Hello and thanks for checking out this post.
My first batch of juice I made some Dragon's Blood; 6mg 40/60
10% TPA Dragon Fruit
4% TPA Strawberry
3% TPA Vanilla Swirl
2% TPA Bavarian Cream
1% TPA Sweet Cream
1% TPA Ethyl Maltol 10% in PG
Smells like heaven, but tastes like nothing or slightly sweet out of everything I vape it in, RDA, RTA or clearomizer.
I also made a Menthol blend but can only taste the menthol and the coolness from the koolada but I can smell the speamint/wintergreen in the bottle.
They Have only steeped a day or so but I figured that with the way it smells there should be at least some flavour to it... I did give them a warm bath for an hour or 2, but I left the lid on and put them in a plastic bag before putting them in the water...
EDIT: Ok gents thanks everyone for the advice, I'm doing a 10ml run without ethyl maltol and a 10ml run cutting both creams by .5% and will report back.
EDIT2: new bottles freshly mixed tasted about the same.... sigh... whats happening!? hopefully a week long time steep will do the trick...
Rhett from Mo Vapor here, just a few pointers :)
First off, cut the EM completely. Ethyl Maltol is the killer of all good flavor; I refuse to use it in any of our juices. Next, Bavarian Cream can be a very dominating flavor, especially combined with other creams. 1-2% total cream flavoring in any blend is the sweet spot, especially with TPA flavors. I would suggest trying it as follows:
12% Dragon Fruit
5% Strawberry (3-4% if strawberry wild)
2% Vanilla Swirl
1% Bavarian Cream
I'd also reccomend a 60/40 pg/vg ratio; I've found that provides the best balance of flavor to vapor. Good luck!
Edit: formatting
Does it taste like sweet air? You've got too much cream in there IMO. Some people pick up on the subtle flavors in the cream recipes and some people don't. Cut out a little bit of cream, drop your dragon fruit a bit and increase your strawberry.... Just my $0.02.
Recipes are not the end all/be all when it comes to making a tailor-made juice. If it's too weak on flavor for you, start tweaking it until you like it.
It's your ratio. Swap it. 60pg/40vg. Still produces big clouds in an rda and will give it huge flavor. I notice a big difference going down to even 50/50. The vg really dulls the flavors for me personally. You might even want to think about upping the %'s a bit. The dragon fruit is a very very mild flavor so I'd bump it to about 12%. I don't know if you have strawberry flavor or strawberry ripe but both of those should bump up to about 6-8% (strawberry ripe is a little too harsh for me so I prefer the regular strawberry flavor from tpa). Get rid of the Bavarian cream and EM and bump the vanilla swirl 1-2% higher as well as the sweet cream. I use the croqpot bath method and let my juice steep in glass for about 8 hours (plastic bottles I've found really hurt the flavor). My croqpot on the "warm" setting sits at exactly 140°f. Things with vanilla really need to steep to get good but it should still be pretty tasty right away.
Cut the EM, it can be a major flavor killer.
Also, skip the bath. A lot of people will swear by it, but I've never had a juice turn out as good as time steeping. Even after ~3 days of steeping, you should have a very good idea how the juice will turn out.
I'll skip the bath for sure, I was hoping steeping would bring out some flavour but alas... I'm not so sure about the EM. I've read that it does cut flavours somewhat but I have trouble believing that it's removing all flavour from the mix at 1%... but I'll try a run of 10ml without it.
I added 2 drops to my 10mL custard recipe and it killed an incredible amount of flavor, stuff is potent. It might not have such a dramatic effect on this recipe, but I think you'll be able to tell a difference. Let me know!
I agree with cutting the EM and that also could be too much cream, those cream flavors are pretty powerful to me.
You could boost the strawberry a bit if you find that lacking, but I honestly think that cream could be overpowering the fruits and your senses.
it's that there is no flavour at all I'm worried about. This is a recipe that I found online and I'm sure went through it's rounds of testing. I'm thinking that it had something to do with how the EM was prepared or the recipe was mixed or some wierd circumstance I'm not aware of or something along those lines
TPA dragon fruit is a pretty weak flavor IMO.. Inewera dragon fruit however is amazing! Cream and em always dull my flavours too. Also how are you measuring percentages? Drops or syringe? Drops will put you WAY under if your following a recipe. Need to almost double what a calculator tells you. And finally VG. That will contribute massively to dulling flavour. Again you need to increase percentages if using high VG.
If I had to hazard a guess, you have something in there that has a large amount of sucrolose (sweetener) which can seriously mask flavors, I have a "cookie" style recipe that I had added a touch of sucrolose to, it was closer to what I wanted, so added a touch more (I work in 100ML batches, and I am talking .25ml of 10% sucrolose solution) the first addition was almost exactly what I was after, but I wanted more sweet trailing flavour on it... Added another .25 and found that the flavour was dulled, went to a full ml and it became a touch of cinnamon and just sweetness.
I would look at adding a little Maltol Propiniate to enhance the berry flavours, Ethyl Maltol has it's merits however it looks to me that you are a bit heavy on it.
Keep in mind also that there are flavors that are "ending" they will literally close off the sensation of other things, the classic one is Menthol that is eucalyptis based as opposed to Spearmint based, it will cap the tasting process and leave you with what I describe as a cold tongue (like you have an ice cube in your mouth numbing out the tastebuds).
Just my .02
-DV