Lancashire Steam Company New Condenser Range
I'm writing these reviews for the purpose of promoting the company and I make no apologies for that. I'm not being paid to do it and I offered to pay for the 10ml samples that George at LSC kindly sent me free of charge. I'm doing it because they've been around as long as I've been vaping, they are a really cool British, independent, small e-liquid company that I think deserves more attention and love on this forum. Since the TPD we've lost more of these smaller companies than I like to think about, many of us can name at least one of our old favourites that are sadly no more.
That doesn't mean that I won't be honest about how I like the flavours, as we all know taste is very subjective and some people think liquid 'reviews' are utterly pointless anyway. It doesn't really matter what I think of each individual flavour, I'm just writing this to make you aware of this new range, tell you what you can expect from them and hopefully give you some more good options when thinking about what e-liquids you are going to try next.
A lot of these flavours may seem a little out of my usual wheel house, but I've been on a bit of an e-liquid adventure myself lately. As I write this I'm currently vaping watermelon with WS23 and raspberry cola, not my usual tobaccos and bakeries..... and very enjoyable they are too.
What
is far from my 'normal' is the 80% VG content of this 'Condenser range' from LSC. So I'll be using my trusty 'Le Concorde' RDA's that I use for all my flavour testing so I can still vape them in a way that works for me.
With all that out of the way, I'm gonna wick the RDA's and get testing the 5 new flavours from Lancashire Steam Company.
Brew Time
No not beer, Brew Time is a biscuit, custard, vanilla cream flavour. It smells super biscuity and nice... designed to go perfectly with a cuppa I presume, so that's what I'll do... Time to get the kettle on.
At first I was a little underwhelmed with the flavour, but as I vape it (and drink my tea) I'm increasingly enjoying it more. It reminds me of those digestive cream biscuits a lot. I may even go as far as saying that's exactly what it tastes like and it does go really well with a cuppa. I don't get a lot of custard flavour, to me it's more like a vanilla cream/custard filling. Which is probably where it's supposed to sit rather than tasting like you put the biscuits in a bowl and poured custard all over them.
It's not a 'punch you in the face' flavour either but when does a cream biscuit ever have that? It's an authentic flavour and tastes like it would if you were eating a biscuit of this type, so in that respect I can't fault it. It has a nice level of sweetness to which feels authentic, it's sweet like a biscuit but I'm not left with sweeteners lingering in my mouth. I'm also glad that George sent me 3mg liquid as I've vaped about 4ml just sitting typing this. I also need to go and open the back door as currently I can't even see the back door through the fog. If you are looking for a nice digestive cream flavour that pairs well with a cuppa then I would recommend giving this one a try, it does what it says on the (biscuit) tin.
Ocean Blue
Ocean Blue is an orange, coconut and pineapple flavour. I love coconut, I like pineapple … bit iffy on orange, so I have my fingers crossed.
I was quite taken aback when I first tasted this one because it wasn't what I was expecting. The overwhelming reaction for me is that it tastes like the tinned mandarins that my mother used to give me for pudding as a kid, it was a really nostalgic taste for me and a really pleasant surprise. I think it's maybe the orange and pineapple together that's making me taste mandarins because I can't really separate the two on my palate. The coconut isn't massively prominent to me but seems to add a nice smoothing and thickening effect, it's kind of calms down the cirtusy notes with a subtle 'coconut milk' type vibe. I can honestly say that I've never vaped anything like this flavour before, to me it tastes like a bowl of mandarins with a splash of coconut milk and (oddly maybe) I'm really enjoying it. It has the perfect sweetness level for me again and no weird stuff in the aftertaste. This one has genuinely put a smile of my face and I could happily vape this for the rest of the day ….. but I still have 3 other flavours to try, so I better finish this little bottle off later.
Karaka Black
Karaka Black is a blackberry, citrus and (unspecified) berry flavour. This one is timely because I made a blackberry crumble yesterday with my daughter from fresh blackberries we'd picked in the morning.. before then I don't think I'd tasted blackberries for years.
Karaka Black is not as bright as I was expecting, it's sweet, dark and warm.... almost as if it's a blackberry liqueur but without any boozyness. Like a fruit vape that's been designed for the winter rather than the summer. To be enjoyed outside of the pub in January rather than down the beach in August. It's a very tasty combination but it's hard to pick out individual flavours, there's no lime I can detect thankfully, which I was a bit worried about with the mention of citrus, it seems that a subtle note of lemon has been used to make the darker berry flavours 'pop' a little more and give a subtle hint of citrus on the exhale. I'm enjoying vaping this a lot, but like I said for me it's more of a winter warmer flavour. I think this one feels a little sweeter than the first two, it has a comforting syrupy taste which would go great with a glass of rum.
Lemon Steam Turbine
With a flavour profile of lemon, honey and menthol I have to admit I'm a little frightened of this one before I've even opened the bottle. To me it just screams 'Cold and Flu Remedy' but I'll give it a fair crack and see how we go.
Ok.... this has some serious menthol in it, far too much for me. The honey note is very nice, sweet and really authentic. I'm actually very impressed with the honey taste, it's flippin' excellent, I'm just having real trouble tasting it with all the menthol. The lemon seems to be sitting quietly at the back and doing a good supporting job.
As I vape this I am getting used to the menthol, it was just a bit of a shock at first and it really isn't unpleasant, especially with that really tasty honey in there. I'm kind of torn with this one. I have no doubt that it's one of the best honey flavour notes I've ever tasted which is making me keep vaping it. The menthol though I could probably do with being half the amount it's at. If you need something to blow the cobwebs out, then the Lemon Steam Turbine will definitely do that though.... which I presume is the whole point.
Raspberry Fizz
This is a raspberry, lemon and sherbet flavour. Raspberries are one of my favourite fruits so I had high hopes for this one, especially after tasting all the others. It's a very pleasant natural-ish raspberry flavour and the sweetness is spot on for me, sweet without being sickly and if I was looking for a good raspberry vape then I would be happy with this one. It hasn't got me excited as much as some of the others though. I wish the lemon was a little more forward and I don't really taste the sherbet that much but maybe that's because my taste buds have been exhausted by the Steam Turbine! There is some nice things going here though, the raspberry is sweet and forward without any off-notes and the lemon isn't too sharp or overpowering. The sherbet gives it a little bit of a candy vibe but it's not something I would have picked out.
In Conclusion
There's no doubt that George over at LSC knows what he's doing when he's creating flavours and I would highly recommend checking them out. They make a ton of different flavours so there should be something for everyone. While I was browsing over there I noticed one called Gunpowder which is a Rum, Raisin, Naturally extracted Cigarillos, Dark tobacco flavour. That's one I'm going to have to try soon.
Out of the Condenser range my favourites were Ocean Blue (for the summer) and Karaka Black (for the winter) … and if I had a cold then I might even reach for the Lemon Steam Turbine. Brew Time gets a special mention for the perfect cuppa companion too.
I'm pretty fussy when it comes to 'off notes' 'weird notes' and especially 'pukey notes' and I'm happy to say I didn't get anything like this from any of these liquids. They all seem to be well crafted and you can tell that this isn't just flavourings chucked in a bottle... there's clearly been a lot of thought and work gone into these.
If you made it through these 1600+ words then thank you for taking the time to read them and thanks again to George for sending these samples over, it's been a fun and interesting afternoon.
The Lancashire Steam Company can be found here:
https://www.lancashiresteamcompany.co.uk
Go and have a browse.
P.S. If you are a regular on the forum and you'd like to try what's left of these samples then comment below and I'll pick someone out of the hat to pass them on to. There will only be a few ml of some of them but there will be enough to fill your dripper and give them a try.
