Brown, Charles Brown

Tis' the season for our basic white girl sides to proclaim "pumpkin spice matters" in all our yoga pant, ugg boot and north face glory.

I'll let you in on a little secret though. I'm not actually fond of things pumpkin "butt" damn who doesn't love properly executed yoga pants.

On to the recipe notes. Hangsen Pumpkin pie has the creamy sweetness you want from pumpkin pie filling but it lacks the spice (cinnamon and nutmeg) and crust of an apple pie. 5% worked out nicely to keep the creamy pumpkin pie sweetness but it needs some complimenting flavors to fill.out what it's missing.

I'm new to real flavors concentrates but what I have used and the reviews I've found all note that they are true to their descriptions but due to their VG base tend to need to be used at much higher percentages as well as needing longer steep times. Hangsen accomplished the creamy aspect with a hint of pumpkin and tpa pumpkin spice added the spice aspect but the pumpkin note still wasn't where it needed to be. Brace yourselves for violation of the 20% overall flavoring percentage rule... Real flavors pumpkin pie at 10% completes the pumpkin note.

Tpa pumpkin spice is some potent stuff that nails the nutmeg taste present in all things pumpkin spice while lacking the more desirable creamy sweet pumpkin taste brought on my the hangsen Pumpkin pie. 1% almost overdoes it for that needed nutmeg pumpkin spice taste but it gets tamed with other additions.

Cap cinnamon swirl danish seemed like the best flavor suited to add a dough/pie crust flavor while imparting some sweet cinnamon taste to compliment the nutmeg taste introduced with the tpa pumpkin spice. At 2% I thought I was going to have to go back to the drawing board because I started getting too much cinnamon coming through as it was making the cinnamon aspect of tpa pumpkin spice stronger. It added some that hit that while not unpleasant was more akin to what you would expect from a pumpkin spice latte rather than a pumpkin pie. I considered ditching that flavor all together until I got an idea.

The pie crust aspect was still missing despite the addition of cap cinnamon danish swirl that was supposed to fill that gap. Queue the TFA pie crust. At 2% it mellowed out the sharp cinnamon and nutmeg notes and added that butter flakey pie crust that is a key part in the enjoyment of any good pie. Now on the the topping(s).

When I on the rare occasion partake of pumpkin pie it is usually in a 2:1 ratio of whipped to pumpkin pie. While cap vanilla whipped cream would suite the needs I had other plans for incorporating sweetness and a vanilla note. I went with fa whipped cream and at 2% it adds that dollop of whipped cream to the pumpkin pie and compliments the creaminess already added from the hangsen Pumpkin pie.

Now to address my preciously mentioned plans for incorporating some sweetness and vanilla. Rather than going for tpa vanilla swirl and em or sucralose I toke a note from a beginner blending episode and used vanilla cupcake to sweeten the pumpkin pie. Cap vanilla cupcake at 1% did the trick of adding sweetness needed while also not adding a distracting amount of vanilla.

I didn't expect this to work as a shake and vape due to the creaminess and potency of some of the ingredients. I've got to be honest though that it's quite wonderful as a shake and vape but I would recommend at least 1-2 weeks of steeping.

Note: Alltheflavors does not have pumpkin pie added to their flavor listing yet which is why you see hangsen Pumpkin spice listed as it was the only hangsen Pumpkin they had a listing for. So hangsen Pumpkin spice is actually hangsen Pumpkin pie.