Initiation
I've been wanting a good coffee liquid. Even though the "coffee" in my stash came from one of the more popular and highly recommended ECF vendors, it isn't fit to use in my mixes. It tastes like coffee but coffee of a particular type. The type where you may toss a shot glass of yesterday's leftovers in a big ol' mug and top it up with pure artificial sweetener or sugar water so stiff you can stand a spoon in it. It's awful. It's so sweet it curls my teeth and hurts my hair.
It was very good news the weekend before last when Matt announced his new flavors, one of them being coffee. I was drooling in anticipation. What I said in my review of Cheesecake wasn't entirely true. I did not exercise restraint. I didn't save the coffee for last. Truth be told, I started vaping it as soon as I unpacked the box, pulled a sample and got everything stowed away in fridge. It didn't go well. I was surprised and more than a little disappointed. It lacked the "specialness" I was expecting. The flavor seemed to be all washed out. Weak and powerless. Admittedly, I set the bar pretty high for this one but it just didn't do it for me. After 2 ml and 24 hours, I put it down and walked away feeling grateful I only ordered a 30 ml taster. Mr Coffee let me down.
Analysis
So what happened? Not sure. It may have been the brand new atomizer. They don't work all that well for me. It also may have been the fact my pet perennial habañero pepper plant (her name is Magma) had just started producing like gangbusters and I was eating those peppers like jellybeans. She quit producing in January so I was making up for lost time. Hmmm, could a massive overdose of the hottest hybrid peppers on the planet possibly affect my sense of taste? Nah, I think I was just in a bad mood because I terribly missed my wife who was gone to a girls weekend at the beach. I'm simply not a happy man when I can't look at her face every day. I was home alone with the dogs and the cat and the raccoon and the horse. That, in itself, is not bad at all but the satellite went out so I couldn't even watch the Indycar race on Saturday night. All in all, I was generally honked off and not even the highly anticipated arrival could help.
Revisitation
Regardless, my wife returned home Sunday afternoon, my atomizer got broke in after a few days and I slacked off on the fruits of Magma to settle in at a rate of about three units a day. Wednesday morning I went back to the Coffee and have been stuck like glue ever since. Speaking of Wednesday morning and remembering another slow start, I'll tell you about Coffee's weak point right up front. Coffee and coffee do not work well together. You simply cannot appreciate the taste of the Coffee when drinking the coffee.
Beyond that clash of the titans in the mouths of mortals, there are no problems. The Coffee e-liquid does taste like coffee. Nice, rich, unsweetened black coffee. Nothing more, nothing less. No weird taste, no weird aftertaste, nothing bad at all. Just coffee, plain and simple. The gods have smiled on those of us who want a great tasting coffee liquid with not even the slightest trace of the weird sweetness that seems to be endemic in all the lesser liquids of non-WYS origin.
Of course, it doesn't have the complexity found in the finest coffee beans, but hey, what do you want? A juice this good can be as simple as dirt and suit me just fine. You can make your own level of complexity by mixing with Caramel, Chocolate, Tobacco or Vanilla. Ideally, mix with all to produce what I expect to be a monster of a taste. Which is exactly what I was speculating about in an earlier post. Move over Macanudo.
Ah yes, mixing. This brings me back to another thing that spooked the bejeezus out of me when I first tasted the Coffee last Saturday. I was afraid it wouldn't have the power to hang with my other blending favorites. I was afraid it would simply disappear. After spending more time with it, I reckon maybe that was endorphin-fueled paranoia. (heheh, that pesky pepper buzz again). After the extended revisit, I'm thinking coffee has sufficient strength to hold it's own and provide a subtle touch of flavor in as little as 10% concentration. But that's for another day to decide. The problem now is: before I'll ever know, I have to stop using this stuff straight. The problem is I can't put it down. I'm afraid I'm becoming a Coffee junkie. Sweet addiction. First it's being hopelessly hooked on hot peppers since I was a kid and now it's WYS Coffee. Well, I suppose it could be worse. Life is good.
Having my 201 glued to my hand and face doesn't bother me.
