Ok. I figured if anyone can help, you guys can.
I have a problem, I don't like sweets. All the juices I seem to find for purchase or flavors and recipes are for sweet things. Everyone raves vaping is like desert all day. I can't imagine something worse.
I would like to step up my setup and maybe get into making my own juices (I'm a chemist by trade, so I'm comfortable with it). However, before I make the investment, I want to make sure I'm getting something I want.
I'm not into cloud chasing, I want flavor. But flavors I want are bitter, savory, earthy, meaty, etc. Think true tobacco flavors (not the sweetened or chocolaty crap I've found), beer type flavor, unsweetened teas, bitter, spicy, vegetables, etc. If anyone can point me in direction of someone whom makes these kinds of flavors, or recipes that fit the bill. Although I would like to try some before I made the jump to building a setup to make my own. I'm desperate at this point. I have even considered trying to extract/distill my own flavors from various things, but would rather go a commercial route due to convenience.
There are a few exceptions to my sweet rule. I do like flavors of coke and red bull. However, flavors I've found (and granted I'm sure I haven't tried most) in coke are not Coca-Cola. They are generic cola flavors I don't like. Red Bull flavors I've tried smell perfect, but have little to no flavor.
I currently use an iTaste mvp. I understand there are differences in setups and equipment, but I don't want to buy anything more until I find good flavors. Thanks in advance and my eternal gratefulness and bonus points that mean nothing to anyone that helps me.
You're a chemist? Let's talk!
Pyrazines are going to be right up your alley.
Do you have any lab equipment at your disposal from work to setup some simple extractions?
A decent amount. My wife got into essential oil stuff with some of her friends and I wasn't about to pay them prices. So I extract all of them for her. I also make weird types of liquor for parties and such.
I'm with you bud. I've been riding the melon train recently, because it's a nice fruit vape but the flavors don't add a lot of sweetness. A lot of tobaccos can add an earthy presence though I wouldn't say they taste anything like tobacco. I'd try cam-t or Virginia tobacco with a melon and cucumber. Mix at 8 percent total flavoring with cucumber being the smallest, it hasn't let me down in quite a while.
How close do the melons taste like real melons. I usually stay away from fruit because that's too sweet for me. I really only like raw lemons/limes in that category.
I'm mostly on the sweet kick, but fruits only it seems. I really wanted to find a nice tobacco flavor and bought up a good chunk of them at once, then after the third failure, gave up. A couple days back, another user recommended am4a at 2 or 3 % for a nice pipe tobacco and he was spot on. Too earthy for me personally, but maybe it'll be up your alley. I did find out Coumarin pipe tobacco is a real kick in the arse at too high of a percentage... sickening even. But at 2, it wasn't bad and might fit the bill, though it gave me headaches (it was one of my first and I haven't revisited, so it may have been a bad batch on my part).
Outside of those 2, the other 2 I tried had sweet notes in them, so probably not much of a help.
Ninja edit: acetyl pyrazine seems to add a bread or nutty like tone for most... You could take a shot at it with some less sweet flavors or with a tobacco to add a bit of earthiness to them.
Interesting. I may have to try this. How do you think the acetyl pyrazine would be added to one of the more popular peanut butter type flavors I see around. They seem to be the closest I can handle.
Let me know how you like them. I'm always looking for new things to try and you might make a flavor that comes across perfectly.
A side note, the mvp isn't something to worry about so much as the tank you're running on it. I found the nautilus to be far better than what came with the mvp. Gave up on the mvp with the old tank for myself and didn't think about it until the SO burnt out all of the coils for it. Picked up the nautilus for her and there is a remarkable difference in flavor between the two. She fell in love with it instantly, though now she's finding she wants more since she's found a difference between the old and the new. She's taken to stealing one of my mods with a kayfun as of late. Kayfun on the mvp, not bad but always wanted more. Sweet spot came out with a twisted 28g at 0.6 on at 1/16 id, outside of the mvps abilities. Whole point of the 1am ramble fest I'd that you might find what you like now on that tank, but don't fret if you move to something else and it needs tweaking... just par for the course.
If you're looking to get into DIY, anise, tea, cola, energy drink, bourbon/whiskey/rum & beer flavors are all readily available through websites like ecigexpress.com and wizardlabs.com. I'd suggest browsing diy supply websites and see what flavors sound appealing to you.
In fact, check out TFA first. They have their flavors sorted nicely into subcategories; the spice and floral, tea and cola, nutty, and tobacco and wood might be a good place to find something that sounds appealing to you.
If you're looking for off the shelf flavourings, as opposed to homemade, Inawera makes a lot of good alcoholic and spice flavours. Many of them are not sweet on their own, or not overly so. Even some of their fruit ones aren't sickly sweet. Their basic apple is more like an apple juice or cider than a sweet fruit/candy flavour. This brand is very potent, many of their flavours work well alone at 2-3% max!
Inawera is well known for their tobacco flavours, too, but some of these will definitely not be to your liking. The ones described as being without a lot of additional non-tobacco flavours might be worth trying though. Tobacco is the last thing I want to taste, so I can't be more help than that.
Flavour Art also has some interesting ones in their lineup. Worth exploring. Also more potent than the common American brands, but some aren't quite as concentrated as Inawera's.
I think the trick will be to eschew American brands, or at least be very selective with them. They seem to be a lot sweeter by default, which isn't really surprising.
a few options, if you want to DIY
FlavourArt makes s product called "Bitter Wizard" for this very reason. I've never used it, as I have a sweet tooth
Lorann's "Tart and Sour" additive may help for similar reasons
People often use lemon juice and apple cider vinegar to balance pH. This may help.
In high VG mixes, USP sterile saline solution is sometimes used to thin out a mix. Worth a shot, though it really doesn't impart a "saltiness" until you get up past 4% (which may make the mix too thin)
And while many fruit flavors seem to have an inherent sweetness, tobacco flavour concentrates may not, depending on the flavor. There's often a nutty/spicy/and sometimes cocoa-y (as with FA's "Dark Vapure") undertone that may work for you
Get FA Bitter Wizard. It really helps to cut down on the sweet taste in your juices (in the same way that hops balance out the sweetness of malt in beer). I've actually been thinking about trying to do a hop extract to work into a beer as I love the way hops smell (especially when you add them to the boil when you're brewing your own beer. It makes your whole kitchen smell fan-fucking-tastic).
Obviously, menthol and tobacco are your friends as they are good, non-sweet flavors. Another interesting flavor that I love is FA Oakwood. Like you, I'm not a huge sweet fan and FA Oakwood is delicious by itself, but even better with just a hint of vanilla.
Coffee and tea flavors are also pretty bitter (by themselves, without the sweetners almost everyone likes to add) and work well to balance out the natural sweetness of PG and VG. I do my own coffee and tea extractions so I can't really recommend any good brands, but I can tell you that FA Black Tea sucks and doesn't taste like black tea at all. In fact, my disappointment with FA Black Tea is what led me to start my own black tea extractions--which are excellent. I love using my black tea extract as the sole flavoring agent for my black tea ejuice, and it is hardly sweet at all (add a drop of Bitter Wizard per 15mL of juice and it isn't sweet at all. Tastes like a crisp cup of unsweetened iced tea.
Do you do a distillation extraction or a reduction.
EDIT for my other comment: Just make sure the VG isn't "too hot" when you put the tea bags in or you can burn the tea (and hence the tea flavor). I apologize that I don't really have a precise step-by-step guide as to how I do it, I only use it for personal ejuice so I just kind of eyeball everything and go off intuition. For a better guide on how to do it, the sidebar should have a post about DIY extractions.
Flavour Art's "Mad Fruits" is a good strong red bull. I vaped it a lot, when I started vaping.
Also I'd recommend my 7 Marlshade III; it's an excellent tobacco ADV!
EDIT: Try some tobacco extracts. I have one from "Lord of Liquids" (check him out on youtube), that is really good. The tobacco taste is excellent!