NET Rating 14ea FLAVORAH synth “tobacco” samples

[50YearsOfCigars]

DISCLAIMER:
First, as everyone here understands, TIS, = “taste is subjective”. These comments are from the perspective of my taste buds only. Your milage might vary.

I have no connection with FLAVORAH. I obtained these samples from a CARE package sent to me by fellow traveler in NET @Kinnikinnick . I want to acknowledge his efforts and dedication to the whole subject of “tobacco” and vaping. The samples were in factory packaged 15ml plastic bottles, and appeared genuine. They were sampled using low volume MTL style vaping on a VandyVape Berserker MTL RDA. Dilution at 5% in 50/50 PG-VG. 2.5mm 316L Stainless with Rayon Wick.

FYI, in real life I am a NET tobacco vaper only. I do not, as a matter of personal choice and flavor preference, vape any synthetic flavors whether that be fruits and desserts on the one hand all the way to so-called ‘tobacco’ on the other. I vape NETs only. Therefore, as in all published papers that attempt to explore a narrow subject matter, you must always look for ‘investigator bias’. I readily admit that there is plenty of that here.

METHOD:
Since the idea is that the supposed purpose of these products by the manufacturer is to mimic tobacco flavors and tastes using only artificial flavoring techniques, it seems logical to have an experienced tobacco flavor tester that is very familiar with the real thing as produced by mother nature, compare the synth sample in a quantitative way which assigns a number of “relevance” or “truth in flavor” from a base group of real products against the synths.

Therefore I decided to include in the format for these notes for this particular group the addition of a feature I will call:

Relevance to Unified Tobacco base profile (scale 0-10).

This number scales how close the samples overall character contains components that an experienced NET vaper readily and commonly identifies as particular and relevant to the nature of real NETs. It should be noted that these particular components are important, as they contain the essence of what can properly be called Tobacco. As a flavor profile is missing or has a lesser impact from these components then it becomes less and less ideal to call the sample “tobacco”.

This last point is very important, because, as the old saying goes “words have meaning”, and the casual and incorrect habit of the vaping community to throw around and attach descriptors like “tobacco” to just any flavor profile is doing a great disservice to people that read reviews and comments, and as they attempt to use recipes posted in the forums that incorrectly use the term “tobacco”.

Arabian Tobacco
Dry with a pronounced woody character. Exhale aroma reminds of the aromatics from ground walnut shells
Extremely low level background presence of artificial smoke favoring, pervasive into entire profile.
A remaining slight but persistent unpleasant plastic after taste appears on the palate after the draw and exhale.
Relevance to Unified Tobacco base profile (scale 0-10) : 0

Cavendish
Dry with a Light and airy top note mixture of slightly sweet fruit compote,
mostly the aroma and flavor of canned peaches predominates.
Mild Mid notes of aromatic cedar bark
Relevance to Unified Tobacco base profile (scale 0-10) : 0

Connecticut Shade
Dry Light top notes of a pale white wine similar to Chardonnay
Supporting the wine aroma and taste is a mid-layer of pine wood aromatics
Overall there is a faint sweetness to the entire body, in concert with a very slight and pleasant acridity
True Connecticut Shade leaf is a very light specialty cigar wrapper, and surprisingly enough this synth
does a fair job of approaching those flavor elements.
Relevance to Unified Tobacco base profile (scale 0-10) : 5

Cured Tobacco
Test Mixed at 5%, could not find any flavor profile
Re-Mixed to 10% and noticed a very faint almost unidentifiable trace of a synthetic plastic like component
Re-Mixed at 15% and detected faint odors like smoke from a freshly extinguished paraffin candle flame
Whatever this is supposed to be, I missed understanding it.
Relevance to Unified Tobacco base profile (scale 0-10) : 0

Kentucky Blend
Slightly Moist nicely unconfused single flavor profile reminiscent of a light Ligero Cigar Filler
Very impressive for a synth concoction. It could find use as a Blender component in a more complex mix
I would rate this a few numbers higher, except it reveals, after a few puffs, a faint but detectable plastic taste on the palate.
“Kentucky Blend” is mislabeled, as it is much more a single leaf extraction profile, perhaps Nicaraguan in origin.
Relevance to Unified Tobacco base profile (scale 0-10) : 8

Native Tobacco
Dry with an underlying cedar woodiness.
Not at all bad for a synth in the light cigarette imitation world, reminds one of a light blend of Virginia and Turkish
There are subtle top notes of cherry fruit and occasionally this transforms into a bubble gum like note.
I have extracted many Native American tobaccos and, this name labeling from FLAVORAH is very far off the mark.
This sample is good for what it is, just not Native American tobacco
Relevance to Unified Tobacco base profile (scale 0-10) : 3

Oriental Tobacco
Lightly moist with top notes of mixed spices. A clove note predominates with a very slight white pepperiness underneath.
Overall this synth is not a bad imitation of a light Oriental Pipe Blend, but:
I would use it as a blender in more complex recipes, not as a standalone ADV.
This could be well used as part of a base when creating English Pipe Shop Blends, but not for cigarette work-a-likes.
Relevance to Unified Tobacco base profile (scale 0-10) : 4

Red Burley
Somewhat Dry , an almond like nutty smoky body with predominate overtones of sweet molasses
There are some vanilla top notes and an overall very smooth character.
This is a reasonable synth imitation of a real Burley, but not isolated enough to use as a Blender component.
It would work well as part of a sweet cigarette recipe, and also might make an occasional ADV on its own.
Relevance to Unified Tobacco base profile (scale 0-10) : 5

Tatanka Tobacco
Moist with an annoying and clawing caramel sweetness that overpowers and persists forever as a room note.
I have never heard of a real tobacco blend or curing that carries the name Tananka. What on earth is this doing in their collection of ‘tobacco’ ?
I think FLAVORAH just made this up out of the blue. It is a nauseating caramel cherry / fruit compote.
In sum an overpowering artificial sweet custard - desert style non tobacco vape
Relevance to Unified Tobacco base profile (scale 0-10) : 0

Turkish Tobacco
Dry slightly sweet with a relatively light flavor intensity. There is a perfume top note of lemon like citrus.
A background pervasive note of a woodsy dirty almost fungus like quality is ever present.
I can see what they are going after here as some Blending Turkish is grassy and slightly sweet
But this doesn’t quite hit that target, so I would not include this in an attempted cigarette work-a-like.
Relevance to Unified Tobacco base profile (scale 0-10) : 2

Virginia Tobacco
Slightly Dry with a mild flavor intensity. Could be mixed as high as 10% depending if you are looking for an ADV or use as a Blender
This is a very good synth imitation of a Light RYO Virginia. Very impressive for a synth. A light just barely sweet natural honey top note
It has subtle butterscotch natural tobacco undertones of a real Virginia. This one is very well done. No plastic issues like some synths.
With a bit of nuttiness supporting the entire profile. This will work excellent in a cigarette-work-a-like blended with their Kentucky
Relevance to Unified Tobacco base profile (scale 0-10) : 8

Classic Cigarette
This is one of those common profiles which is very typical in the synth world of wanna be cigarette.
I guess since everyone else makes some version of this disaster profile, FLAVORH felt compelled to have one as well.
Dry neutral flavorless with a dirty aroma taste infused into a smokey but flavorless mid base that contains hints of artificial smoke flavoring.
This creates, to me, an extremely, and somewhat overpowering, sense and feeling of “artificial / synthetic” and after a few puffs underlying plastic components appear over the aroma and carries with it other disjointed sickly sweet notes underneath.
Relevance to Unified Tobacco base profile (scale 0-10) : 0.

Commercial Cigarettes
This is almost identical to #12 above. There is a slightly more pronounced nutty walnut shell mixed into the top notes.
Also the intensity is about twice as high, so one would have to be very careful mixing this over 2%. It might serve as some sort of accent part of a base at less than 0.5% that is: If your goal was to clone one of those terrible artificial synth ‘tobacco’ mixes that are in every vape shop, things like HALO Tribeca.
Relevance to Unified Tobacco base profile (scale 0-10) : 0.

Sweet Cigarette
Unimpressive slightly Dry and dirty woodsy smokey character.
There is a distinct mid note of something that reminds me of a soapy dishwasher liquid.
And, a slight component of burning plastic. I struggle to find any “sweetness” as the name implies.
There are much superior synths in this category for example Nicvape Item #: EF022V015
Relevance to Unified Tobacco base profile (scale 0-10) : 0.

[Peter_Ramish]

In many of the comments from members of the forum.e-liquid BBS there is a common thread that expresses concern for the way the samples were tested. A typical reaction is this following comment:

Chrispdx:
Hmm. Seems like we are getting off topic. @50YearsOfCigars I would still love to hear you thoughts at the 1-2%
In the interest of science I re-ran a group of the samples and this is what I found:

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I mixed the following at 3 drops in 4 mls of 50/50 PG/VG for less than 1% by weight.
Re-Tested:
Arabian Tobacco
Kentucky Blend
Classic Cigarette
Sweet Tobacco

Observations:

1.- The product is obviously very concentrated, as it carries with it the flavor profile even at these low levels.

2.- The flavor components of the overall profile for each of the tests I did was exactly present as in my initial tests at 5%. however the weighting of the notes in the profiles changed in each of these 4 samples in a very particular way. That is:

3.- In all cases of each of the 4 samples the weight of the “sweetness component” in each sample rises in relation to any other flavor points in the mix. This changes the overall character of the mix, OK if you like sweeter vrs less sweet. I think this may be in some part due to the now very much higher percentage of VG, which creates a sweet vaper on its own.

4.- The top notes that were added by the chemist when the mix was created, when tested at 5% are still present although noticeably depressed at 1%, at least in MTL vaping. This may not be the case if you sub-ohmed it, but I did not perform a sub ohm experiment to verify. This ‘depression of top notes’ has a negative impact to the extent that it lessens the ‘identity’ of each sample, and t he individuals within the group start to ‘all taste the same’. All flavor notes still exist in each profile as in each 5% sample, but one must be very discriminating in searching for the notes at less than 1%. They are still there, but you have to really dial up on your ‘sense awareness’ and look for them. In casual MTL vaping at these -1% most people would miss the top notes, and just be left with the remaining ‘base’ or floor of these mixes. It is worth noting that the chemist who compounded these did so from a very similar formulary so all these ‘base constructs’ are similar in profile. It was the top notes that he relied on to differentiate each one from the other. As the top notes lessen, so does the product identity and differentiation of each sample.

5.- As to ‘plastic taste’ -Yes it is still very much there. It is just an artifact of the synthetic chemistry. You have to live with that if you want to use these fully synthetic artificial favors. People get used to them. I know a woman who is addicted to Diet Pepsi, and she tells me, after years of consumption, that she can no long identify the over powering synthetic nature and underlying strong plastic flavors of the product.

6.- I tested 4 samples and since the results were very similar I felt it not necessary to work my way through all 14 of the samples. The deal breaker for me was when I sampled Kentucky Blend which was the one that took ‘top honors’ during my original sampling. When I saw that it lost considerable character and it’s profile suffered badly from the effect I noted in comment 4 above, I felt there was no point to continue any further.

So there you have it. Take it for what it is worth. My take away from all this is that artificial flavors have imbedded issues of their own, and the subtler and more complex the target for duplication the less likely that the ‘artificial gun barrel’ will hit the bullseye. Part of the attraction to things like tobacco and fine fermented wines, an attraction that has held the attention of mankind for thousands of years, is this complex subtly of user taste experience. Speaking from my background, a career as an industrial chemist, I can tell you that duplicating Mother Nature in the lab is no easy trick, and usually, as it did again in this case, the effort fails.

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