent molecule. Tread with caution, as a tiny bit too much will turn all of your hard work into corn chips. Use a drop or two in bakery or tobaccos that are missing that bready/grainy flavor. Seriously, though, a drop. It is here to bring out a touch more of the grain note I needed for a true to life cereal flavor.

Hopefully a few of you that have been letting us know how much you miss PB Cereal will now be able to satisfy that craving, and a few more of you will give mixing e-‐liquid a try. Drop some comments, discuss your thoughts, or just let us know what you think! Also, stay tuned, as we will continue to release recipes for discontinued liquids. As always, thank you all, and I can’t wait until next time.

 

[ShowMeTwice]

Charlie Noble Canary Coulis is the second recipe released on Mar 09, 2017

Thoughts from Charlie

The Not--so discontinued Series: Canary Coulis

Whew...we made it through the holidays, and now as the weather starts to warm up, I thought maybe it would be a good time to drop a recipe for one of the lighter, brighter flavors that Charlie Noble has ever released!

Melon flavors are love/hate for a lot of vapers, myself included. Canary Coulis falls into the ‘love’ camp for me, but since it was originally a seasonal flavor, it was put on the chopping block once we saw what was going to be required for PMTAs. Really quite a shame, this is a great, refreshing vape, perfect for the summer. Without further ado...onto the recipe and flavor notes!

TFA Honeydew - 4.00%
FW Cantaloupe - 5.00%
FA Watermelon - 3.00%
TFA Papaya - 1.50%
TFA Cotton Candy - 1.00%
TFA Philippine Mango - 3.00%
TFA Sour - 0.50%

TFA Honeydew – hands down, my favorite melon flavor. But it’s STRONG. ‘well, if it’s so strong, why is it at 4%?’ I can already hear you asking. Because we should have a good melon base, that will stand up to the other flavors that we are going to layer on top. I don’t want the honeydew getting lost in the mix.

FW Cantaloupe – I have my problems with FW, but one thing I can say is that they have some amazing fruit flavors. Real fruit, candy fruit, sour fruit...give them a look if you’re not finding what you need from the other flavor houses. I like this cantaloupe here because it is a lighter melon, but adds some depth and fullness to the honeydew, while still leaving the cantaloupe flavor in the background. This is a ‘wetter’ flavor, and is used at a higher percentage to make sure the final liquid doesn’t become overpowering.

FA Watermelon – a real watermelon flavor. Even down to the earthy notes of rind. Amazing depth, and adds to that melon medley we’re going for. Plays nicely with the previous two melon flavors, just to add that body we want.

TFA Papaya – now it’s time for the ‘coulis’ portion of the liquid. ‘What’s a coulis?’ A coulis (﴾/kuːˈliː/ koo-‐lee; French)﴿ is a form of thick sauce made from puréed and strained vegetables or fruits. A vegetable coulis is commonly used on meat and vegetable dishes, and it can also be used as a base for soups or other sauces. Fruit coulis are most often used on desserts. Raspberry coulis, for example, is especially popular with poached apples or Key lime pie. [thanks, Wikipedia!]

So, the goal here was to build a melon salad, and then have a tropical fruit reduction/syrup on top. Papaya does a wonderful job, with the sweetness, and with a bit of darker, earthy notes as well. It just fits right into this recipe like we were playing Tetris.

TFA Cotton Candy – in production, we use a 10% ethyl maltol in PG solution, because we can make it fresh as needed, and because it’s cheaper than buying Cotton Candy. Either way, the EM is here strictly as a tool to smooth out the rough edges of all that melon and papaya. I don’t use sucralose, and I honestly try to avoid EM, except where it makes sense. This is one of those cases. I’ve said it before, I will say it again...if you must add multiple percentages of a sweetener to get your recipe to taste how you want, you need to rework that recipe.

TFA Philippine Mango – this flavor. Wow. Dead on mango. Knocked me on the floor the first time I tried it. Now it’s used here to add to the coulis. The mango and papaya work great together to give me that tropical, sweet, syrupy vibe I’m looking for, without taking over the whole recipe. They really complement each other and the melon very nicely.

TFA Sour – same as the EM, we make our own with citric acid and PG, or for tart and sour you can add some tartaric acid as well. Are your fruit mixes missing a little pop? A little underwhelmed? Add a bit of sour, it will brighten up almost any fruit. Go easy though, it will kill flavor at too high of a percentage, and high amounts will also kill coils just as quickly as sucralose.

There you go, a nice, bright flavor for you to enjoy as you make your way to the pools and beaches for spring break, and as we move into the summer. Give it a try, and be sure to let us know what you think!

Thank you, all of you, and until next time.

 

[ShowMeTwice]

Charlie Noble Commodore Pearry is the third recipe released on Apr 26, 2017

The Not--so discontinued Series: Commodore Pearry

Welcome back to the latest installment of our occasional series, featuring some of the Charlie Noble flavors that have been discontinued, but never forgotten! I had a plan for the order of the recipe releases, but Commodore Pearry has been far and away the most requested, so ask and ye shall receive.

When Commodore Pearry was developed, I had been working on several different flavor concepts for a few weeks, and just wasn’t in love with any of them. There was a lot of potential in a few of them, but nothing was popping. After making another dozen or so variations, I decided that maybe a break was what I needed, get some food, find something else to do for the rest of the day. I ended up in a Latin market, and saw a can of pear nectar. Light bulb moment. Realized that I love pears, I love pear nectar, and I hadn’t had a good pear e-‐liquid in quite a while. Bought a few cans of the juice, bought a few pears, and headed back to the laboratory with the beginning of a concept.

Obviously, Commodore Pearry didn’t stay as a straight up pear nectar flavor, but instead shifted to a creamy, silky, pear e-‐liquid. There are a few reasons, mainly that we were still in the middle of the cream/custard era of e-‐liquids. Also, a strong pear flavor can develop a ridiculous throat hit without something to balance it out. Remember, we’re talking about the era of mechanical mods and RDAs being the dominant hardware in the vape world. Hence, the birth of the Commodore.

On to the recipe!

TPA Pear - 6.50%
FW Bavarian Cream - 3.50%
CAP Vanilla Custard V2 - 3.50%
CAP French Vanilla V2 - 1.50%
CAP Coconut - 1%
FW Caramel Candy - 0.50%

Pear [TPA] – Just a great all around pear. FA makes a truer pear flavor, Capella makes a sweeter pear, but TPA pear is just a wonderful, full, juicy, pear flavor. This is also my favorite pear to use to complement other fruit flavors to fill out a recipe, or to accentuate an apple note in a liquid. I really wanted to keep this recipe simple, layer the flavors nicely, and give everything room to breathe and work with each other. This percentage is kind of high, unless you’re going to balance it with some dense creams...

Bavarian Cream [FW] – yeah, Flavor West. I have my issues with them, but the flavors they do right, they do REALLY right. This is the beginning of the cream base, and it works wonderfully with the other 3 parts. This has a wonderful dense mouthfeel, and brings the cream notes without being overly sweet. I tend to use this in equal portions to the other main part of any self-‐respecting cream base...

Vanilla Custard V2 [CAP] – c’mon, man. You had to know this was going to be the next ingredient. The gold standard of custards. ‘nuff said. This fills the rest of the cream out, and rounds out all of the other flavors. I might use some V1 if I was making it for my personal use. Maybe.

French Vanilla V2 [CAP] – Vanilla pairs wonderfully with pear. So we have a strong pear flavor, balanced it with a rich cream base, and now we need to get the accents in place to make the flavors really start to pop. A little bit of French Vanilla works perfectly here. Give the note to play off the pear, and to lay nicely with the creams. Just enough to be noticeable, but not enough to try and steal some of the spotlight.

Coconut [CAP] – the old liquid maker’s trick, a tiny bit of coconut to make anything dairy related taste a little bit more realistic. Just a touch, you don’t want to actually taste coconut.

Caramel Candy [FW] – just some more accents, and caramel pairs amazingly well with both pears and vanilla creams. This is a strong flavor, so once again I’m only adding enough to play the part of highlighting the other flavors, but not enough to become one of the forefront flavors. I want it to blend into the background, and be another component that ties the entire recipe together.

There it is, Commodore Pearry! One of my favorites, and it’s wonderful to be able to share the recipe with all of you.

 

[mattymatt82]

I have made the PB cereal recipe and I thought it was pretty good.

 

[newyork13]

Thanks for posting this and thanks as well to Topolski for releasing the recipes. I just ordered more Ten Buck That's Nuts, which though under my preferred and usual nic level, is really nice.

 

[ShowMeTwice]

Matt told me there will be a CN Chocolate Mousse recipe from the yogurt line coming soon...