Just spent, shall we say, a “veeeerrrrrryyyyy long time,” reading all the beginners’ advice posts. What an amazing resource you all have created. Thank you.
This post is inspired by the “Most Efficient Flavors” section in @Scottes777’s analyzation of the 100 Top-Rated Recipes & Beginner’s Guide to Making the Top Recipes (amazeballs).
If I had my way, I would pick my first 20 or so “commonly used” flavors (I only have LB, and I don’t have any experience, let alone enough to create my own recipes yet) by utilizing the data just like he did, but adjusting for my flavor profile, removing the dragonfruit flavor (never sat great on my palate), and checking with baited breath to see if any additional bakery flavors and recipes popped up in the list as the dragonfruit recipes dropped off. Potentially removing another flavoring if necessary. Checking again for any added bakery profiles
Unfortunately, I haven’t the foggiest notion of how to do that.
Wondering if I could instead, take 8 flavors that sound amazing. Say…
AFAIK that feature doesn’t exist but you can add flavours you don’t have to your stash. That would have the same result.
Just make a note that you only added them for more results with recipe search or you’ll get confused and think you already have a flavour when you don’t.
What you want isn’t possible, unless you do like Josephine suggested. For that purpose, I added a lot of flavors to my stash that I don’t have, e.g. if I have DX Bavarian Cream, I’ll add TPA bavarian cream, FLV Bavarian Cream, CAP Bavarian Cream, Bavarian Cream, etc.
When I make a recipe with flavors that were not exactly the same and it tastes off, I know that’s probably the reason, but I get a lot of additional recipes in my searches that at least give me some inspiration to build on.
I am very much in favor though of something similar because I think a lot of these recipes can very well be made with similar flavor from other brands, taking in account the strength of the concentrates and working that up in a new recipe.
I’ve done some remakes of recipes where I used e.g. FA instead of TPA and they turned out very well (most likely very different, but that’s OK), so it would indeed be nice if there was some kind of selector tool like “strawberries, custard & cream”, without needing to select on brand as well.
Now, especially with everyone seemingly publishing every concoction they make and names that don’t reflect the contents, it can take forever to find some good inspiration for a certain flavor profile. And on top of that, there’s still a list of thousands of duplicate flavors in the database which doesn’t make it very easy to search for recipes.
An hour or two after posting this, that is exactly what I ended up doing. Works like a charm, indeed.
That would be great!
It would be rad to be able to do that, then play with which flavors are most efficient to the highest rated recipes in those profiles, be able to remove a flavor to see which recipes are left, add the next most efficient flavor to see what new recipes one ends up with.
That said, I’m noticing that with a little experience, this gets easier to do without having to manipulate data. For example, after hours of pouring through multiple recipes from a few respected mixers, I start to notice groupings of flavors that each mixer uses often, which makes it easier to pick those base flavors used most often by that mixer within a grouping, and add a couple extras for the given recipes that sound the tastiest.
It’s not stealing
Instead of looking for exact recipes, you’re looking for flavor profiles instead this way. It’s a different way of working/mixing, less copying and a bit more DIY to get some recipes in the right balance. Not all flavor alternatives have the same strength and can be used at same %.
over time, you’ll learn what the big differences are if you do this. You can’t swap out DX concentrates for the regular ones, or swap V1 with V2, FW Blueberry is not at all TPA Blueberry extra… BUT, especially as a beginner, if you only have 20-40 flavors, you can have a better idea of what you can make with your selection.
Most recipes that are made with TPA Graham Cracker, can just as well be made in a nearly similar way with CAP Graham Cracker v2. A lot of recipes allow you to swap TPA VBIC for CAP VBIC or FW VBIC without changing much to the whole flavor profile. It won’t be exactly the same, but it often works more than good enough.
