Three Cities: A Tribute to Tripoli

Created this recipe for the October Monthly Clone Challenge on /r/diy_ejuice. I’ve since tried the real thing, and it is nothing like it! I still really enjoy this recipe, but I was mostly focused on the tobacco and spices part, whereas the real thing is much sweeter and leans more in to the dessert tobacco area in my opinion. So don’t mix this up expecting a clone! I’m working on a clone though, so maybe that’ll see the light of day in the future.

"The taste of an exotic port-of-call, Tripoli is a finely crafted blend of aged Turkish tobaccos, fig, almonds, and rare spices."

Having never tasted it, that description is pretty much what I had to go on. I did a little bit of research, but mostly just did my own thing with it. I made one version, but didn’t really like it so I started all over, and decided that I wanted to dig in to some of my neglected Hangsen tobaccos.

First, I decided to go with Elder Captain for the spice notes. Unrelated to this challenge, I picked it up not too long ago because there was a Hangsen sale at Nicotine River. Single flavor test reminded me a whole lot when I was messing around with clove and cardamom for some other recipes. Even at .5%, those spice notes are right on top.

For the fig, I went with HS Arabic. It’s got a bright fig like flavor on top of some sweet tobacco.

HS Turkish is one of the better Turkish flavors out there. I’m not really a fan of FLV Turkish (but the Oriental I’m really liking, but that’s a little off topic.) INW and FE/SC don’t really taste anything like Turkish tobacco to me. I got rid of TFA because it was gross. So yeah, HS Turkish for the win. On its own it is kind of lacking the spice notes that you get with real tobacco, but it does provide a nice tobacco base for you to add the spices to.

FA Almond and AP kind of blend in to the base here. Not super in your face. If you’re wanting a more nut forward and spice background mix, maybe drop the Elder Captain to .25% and bump the Almond up to 1.5-2%.

One thing to note about this is that HS tobaccos are super steepers. I dont really taste them much when fresh, but they start showing up around a week. When you see people talking about month long steeps for tobaccos, Hangsen is a good candidate for that. This current version I’ve only got steeped for 10 days, but it’s gotten really good. Since this was for October’s challenge, I figured it wouldn’t make much sense to give my final thoughts near Thanksgiving. If it ends up turning to shit after a month, I’ll come back with a warning.