(INW) Tobacco Falcon Eye

Ginger, Pear, Tobacco

If you decide to try this or it inspires you to mix something similar, please thank @ChemicalBurnVictim. He was one of the sources of inspiration and it was his suggestion to switch from using FLV Virginia Tobacco to FLV Oriental Tobacco that gave it that Turkish pipe tobacco vibe that I was looking for.

This all started with wanting to “fix” INW Falcon Eye to be more like a combination of what INW told me it would be, what CBV told me it tasted like to him, and what I tasted. CBV said it mostly tasted like ginger to him; my theory is that his constant vaping of tobaccos makes it easy for him to pick out anything in a tobacco flavor that isn’t tobacco. When I tried Falcon Eye, I got a sweet cigarette tobacco with a solid hit of spice, but while that spice tasted more like ginger than any other spice I could identify, it wasn’t clearly ginger to me. It was weird, but nice.

Oddly, INW calls Falcon Eye “tobacco with a hint of pear,” with no mention of ginger or spice. Fucking Poland. It did not taste like pear to me, but it did have a strong hint of that sort of earthy skin note that some pear flavors have, without the rest of the pear’s pomaceous body and juicy sweetness.

All this just made me really want a ginger-pear-bacco, so I made one, and it turned out pretty great. I used NF Ginger to pull that odd gingery-spice in a distinctly ginger direction. There’s a good reason why this is one of only two of the whole Nature Flavors’ line you can buy at BCF. It’s super solid as a ginger flavor, very spicy, super accurate. Not nearly as sharp and wet as the very fresh-tasting Vape Train Ginger Root, so probably a bit more versatile than that one. But, still more along the lines of raw ginger rather than dried ginger spice powder, ginger ale syrup, or candied ginger. Very slightly earthy, not floral at all, some thick body to it but not syrupy or creamy. As much as I enjoy FLV Ginger and CAP Gingerbread, if I could only have one ginger, it would be this one.

I used MB Shape Up Pear to fill in the missing pear. This is easily the best single-flavor pear out there. It’s everything you could want in a pear and would otherwise have to mix different concentrates together to get. It’s bold and sweet and juicy and crisp, with a lot of apple-like texture and body, and just a little earthy realism, all well-balanced, smooth, with no off notes for me. Just a perfect pear. If I could only have one pear flavor it would be FA because it’s so useful in sweetening and juicifying a plethora of other fruits, but if I want to really vape a PEAR, this is the one.

And then there were the tobaccos, meant to take the mild, malleable tobacco in Falcon Eye and give it some definition as a robust but lighter pipe tobacco that could complement pear and ginger. I wanted to avoid darkness, cocoa, coffee, caramel, and nutty accents that the pipe-like tobaccos have, but still have a pipe tobacco. I wanted to walk into a weird boutique tobacco shop and see some light brown leaf, be told it’s “ginger pear pipe tobacco,” and have Falkor be a deep nose-full of what that smelled like. Users of FLV Virginia Tobacco can maybe tell why I went with a Kentucky + Virginia first? It was a mistake, though. The result was roll-your-own cigarette ginger pear tobacco. CBV came to the rescue by suggesting Oriental instead of Virginia, which until now was an underused flavor for me, and keeping the little bit of that subtly spicy and darker Kentucky Blend in the mix.

Steep Time: This is actually great after sitting overnight. The ginger will taste strong at first, but after a few hits I get used to it. Still, it’s more of a GINGER pear tobacco. Shortly afterward, the FLV tobaccos seem to fade a bit and more pear comes out more, making a ginger PEAR tobacco. After a couple of weeks, they come back, the ginger settles down, and the mix stays relatively stable. In the end, the pear is no longer as prominent as I originally intended it to be, but the juice has that elusive, perfect wet/dry balance between the pear and tobaccos, which, together with the spice keeping things interesting, makes it hard to put down and worth putting out.

Eggnog, gingerbread, and tobacco. Nothing better to get you ready for the holiday season.

INW Falcon Eye and HS Gingerbread together make a really nice gingerbread. The HS is a bit dry, but it works really well here.

FLV Eggnog is a really tasty eggnog flavor, but needs a bit of help in the eggy department, so INW Custard helps with that.

Black for Pipe adds a really nice smokiness and HS Elder Captain has some nice holiday spice notes.

Lovage root in there to help with how dry it ends up being. The Elder Captain and Gingerbread are fairly dry, and the Lovage helps with that.

The Tobacco Base: FLV Arabian, INW TA Virginia, TFA Red Oak. Arabian tobacco has probably been the trickiest tobacco I've ever tried to use. It was dominating mixes for me at .1%. I never completely gave up on it though because it has something that I really like about it. It's incredibly earthy, musky, and a bit acrid. Very authentic tasting. Just so fucking strong. Perfect here at .12%. The Virginia is also very earthy, but more of a grassy/hay type of thing. Along with the TFA Red Oak, it really blends with the Arabian nicely to complete the base.

The Pumpkin Spice: this recipe was a request, and when it was first requested I hit up the googles to see what pumpkin spice was all about. Found an essential oils recipe to make a pumpkin spice scent, so I just went with that. Ginger, cinnamon, clove, Cardamom, and nutmeg. All things I was already playing with for what I had planned to be a Christmas recipe. I wanted to use some other tobacco flavors to make up as much of the pumpkin spice profile as I could. Why? Because why not? Cinnamon I went with FE Hongtashan. It's got a very distinct Cinnamon note to it. It's a warm and dark flavor, which is perfect for the season. INW Falcon Eye is for the ginger. When I first tested this flavor, ginger jumped out at me. Not much tobacco, but that's ok. I just use it as a ginger flavor. NBD. Nutmeg I went with FLV Eggnog. It's got a nice spice taste that isn't too strong on the eggy part, so I think it works well here to give me the nutmeg I needed, and also help the Hongtashan with the cinnamon. It doesn't push it too far in to winter flavor territory (or at least I hope not.) The clove and cardamom kind of speak for themselves i think. I originally picked them both up for an Arrakis clone, and I've been fiddling with them quite a bit the last month. Very easy for them to get a little out of control, so I keep 'em low.