Marietta

The perfect, simple, cream & sugared cup of coffee through the sweet looking glass of nostalgia.

I had my first cup of coffee in 1979 when I was six years old at the Marietta diner in Georgia at 1AM on a family road trip. This recipe is a love letter to one of my fondest childhood memories.

RECIPE NOTES/SUGGESTED SUBSTITUTIONS

THE COFFEE MF Coffee & FA Tiramisu: I know the first question anyone will have is "Can I substitute the Medicine Flower Coffee in this?" the short answer is a resounding "Nope!" It's expensive, it's tough to mix with, the steep time is infuriating, and MF will short you out of at least 3ml of your costly 15ml bottle every time. It is still the best coffee flavoring you will ever get your hands on in this life, at least for the moment. If you truly want a delicious coffee vape with no skunky weirdness or dessert-like fuckery, bite the bullet and grab some MF Coffee. FA Tiramisu, aptly nicknamed "Booster", does exactly that, and gives it a nice little roasty/richness/sweetness boost to it at 0.50% without turning it into some overly-sweet Starbucked-up abomination. You might be able to sub this with INW Mocca, but, despite having this flavor, I've not tried it, and couldn't guess at a good percentage other than to say maybe 1% or less.

THE CREAM TFA Bavarian Cream, CAP Sweet Cream, CAP Vanilla Whipped Cream & CAP Marshmallow: I'm in love with TFA Bavarian Cream, and at 2% it perfectly balances that coffee, wrapping it in rich, snuggly creaminess without weighing it down too much. This you can absolutely substitute at the same percentage with your Bavarian Cream of choice, be it Lorann's, Jungle Flavor's, or Flavor West's, it's all good. CAP Sweet Cream adds a sweet dairy note, and lifts the Bavarian Cream out of the pudding zone. If you don't have it, a blend of 1% FLV Cream or FA Cream Fresh and 0.5% Vienna Cream will work, too. CAP Vanilla Whipped Cream adds a nice complexity to the cream, and at 1.5% doesn't add enough of a vanilla note to complicate matters. You can sub this with TFA Vanilla Swirl at the same percentage, but, CAP WC is just so much better here. And, finally, CAP Marshmallow at 1.5% makes the whole thing thick and lush, giving you satisfying, pillowy clouds, but, don't bother if you have Capella's "new" version of Marshmallow, because it's not the same thing, sadly. They introduced this modified version to deal with the global shortage of Tahitian vanilla, and it's a serious step down in quality. If you still have some OG Capella Marshmallow on hand use it for this, because it's perfect. (You can tell because it's dark brown in color and smells like vanilla sugar in the bottle. The New stuff is pale yellow and smells like nothing in the bottle.) If not, you can sub it with 1.5% TFA Marshmallow, or a mix of 1% TFA Marshmallow & 0.5% FA Marshmallow if you're feeling fancy.

Okay, so, this next part sucks, and I'm sorry, but, you cannot rush this recipe. It takes a full month to steep, minimum and not a second before. (Honestly, even longer is better) Don't mix it with a milk frother. Don't try to speed it up with heat/ultrasonic. Don't. Don't. Don't. Just make sure all of the flavors are meticulously shaken before they're dripped in, add your nicotine and preferred base, cap it tightly, shake the bejeezus out of it, note the day you mixed it and put it away somewhere cool and dark for at least 30 days. MF Coffee goes through some pretty gross and weird changes throughout the steeping process, and after more than a year and a half of working on this recipe, with countless revisions, I promise you, it won't be where it should be any sooner than that.

But, I swear, after that 30+ days is up, what you'll find in that bottle is a dark, rich, authentic cup of coffee with cream and a little sugar and nothing more. If you want to add anything else to it, please, go nuts, because I'm dying to see what people add to this base, but, all I was looking for from the start was just a real and accurate coffee vape. So, I beg you to mix this up 1:1 first, so you can taste it in all it's simple, satisfying glory.

Excellent variations I've found include: 1% DIYFS Holy Vanilla (or FA Vanilla Bourbon or CAP French Vanilla), or 0.30% FLV Rich Cinnamon, or a mix of 0.50% FLV Caramel & 0.50% FLV Butterscotch for some uber-sweet Starbucks style dessert-coffee-milkshake nonsense. I also imagine FW Butterscotch Ripple, FW Butter Pecan or FW Hazelnut would be bitchin', but I've not tried any of those yet, because I tend to find the recipe as-posted more than satisfying.

So, there you have it! I've said, and heard, for so long that there is no such thing as a good coffee vape that this recipe was more-or-less finished in May 2016, but, I've fearfully sat on it all this time, because I really wondered if it was as good as I thought it was. Which is why I'd like to thank user fairtradesloth for taking a leap of faith, buying all the ingredients, mixing it up, then coming back with the feedback that gave me the courage to finally post it. He's the real MVP!