Madrugada v1

Mixer's Club Submission November 2020. update a recipe with current flavors

TLDR: sorry to send out an experiment :(

Notes: Ok, so this is not really an update. I sat on some ideas with absolute frustration and flavor paralysis. Updating a recipe loving crafted by someone else, is not an easy task. You would think that it was just a matter of swapping one flavor for another, some kind of upgrade. Sure, toss out that FA Fresh Cream and squirt in some FLV Cream and presto! You have your MVP All Star Game on with all the greats from all the teams making magic. But it isn't that simple. A recipe is a labor of love, a vision of the chef. Originally, I wanted to update a recipe I have the utmost respect for, that I return to often and tweak to fit my tastes, by ID10-T. When I finally broke down and asked him what he thought of my idea (ofc after sending the wrong file) his response was what I needed to hear. to paraphrase: that sounds delicious but uninteresting; try something different, something unique. Yikes! But it was what I needed to hear.

Moving right along, talking to Foment about what to do, he offered up his mix Before First Light for a remix. I had tried it and found there was something about it that didn't sit well with me. Foment graciously suggested trying my hand at it with my own palate in mind. Tinkering with the idea of what flavors may have been causing me unease, I started by breaking down what the flavors he chose were adding to the mix and swapping out what I suspected to be the likely ones that were causing me olfactory dissonance. What I ended up theory crafting was a 'me' version of the mix. Running it by him for feedback, he pointed out that it was an aggressively flavored mix. Is that bad? Not in itself, no. But what was the original intent of the mix? A mix that captures the peacefulness of the early morning dawn light. Bacco, coffee, spice, and calmness. I was far from that. Very far. Even if I like an aggressive morning cuppa biden, I had to dig a little deeper. What follows is a theory crafted potential hot mess. It is untried and I'll be sampling alongside you. Feel free to take one pull and then hate me. I am here at the 11th hour with a hail mary idea that I think might work. I just hope it honors the original and gets close to what I imagined.

The inspiration for this mix being the calm quiet moments of the dawn, I was thinking of how to try to present the coffee and work with what is known as a tricky flavor to grapple with. I decided in the end to try for a cafe de la olla styled mexican coffee. If you have never had a proper cafe de la olla, you're missing out. It's a lightly spiced, sweet deliciousness. A black coffee that tastes brown and sweet with cinnamon spice and hints of star anise made in a pot simmered all together... it's lovely. To make this "interesting" i decided to replace the flavors that were seasonings/spices with tobacco counterparts that could accomplish a similar feel. Is it possible to use a coffee flavor and to accentuate it with the right tobaccos to make a blend that lends the right notes to the main flavor and is yet a pure tobacco mix in every other way? We shall see...

Coffee - Starting with the coffee, Im using MF here. It comes off as gritty off the shake and mellows out over time, especially if you add something to tame it. 0.5 is a hedge. I've eagerly vaped it at 1% out of a pod and it can be rather mellow with the right flavor combinations. I figure that 0.5% will give enough to present itself but hopefully will blend into the spice notes to not dominate.

Piloncillo - Cafe de la olla is sweet. It is traditional to use Piloncillo, a form of raw brown sugar that is unrefined, not processed white sugar with molasses added. My inclination to over complicate recipes, I was tempted to try a combination of FLV Caramel and Milk and Honey. maybe I should have. Considering the tobacco blend to follow, I decided to leave this as is. FLV Caramel presents as a gritty brown sugar. I wanted to crank it up a bit, but knowing that Gold Ducat is syrupy sweet, I'm hoping it does double time to make up for the lost brownness.

Spiced Bacco blend - the original uses maple as a reminiscent of morning that surely works well with the tatanka to sell that syrup more effectively. I decided to go with Gold Ducat as the main tobacco and to boost it with other baccos that would both complement the spice profile as well as round out the 'goldness' of this tobacco which I can find a bit overwhelming if left unbalanced. The idea now would be to darken it up a bit to fit the sweet black coffee profile. A touch of Black for pipe here is the ace in the hole to hopefully deliver what's needed. Additionally I'm hoping that, even if just a hint, that anise note will poke through or at least add to the overall warmth of the spice. To add some nondescript spice, we toss in a little turkish and push it all a little warm spice with some HS Elder Captain (mostly soft warm bakery clove to me). Overall, the hope is that this will pull the GD into darker territory and add some girth to the bacco making it the most prominent profile in the mix.

Spices - Cafe de la olla is all about the cinnamon. This was the hardest part to guess. Rich Cinnamon, god bless you, takes the guesswork out of the mix, but the percent? Too high and it will safely cover up off notes yet be an elaborate cinnamon vape. Too low and it might not provide the essential characteristic of the real thing. We are going to play it safe with 0.15% and hope for the best.

What was lost from the original was the joy of the RB/Tatanka combo, the nuttiness of the original, and any attempt at cream. I think that the flavors used will provide a distinct enough (read: good enough) bacco, replace the nutty notes with a warming spice blend, and remove a need for cream. Thank you ID10-T for encouraging me to try for something interesting, Foment for putting up his mix to be meddled with, and Wolfwheeler for reminding me that the fun of this is being just a little bit daring.

Foment's Original Notes: I wanted to capture as much of a peaceful morning as I could in one go. Coffee, some sweet tobacco, something just a little nutty, and enough maple to really hammer home the morning time nature of the whole endeavor.

VT Caffe Latte is impressively functional for coffee to start, and doesn't need a whole lot of help there. It doesn't read as though there's as much milk here as a Latte would imply, but that's perfectly alright in this instance.

FLV Tatanka and FLV Red Burley are an unreasonably complementary pairing in my opinion. The sort of well rounded tobacco base you can build in a lot of different directions. it's a little sweet and has enough body to it that it doesn't get buried in everything else going on here.

TFA Pralines and Cream is adding some nuttiness, some body, and a little more sweetness

TFA Maple syrup is the icing on the cake here to me. It is just the concentrated flavor of the major brand "maple flavored syrup"s, the little bit here goes a long way to make sure this mix doesn't get mired in the coffee and tobacco's lack of sweetness and adds just enough maple to come through and make things a little more interesting.