Blitz

The Mixers' Club topic for September was "Back to School", and this was my submission. I wanted to create a fusion of beer and energy drinks to really capture the quintessence of the theme, and I thought this was finished until I read ID10-T's feedback: </lb> Hop infused rhubarb and dragonfruit energy drink is a crazy profile, but i think this just about gets it done. I’ve got like 1,200 flavors and somehow this recipe has two that I don’t have, Green Goblin and Pink Panther, so I was intrigued to try it. It’s cold but not too cold and I’m not sure it’s something I’d want to taste without it being nicely chilled. The green energy drink flavor was never my favorite but it seems to just mostly fill this all out. My favorite thing about it is that after the hit of coolant and in front of this constant backdrop of green stuff I get a progression of flavors, hops, INW dragonfruit, that nifty sort of rhubarb sweetened with red berry juice. All of them intensify with extended vaping like watching a play and getting to know the cast of characters and caring about them so much that the fact that it’s cold in the theater and the curtain is an unnatural neon sticky sweet green isn’t super distracting anymore. </lb> If I could change one thing about this recipe, it’s that the overall flavor is a touch light to me. Normally I appreciate that in that it won’t wear out my palate but this is such an odd combo that I feel like it ought to be LOUD as well as weird. I only tried it in my favorite RDA so this an untested theory, but I have a feeling that if I put it in a shitty subohm tank with prebuilt coils it would taste like cold sweet nothing. I want this to be something that would be plenty of flavor in that sort of setup. I want my face blasted off with these flavors. I don’t want it overdone and throwing up off notes everywhere, but I do want it pushed right up to the limit, just every flavor in here giving me its all. A crazy bold mix for a crazy bold profile, no feather touch stuff, no more Mr. Nice Guy. If I had bought this as a one-shot mixed it at 12%, I’d try it again at 15%. Might wind up regretting it, but I’d at least give it a shot. </lb> After reading this, I knew he understood the vision. So I went back to work and made this thing aggressive, confusing, and obnoxiously loud.. just like it should be. Some of the nuance and layering was destroyed in the process, but that's not what we're here for. I didn't want to add an excessive amount of neon green "Monster" flavor, so I just added 1% to the original formula. I turned the Fizzy Sherbet up to 4% from 1.25%, which is what really makes this thing fight back. Yakima Hops went from 1.5% to 2% to add some bite. Anything past 1.5% with Pitaya made the thing too floral, so that was as far as I could take it from 1%. Finally, the most difficult thing to figure out was Pink Panther. It really knows how to dominate a mix so I could only take it up to .6% from .5% without getting too weird. It adds just the right amount of rhubarb/red currant without covering up everything else.