Name and Format: Kawabunga – Pikasso Vapors (PGVG Labs) – Concentrated flavor 20 ml in 60 ml chubby bottle – received by the manufacturer
Batch: 4523010218
Nico: 0 mg/ml
Declared base: 30 PG / 70 VG
Expiry date: 20-04-2020
Devices: Vandy Vape Pulse BF 80 W + Wotofo Recurve RDA single alien clapton coil 0.25 ohm (Ni80 24 awg x 2 + Ni80 38 awg) with Cotton Bacon V 2.0.
The ship of The Flavourist today has plowed the vastness of the Atlantic Ocean, to arrive again in Canada and deal with one of its biggest manufacturers: PGVG Labs.
A few weeks ago we reviewed the first of three e-liquids of a new and colorful line by the Montreal manufacturer, the Pikasso Vapors collection which consists of three e-liquids: Gâto, Kawabunga and Bucano.
After talking you about Gâto (which received a nomination as one of the best creamy e-liquid of spring 2018), today our team will take care of Kawabunga:
How to make a perfect fruit explosion? Launch a grenade directly in the fresh fruit display, retrieve the leftover apples, pears and peaches, bottle them and shout Kawabunga!
Inside a colorful cardboard box there is a 60ml unicorn bottle, filled with 18 ml of concentrated flavor, to which 42 ml of vegetable glycerine must be added and, if you want, nicotine. The final e-liquid composition will be exactly 70/30 VG/PG. The label is made with a superb satin effect that brings out a minimal and contemporary style. All the key info about the product, from the batch number, to the date of manufacture, through the amount of flavor (propylene glycol), up to the details of the manufacturer is shown.
The smell test of Kawabunga presents a general aromatic picture characterized by a complex and rather intrusive structure. The scent that comes out of the bottle, immediately appears pungent and impetuous with really overbearing tips. A sweet hint of apple syrup, leads the way to a sticky note of pear that carries with it strong and pronounced alcoholic veils. The bar of the aromatic intensity of the e-liquid is really high, as is its sweetness, and these two factors combined together give me an overall feeling a little artificial. So I’m getting ready for the vape test I’ve decided to tackle with the excellent Wotofo Recurve RDA in bottom feeder on a Vandy Vape Pulse BF 80W.
Even at the vape Kawabunga confirms the very first smell impressions and presents itself as a fruity recipe with very sweet tones. The feeling that I get from the first puff, however, is that there is a syrupy base as the basis of this recipe. Not a mix and no explosion of fresh fruit but a syrupy juice with a high sugar content.
This sweet and syrupy impression, well calibrated, removes the bouquet from its naturalness and, after every puff, the long-awaited perception of an inviting fruit salad is further and further away.
The apple flavor, the main ingredient of the mix, emerges neat from the inspiration and shows itself in a very pasty and sugar-rich frame. The sensation is almost “warm”, a bit as if it were apples baked in the oven and abundantly sprinkled with sugar. After a few puffs, I recognize pear nuances that intersect with excellent balance to the apple notes. The pear has lost any alcoholic ambition, on the contrary it appears a soft mash that delicately amalgamates with the apple, suggesting a harmonic and almost velvety vape.
Only at the end of the puff in the tail notes and during the exhalation there’s a timid and somewhat remote peach tip; its flavor, however, is hard to emerge with conviction and to carve out a convincing role within the fruity mix. The aromatic density of apple syrup and pear cream prevents, already by itself delicate, aromatic peaches, from having a more significant presence within the Kawabunga recipe.
The e-liquid, if on the one hand certainly seems to be appreciable as all day vape, on the other hand convinces less as a summer recipe, just because it appears in the presence of the papillae as a sweet fruit sauce for a final perception tasty but probably a little thirst-quenching.
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Suggested dilution: 30% = add 42 ml of vegetable glycerine base inside the bottle containing the aroma.
Steeping time: ready to vape.
Pro: A pleasant amalgam between a cooked apple syrup and a pear puree.
Cons: On the palate it does not seem to be an explosion of fresh fruit.
