I hate when I buy a flavor by a certain vendors and it’s subpar to another vendors flavor. When buying flavors I’d like to buy the best flavor possible. I’m hoping to create a guide for the best flavor by vendors and maybe we can get @JoJo to group and organize it for us. I need to hear from the Pros on this one. Feel free to amend this list and post to any or all.
I’d like a subcategory or list called “Don’t even bother!” or maybe “Flavors to avoid at all costs!”
Top of that list would be TPA Blackberry. It tastes somewhere between Cashmere Bouquet soap and something crappy by Avon. Godawful stuff it is.
Good idea. What might be complimentary to the Top Flavors list would be a voting mechanism whereby people could vote through their flavor stash. Something not rated by stars but a mere thumb’s up or down and a total count of votes. Or even a scale representing + and - 5 stars where each star could represent a certain percentage of overall votes cast that lean in one particular direction. So say you had 150 votes for a flavor. 50 were thumbs down, 100 were thumbs up. You could say 30% of the total vote leaned thumbs up…3 stars. Just a thought.
I’m sure there’s gonna be a lot of disagreement on this one, but regardless I gonna put in my two cents. Please keep in mind I can not use FA or HS since the quantity needed to buy for wholesale pricing is beyond my limits at this point. That leaves TFA and Flavor West. Here goes with what I have tried…
Ill add Grenadine (CAP) to that list. I never even mixed with it, put one drop in a shot glass with water and spent the next hour with a tongue scrapper and Listerine.
Out of curiosity, how much pricier would it be? I mean 500ml is $78 on ECX (30ml is around $6) - and yes, that is steep, but considering that you use like 0.2-5% instead of the MUCH higher ratios of TPA and FW in most mixes gotta take the relative price down? I mean a lot of my mixes are around 5-9% total flavoring (you can even make satisfactory mixes with 3% flavoring) compared to the 15-25% I see with TPA and FW…
Just for a for instance we’ll use TFA Strawberry Ripe. My cost is 21.00 for 16oz which I believe is 480ml. We’re talking over 3 times the cost but that’s not necessarily the full reason. FA may be approximately 3 times the strength concentrate. OK, that’s 1500ml flavoring equivalent. I can’t use that much flavoring daath. I have a hand full of flavors I might use 500 mls in 6 months. As far as 30 mls for six, I pay between 10-12 usually for 240ml. But you know, as I said, that’s not necessarily the full reason. As it is I have 3 major vendors and this is just for base or favoring. I also have a few Equipment vendors to deal with. At wholesale pricing you do not get free shipping so you try to keep the amount of vendors you use down to a low roar. Truth be told, I am perfectly happy with my chosen go to flavors I get from TFA and FW. I have come up with many very nice blends using these flavors. I’m used to the percentages, and honestly sometimes struggle with highly concentrated flavor. Right now I will have to admit I wish I had some HIGHLY concentrated flavors experimenting with the Distilled Water. But, that’s only a experiment and most likely won’t go any further…
Here are a few I’ll add that I highly recommend. Don’t see them listed so have to think not many people have tried or used them.
Capella
Butter - Wonderful in many bakery blends. Gives chocolates a nice touch.
Sweet Mango - Realistic(ish)
Blackberry - Initially strong, fades some then pops nicely after a 7-10 days.
Dragon Fruit - Tart and zesty. Start off slow and build to taste. Recommend 2-3% at first.
LorAnn
Bavarian Cream - Killls TPA - imo
Cheese Cake - Excellent!
Creamy Caramel - Very nice. Close to a stand alone.
Three of my favorite flavorings, i cant live without them anymore. I mix Creamy Caramel with Caramel (CAP) and either Simply Vanilla (CAP) or Vanillin (TFA). I know a lot of people dislike LA for whatever reason but i use quite a few of their colorless flavorings. LA Bavarian Cream is by far my favorite BV out there.
I’m not sure what the best way to go about this would be, since taste is so subjective and it is usually pretty rare that anyone would have all the vendors that make a certain flavor.
So, what I did was go through the list @NewDrip posted on ELR’s Flavor List (sans a few I felt were redundant or didn’t have much or any info). I searched for the flavor, sorted by number of recipes, and recorded which flavor had the most number of recipes for popularity, and the highest star rating for highest rated. I disregarded any flavors that didn’t have a vendor or that weren’t inputted correctly. This is far from a “definitive” resource, but it’s a start I suppose.
I apologize that I can’t answer that. I always include them in a mix. The Cheesecake I have used anywhere from 2-4%, but the Creamy Caramel is a little different. I have never really narrowed it down because depending on what I’m mixing it with I usually find it either dominates the mix or is nearly imperceptible. Finding the right percentage may be a challenge. For example, I have one I made called Whiskey On My Breath and I remember bumping it up a little at a time and stopping at 3% because as I mentioned it can dominate and my tests to that point had made the caramel just obvious without overpowering. I haven’t made any of this lately but I think I’ll try again soon and continue bumping up the creamy caramel to see how it acts
I was really hoping to get more participation from the community and then use the most popular. I do like this list you have made. I’m almost certain that TPA will probably lead in popularity because it’s what most people use even if it isn’t the best. I’m gonna print this list and go thru what you have gathered and maybe we come up with something.
Unfortunately most of the community is not gonna have a chance to try all flavors from all brands. There is our problem. Not everyone is made of money as you and I are drip (YEAH, RIGHT). Honest truth I disagree with numerous calls on flavor in the list and one of the reasons for that is many flavors I use I do not see others use. For instance FW Blackberry (Natural). Excellent Blackberry. FW Raspberry (Natural), again, great. I never see these flavors being used. They are fairly new, granted, but they cost more as well and many have a thing about FW (Shame on them). MBV might help a bit with the ratings of flavors since they seem to carry only what they seem to deem the best flavors from all the main players in flavor. I use their buyers ratings to judge considered flavors to buy. As is our users of ELR opinions, MBV doesn’t have every flavor listed for sale and of course Rated. I guess what I’m trying to say here is the task which you are trying to accomplish here is a very difficult task. It will take many avenues of research, not just one, to accomplish this feat. I Commend you and @JoJos work on this and hope that you can come up with a winner…PS, add Yogurt
I agree, but this is probably the closest we are going to get. I’m sure everyone has their own favorites. I know Daath loves FA, Ringling (as he said) uses a lot of FW.
Honestly, I was kind of surprised at some of the things I found. I was fully expecting TPA to take the cake on EVERY flavor for relative popularity. And I was expecting a lot of FA’s flavors to be the highest rated. A huge problem with this list and “system” is that the ratings aren’t necessarily correlated with number of recipes. A flavor could have 1500 recipes but only three people actually rated it. If those three people loved it or are inexperienced with other vendors, it can get 5 stars even if it is an awful flavor. Or the other way around. So, like I said…definitely NOT definitive. I have based some of my purchase decisions on looking up the flavors in ELRs list. Worst case scenario, I’ll find out what I do and don’t like.
I currently have three different coconuts that I’m trying. I’ll give my 2c when I decide which is my favorite. I will have 5 creams, 2 blueberries, 2 butterscotches, 2 Jamaican rums, 2 vanilla custard (both cap), 2 watermelons, and 2 strawberries that I’ll be using over the next several weeks/months and I can weigh in on what I think are the best of what I have. I will say of the coffees I’ve tried, TPA coffee and cappuccino, my own extraction, and FA dark bean, FA is by far the best. So there’s that. LOL
I’ll add Yogurt.
EDIT: I’ll not add yogurt (or yoghurt) because there’s hardly any info on ELR for either.
I’m taking any info possible, If you have any resources of top flavors buy vendors then link it please. I just don’t want to buy another inferior flavor to let sit unused because I hate it. Maybe I should change this to flavors to avoid.
I think I may go this route since this is such a tough feat to tackle.
The only other thing I can think of is to sucker @daath into making a whole category just for flavor ratings, make a post for each flavor type, and hope that people reply with their favorite vendors. Then, tally up all the vendor votes and make a list of those. Unless there’s some way to do polls on here.
I think flavors to avoid would probably be a lot easier to manage. I can always tell when I hate a flavor, but it’s a lot tougher to nail down a favorite when I haven’t tried them all.
EDIT: Did I say sucker? I meant to say sweet talk…
I don’t have a whole lot of experience to add, but I’d be happy to collect posts and give my 2c when I can.
