Ink Review #118

*Please note that the scan is the accurate representation of this color.

This ink is part of the Inkvent Red Edition (2021)

Overview

The color/properties:

Diamine Brandy Snap is a golden yellow that offers a lot of shading with a soft cut between a much darker brown tone where the ink pools. The shading is especially noticeable when writing in print.

Rhodia

Leuchtturm1917

Performance on paper:

Brandy Snap behaved very well. There was the smallest amount of bleed-through on one spot of the Kokuyo sheet with the broad nib, but otherwise, there wasn’t any visible bleeding or feathering on the other test papers. The dry times were slightly longer than expected, but still average, drying around 20 seconds with the large nib sizes and 10-15 with the smaller nibs.

The water resistance isn’t great, but there are at least crisp and legible shadows left over of anything that was written. There’s some minor clouding of the color after water exposure but it’s not dark enough to take away any of the legibility.

Midori MD

Maruman

Tomoe River

Kokuyo

Performance in the pen:

Brandy Snap has a medium flow and is lubricated enough to be smooth, but not so much that it takes away the tactility of the pen. I found it quite pleasant. The ink felt slightly dry through the needlepoint and fine nibs, but otherwise, I found the ink to be quite pleasant, and it never suffered from any hard starts, skips, or stops during my tests.

Cleaning the ink out of the pen was very easy and only required the standard soak and flush, with no remaining color or residue left in the nib units or barrel of the pen.

• Performance in a pen: 9/10

• Performance on paper: 9/10

• Color saturation: 5/10

• Sheening: 0/10

• Shading: 7/10

• Dry time: 7/10

• Water resistance: 2/10

• Ease of cleaning: 10/10

• Shimmer: None

My personal thoughts…

So, what is a brandy snap? It’s a rolled dessert that looks like a brittle cannoli, often filled with whipped cream, and —get this— doesn’t actually contain brandy. Apparently they’re popular in the UK, so naturally I wasn’t able to get one to try before writing this review. Tragedy, but I’m getting sidetracked. Brandy Snap is one of those inks that certainly makes for an excellent Inkvent ink that is well-suited for the holiday season, but to be honest, I use this year-round, especially in brown pens. It’s just a nice, warming, honestly elegant yellow. It’s a bit of a shame to not hear it talked about more. I mean, sure, yellows aren’t often favored by the majority, but just look at it — it looks delicious, cozy. Yep. Brandy Snap is wonderful.

More images/info:

Tools and materials used in the writing samples:

• A TWSBI Diamond 580 AL with 7 nib units including a Needlepoint grind, EF, F, M, B, 1.1mm stub, and an Architect grind. All nibs tuned to perform at the same medium wetness.

• A Rhodia No16 A5 DotPad

• A Leuchtturm1917 A5 Notebook

• A Midori MD A5 Notebook

• A 68gsm A5 Tomoe River Notebook

• A Maruman Mnemosyne A5 Spiral Notebook

• A Kokuyo Campus A5 Notebook