I have been playing around with developing flavors more and looking at a lot of recipes. From my experience doing DIY so far the main thing that was lacking in my juice was "mouthfeel" or "vape satisfaction"/"pop" The store bought juice seems to be "full", "creamy" or "juicy" where as my juice would be true to flavor but lacking this fullness.
Based on the juices I like I am not SO much concerned about the primary flavor as I am about mouth feel/satisfaction. The juices I really like have *something* in them that on exhale it just feels really really satisfying to me.
With my latest recipe I reversed the process and found modifiers that I can use to adjust this experience which I have not used in the past. Plain fruit flavors (ie juicy peach) straight from the flavor bottle doesn't do much for me and I quickly tire of it. Adding sweetener helps a bit but still meh. So I am using malic acid, citric acid and tart & sweet to adjust the mouth feel. I add them just enough to modify the mouth feel but not enough to induce any puckering or main flavor note standouts, just enough to enhance and modify the main flavor. Yes it does end up giving it a more candy taste than a plain fresh fruit taste but I am OK with that since it is much more enjoyable to vape due to the mouth feel it adds.
Quite a few of the recipes I have looked at do not include all of these ingredients. I was getting the problem of my vape tasting bland/dry. Adding citric acid made the fruit "pop" but when I noticed something missing in the profile I added malic acid. It was in such a small amount that it did not change the sour profile but just filling in something missing in the total flavor profile. The base of this recipe is based around tart and sweet and using this for fruits is essential for me. I find adding it in the right amounts you can target flavors that do not taste totally like sweet tarts/smarties, but just adds "freshness" to the profile.
There is a delicate balance finding the sweet spot mixing all of the acids, too much of one and there is a VERY disagreeable taste. At some points there was what I can only describe as a battle in my mouth between tart and sour, and it was not pretty. But once I started adding and tweaking I could quickly see how each one adjusted the flavor profile and after vaping could usually know just what I needed to add to get what I wanted. The key to this was realizing that the "sour" flavor is malic acid and not citric (rookie mistake).
My questions are:
Is it wrong to be adding all these extra's in and doing things this way? I get the feeling from reading on here that by doing this it is viewed as an amateur chef adding in a bunch of MSG or cheesy sauce to cover up the main recipes imperfections? I have yet to run across a recipe that uses all of what I mentioned above in one single recipe.
I am starting the develop recipes backwards by finding a combination of things that give a good mouth feel / background notes and then adding in main flavor notes and then finally tweaking the acids (in the case of fruits) or creams (or others like vanillin) to get the final notes I am looking for. I used to start out thinking about the flavor I am trying to create (ie cookies and cream) by picking out what the top flavor notes would be and then start mixing those. Now I know the cream is going to be the flavor "carrier" and develop one that is really oreo'y/creamy/satisfying and then start working on the cookie part of it. Going the other way would not end up with a good mouthfeel/satisfaction. It is so much easier to dilute a known good flavor combination (the oreo cream to tone it down vs cookie) than it is to try modify the whole flavor profile at the same time. Adding in flavors later to get the cookie taste will change the cream but since I have known good starting flavor profile in my brain I can then modify to get that flavor back. I may not have found it though if I started with cookie in the mix from the start. Does anyone else do it this way?
I don't recall reading anything regarding this question specifically, when developing a recipe do you develop the background/mouthfeel first or work with the primary notes and fill in the rest? Not that one way is necessarily better than another but I have had more success going backwards to what I think is conventional wisdom. But maybe I am under the wrong impression and this IS actually how it is supposed to be done?
Based on the juices I like I am not SO much concerned about the primary flavor as I am about mouth feel/satisfaction. The juices I really like have *something* in them that on exhale it just feels really really satisfying to me.
With my latest recipe I reversed the process and found modifiers that I can use to adjust this experience which I have not used in the past. Plain fruit flavors (ie juicy peach) straight from the flavor bottle doesn't do much for me and I quickly tire of it. Adding sweetener helps a bit but still meh. So I am using malic acid, citric acid and tart & sweet to adjust the mouth feel. I add them just enough to modify the mouth feel but not enough to induce any puckering or main flavor note standouts, just enough to enhance and modify the main flavor. Yes it does end up giving it a more candy taste than a plain fresh fruit taste but I am OK with that since it is much more enjoyable to vape due to the mouth feel it adds.
Quite a few of the recipes I have looked at do not include all of these ingredients. I was getting the problem of my vape tasting bland/dry. Adding citric acid made the fruit "pop" but when I noticed something missing in the profile I added malic acid. It was in such a small amount that it did not change the sour profile but just filling in something missing in the total flavor profile. The base of this recipe is based around tart and sweet and using this for fruits is essential for me. I find adding it in the right amounts you can target flavors that do not taste totally like sweet tarts/smarties, but just adds "freshness" to the profile.
There is a delicate balance finding the sweet spot mixing all of the acids, too much of one and there is a VERY disagreeable taste. At some points there was what I can only describe as a battle in my mouth between tart and sour, and it was not pretty. But once I started adding and tweaking I could quickly see how each one adjusted the flavor profile and after vaping could usually know just what I needed to add to get what I wanted. The key to this was realizing that the "sour" flavor is malic acid and not citric (rookie mistake).
My questions are:
Is it wrong to be adding all these extra's in and doing things this way? I get the feeling from reading on here that by doing this it is viewed as an amateur chef adding in a bunch of MSG or cheesy sauce to cover up the main recipes imperfections? I have yet to run across a recipe that uses all of what I mentioned above in one single recipe.
I am starting the develop recipes backwards by finding a combination of things that give a good mouth feel / background notes and then adding in main flavor notes and then finally tweaking the acids (in the case of fruits) or creams (or others like vanillin) to get the final notes I am looking for. I used to start out thinking about the flavor I am trying to create (ie cookies and cream) by picking out what the top flavor notes would be and then start mixing those. Now I know the cream is going to be the flavor "carrier" and develop one that is really oreo'y/creamy/satisfying and then start working on the cookie part of it. Going the other way would not end up with a good mouthfeel/satisfaction. It is so much easier to dilute a known good flavor combination (the oreo cream to tone it down vs cookie) than it is to try modify the whole flavor profile at the same time. Adding in flavors later to get the cookie taste will change the cream but since I have known good starting flavor profile in my brain I can then modify to get that flavor back. I may not have found it though if I started with cookie in the mix from the start. Does anyone else do it this way?
I don't recall reading anything regarding this question specifically, when developing a recipe do you develop the background/mouthfeel first or work with the primary notes and fill in the rest? Not that one way is necessarily better than another but I have had more success going backwards to what I think is conventional wisdom. But maybe I am under the wrong impression and this IS actually how it is supposed to be done?
