Casa negro v3

Mixer's Club February 2021 - Theme: Duets (combine part of two existing recipes to make a new great recipe lovechild.

I love Brigade. It's an excellent bold bacco blend. I have tried before to use it as a base to amp up the OG Cardinal here: https://alltheflavors.com/recipes/135524#sacrilege_cardinal_brigade_2506_mash_up_by_nowar. It came out delightful with the strange subtle addition of am4a pulling it all together. I tried again the same here except taking essentially four of my favorite tobacco flavors found in two separate mixes, and mixed them together as a plug 'n play bacco layer. Casa Blanca by @fear and Brigade by @ChemicalBurnVictim should be able to combine to make a bold, sweet cherry pipe tobacco. Here's what ensued...

The original recipe for Casa Blanca is below:

INW Black Cherry for Pipe 1.3% INW Vanilla for Pipe 1.2%

It's good, but it feels... incomplete. BCfP is a nice black cherry flavor with a slight bacco flavor compared to Black or Dark for Pipe. VfP is a woody vanilla more so than a pipe tobacco with vanilla notes. Pairing this with Brigade was almost a no brainer. Casa Blanca is practically begging for some hefty bacco.

Initial test was a straight 1:1 mash up of the two. I felt like it was slightly bitter and the balance was off a bit. I'm just wary of making too many changes so here's what we did for v2:

1. upped the BCfP a hair. with just two flavors it can star, but vs the brigade it just pokes through garishly at odd times. I am hoping it will be a more steady undercurrent throughout now.

2. Wanted to up the VfP as well but decided instead to try inw shisha vanilla for a bit more of a sweeter vanilla to bind the casa balance portion with the more aggressive brigade. This covers up the slight bitterness I tasted on the v1 and kind of unifies the whole thing, somewhat tipping it more to the casa base than the brigade. I tried flv smooth vanilla which i thought would lend a great mouthfeel and boost that cherry note a bit. It does. Initial tests, I simply preferred the inw. It was just a little less aggressive of a vanilla and was more efficient at smoothing out that bitterness I got earlier.

3. Lowered the Black for Pipe. It just seemed a bit strong here and thought a minor adjustment would be an improvement. Decided to leave the TA as it is. It provided a solid girth that locks the whole mix into a bacco holding pattern.

4. DNB gets demoted to 0.6. This is just a guess. Felt like the OG Brigade was tobacco fwd and heavy, DNB is perfect there. Now, feeling like 0.6 is enough to lend some ashy authenticity but let the sweeter flavors to poke through harder and balance it all. Fingers crossed. I will know better in a few weeks.