I was wondering the same thing. I want to make some lip balms, and I ordered two flavor oils. They are horrible. Smell great, but I tasted them (to see what they would taste like) and I nearly choked. They were awful. I wrote and asked and they said the smell "fools" you into thinking it has a flavor. I am not sure if I buy that. At any rate, I am not going to use them in my lip balms (if I ever get around to making them). I just can't bring myself to now that I know how awful and bitter they taste. I have purchased good tasting lip balm, and I am sure that my nose was not fooling me into thinking that it tasted good!
Susan

I agree, I have had good tasting lip balm as well. Mine doesn't taste bitter in the balm, it has no taste and I am ok with it not tasting but once it is balm it hardly has a smell either. I am using the amount recommended per batch.

It's a pain because people love lip balm but they have to at least smell something

Michelle

I had gotten some flavor oils from a company in Canada called Cranberry Lane. They do have a web site, I think it's cranberrylane.com.
I never did end up making anything with them, but I tried them & they smelled wonderful & tasted sort of sweet (although I didn't taste much, just a tiny bit).
With the exchange rate the prices were pretty good, specially on small stuff.
I used to get my bath bomb supplies from them before I could find them elsewhere.

Hazel

: ) I've had some luck with just using food-grade flavorings in small batches, and was thinking about trying a batch with some kind of cordial blended in (the booze would cook off quickly, I'm more concerned about the extra sugar encourging creepy stuff to grow on it)

but most of my balms just taste from the drop of clove oil I use.

I had a bad experience too, I just bought my first load of products from Just a Soap to make lip balm and I got chocolate flavor oil and vanilla and honey flavor oil to save experimenting with regular essential oils like peppermint. But big mistake! They taste, bitter and nasty and smell equally bad. Good job I only made a little bit 'cos I had to bin it all! I know you can sweeten lip balm with powder sugar but that'll only make you lick it off more quickly. Maybe I've got to experiment with the peppermint after all. Has anyone got any tips? Vanilla absolute is so expensive I am loathe to waste any?

I have had good results with flavors from www.thesage.com. I use their "Sugar Kisses" which is just an oil with a sweetener. Then I add it to their honey flavor oil or their vanilla flavor oil. That gets a very pleasant taste, not just a smell. BTW, you can also mix their vanilla oil with any range EO, (plus some sugar kisses) to get a nice Creamsicle flavor.