Not sure how common issue this is and i hope for some help.
I ordered another 50+ flavors two months ago at 3 different UK vendors (since noone carries all those desperately needed flavors). All flavors seem to be good except two strawberries, which both are disgusting slightly strawberry flavored nail polish removers.
Problem flavors are:
- Strawberry SC RF (bought at Vendor 1)
- Shisha Strawberry (bought at Vendor 2)
Both flavors are horrible and totally unvapable. All i can taste is a nail polisher; there is a faint hint of artificial strawberry with a heavy stinking chemical undertaste. The bottles smell heavily of nail polisher and the finger testing proved a disgusting alcohol/acetone; no sweetness and a serious lack of strawberry taste (it tastes more like a very artificial strawberry candy powder; something you would never put into your mouth even if there was no acetone).
This definitely isn’t the flavor that i ordered. I had an original Shisha Strawberry before and that is one of my top3 flavors overall; it smells fantastic and it tastes amazing. I bought it from Inawera directly at that time, so i have an idea what to expect. The re-bottled Shisha from September is NOT Shisha; it doesn’t taste like Shisha, it doesn’t smell like Shisha and i bet that even chemical analyses would show that is not Shisha. It’s completely unvapable and it ruined about 300ml of my mixes; the only reason i still have it is because i might send it to Inawera in case they want to check it out.
The same stands for Strawberry RF. This is a new flavor for me and i ordered it based on veteran opinions (@Ken_O_Where and some others really like it). SB RF reviewer here says: This is a fresh, ripe, sweet strawberry; tastes like strasberry. This is what i was hoping for and what i received and named as Strawberry RF is something totally opposite.
Fortunately i have ordered two strawberries at two different vendors and i know exactly how one of them tastes (If i ordered only Strawberry RF which i never had before, then i would just pour it away and be convinced and talk around that SB RF is the most disgusting strawberry you can find on the market; something that obviously isn’t true). So, what could the problem be? I hope @Walt_RealFlavors could help here.
Note: i don’t have difficulty tasting strawberries; i had strawberry one-shots, Strawberry inw, Strawberry ripe tfa and Shisha and all were great (all these were in original bottles).
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I would assume that vendor somehow messed my order and sold me a strawberry of some dirty cheap manufacturer, but that is highly unlikely since i ordered two different strawberries at two different vendors. What is interesting is that both flavors taste almost the same and they smell almost the same (Shisha is slightly sharper than RF = slightly more nail remover present in smell and taste, but otherwise it’s the same disgusting shit).
Since i know the flavor of original Shisha, i believe something went terribly wrong during re-bottling process and that isn’t in manufacturer’s best interest (it’s pretty sure that these two flavors wouldn’t be selling well if this was the taste/smell in their original bottles). Should be blamed manufacturer (bad batch?) or vendor (re-bottling process) for this contamination?
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Do vendors make their own liquids or do they just pour the right amounts from barrels into smaller bottles? Are vendors using /adding their own PG when re-bottling (PG sometimes smells like acetone, but this probably isn’t the reason here since there shouldn’t be any PG in RF flavors)? Could it be that they didn’t mix the barrel enough before taking my 10ml out (just took it from the top maybe where there is more Ethyl Alcohol or PG)?
(i didn’t notice this issue in any of my other 50+ flavors ordered neither in any of my other close to 100 original bottles. *the only other flavor that has some taste/smell of acetone is Vienna Cream FA, original bottle, but it is very mild and it is completely unrecognizable after steeping for me; i like that flavor)?
One thing is sure, vendors sent me a disgusting garbage instead of SB RF and Shisha which i ordered. Did anyone else had the same experience with re-bottled strawberries bought at UK vendors lately?