So my halo TriBeCa turned up this afternoon and I've had it in an viva nova tank on the MVP all day. It still tastes like Ry3!
I'll tell you what it is that makes this a hybrid or not a typical Ry4. It's the butter. There's a distinctive buttery popcorn taste with the caramel that cannot be denied with TriBeCa. Is it morish and lovely? Yes, absoulty, but its so powerful a flavour profile it is without question not a strict Ry4.
There's tobacoo here, but its soft and muted, it gives way to a smooth buttery Carmel which lingers and the juice then becomes something else entirely. It becomes, a little savoury in its low notes. Up high you have the tobacoo, butter caramel and then in comes a low rumbling 'cracker' like taste. In the us, I know you have something called graham crackers. Over here we don't have that, we do however have something called the cream cracker and the ritz cracker. That savoury, cheese biscuit (minus any chees thankfully) slightly salty, dry texture? That's here in TriBeCa a little bit. It's not enough to get over powering, but its there. A slightly savoury salt taste that stays just after the butter. I suspect its a salted popcorn like savoury flabour mixed with that butter caramel.
TriBeCa is a sweet mix then, but not overly so. That underlining savoury salted popcorn keeps the juice from being purely a 'butter caramel' vape. For me that's quite a lot like two Ry3 mixes I've had, cloud 9 vaping Ry3 and totally wicked Titan Ry3 (pre 2012).
Another slightly unique thing about halo I've also noticed would be its distinctive colour. This is a yellow liquid, and I don't mean a pale gold or watery pale yellow like a Hangsen or a janty, this is yellow. Artificially coloured yellow I'd even wager. I don't know the full ingredients list of this juice, though both natural and artifical flavours are stated, I'm gonna say one of those artifical flavours is also making the juice artificially yellow.
It is nice though, lovely, morish and buttery. I could happily vape it all the time and I look forward to seeing how steeping transforms it. But is it an Ry4? Not quite for me, I'll happily settle and say its Ry3 though! Lol.
It's interesting that you mention Tribeca tastes like
"totally wicked Titan Ry3 (pre 2012)," as Totally Wicked once sold DIY flavorings that were the
exact formulas of several Halo Tobaccos (These were offered by TW under their Patriot Range DIY flavorings, which unfortunately are now no longer available.).
Halo's current website description of Tribeca states that this is a juice that "
is reminiscent of RY4 e-liquid and other treasured tobacco e-liquid blends... " so they do mix a base RY4 formula with some other Tobacco, probably related to that of the RY3 you recognize.
The
"distinctive buttery popcorn taste," that you mentioned, along with the "graham/ritz cracker" tastes is the unmistakable presence of Acetyl Pyrazine in this juice. This is a compound that occurs naturally in fried peanuts, corn, sesame oil and hazelnut. It also produces a "Roasted, nutty, bready and yeasty, with popcorn and corn chip nuances, good for graham gracker flavors" as described in the
TPA website. AP is commonly used by the food industry in various bready/crackery/popcorny tastes, and that's why we all recognize it as such. I've seen 2 forum members actually describe it as tasting like "hay" - this is what happens when AP is mixed with a lot of caramel, you have an almost perfect recipe for hay flavor. Some people will detect this by vaping a freshly opened, undecanted bottle of Tribeca. But what everyone will detect for sure is a distinctive smell not often found in other juices, and that is the unmistakable scent of Acetyl Pyrazine.
Very recently I've written about Tribeca containing a somewhat toasted/bittersweet after taste. It's this taste that makes this juice a spectacular juice, IMO. Bill, along with several other Tribeca vapers had not detected it, while others on the forum do. I found this taste very distinctive, how could others miss it? I initially attributed it to differences in steeping time. This is true, in part, as Tribeca does have an amazing transformation when well steeped and equally important - decanted. I did however, wonder why Bill, who is obviously a very experience vaper, especially in RY4 and its variants, did not detect it, as I am almost sure that the Tribeca that he has in in his inventory is well steeped...
I ran an experiment a few days ago loading up 2 different tanks, one top-coil and another bottom coil. I do not remember the wattage I set it at, however, the 2 tanks loaded with the very same flavor from the very same bottle had 2 different tastes. I literally had one on my right hand, and another on my left. One of them (the bottom coil tank) possessed that distinctive toasted/bittersweet after taste that is insanely delicious (to me) while the other was totally absent of this. It was unbelievable. I would like to add that the bottom-coil tank that contained that taste was in a tank that contained that same liquid from the day before, while the other (top-coil) was a freshly poured tank.
At this point, I can't say exactly whether it was top or bottom coil that is the culprit or the tank that contained the liquid from the day before (and thus contained a higher concentration of liquid that had gotten 'roasted' by bottom-coil heat). I am still doing experiments on this to home-in on the culprit ... but I suspect it may be the latter. It is a must-experience delight of vaping.
Lastly, about the color. I agree with you that this must be artificial. Although Acetyl Pyrazine is bright yellow, much like Tribeca, there simply isn't enough of it to make what would otherwise be a dull amber color into the bright yellow color that it is.
