I finally caved in and made two bulk batches of bases that I can vape as is... or experiment with.
Cheesecakes and custards are my goto flavor bases and I got tired of waiting for the steep time. I figure a steeped 175ml of each base will be a great for experimenting with. Does anyone else do this?
I swear it's one of the most satisfying things I've done in DIY. Knowing I have 2 ball jars filled to the brim makes me smile.
What method do you use for obsessively developing a liquid to perfection? The drop method just doesn't work with flavors that require a month to fully mature.
One of my friends and I exchange juices all the time and one thing he does when he makes his big batches he mixes the flavors with the VG with no nic and lets it steep age whatever for a full month and then adds in the nic after its done I'm trying that method with my next batch to see how it comes out.
That's how I do it with my Medicine Flower concentrates. I dilute them all 9 parts VG to 1 part concentrate and let them standard steep before I use them.
It does appear to make a difference in overall flavor steep time, but it doesn't bring it to 0 days.
The iterative design strategy I use:
Every night I try to mix two 5-10mL flavors. I have a rack that sits with one row of vials per day in chrono order. I use it like a queue, so for the first 7 days I just kept adding, then on day 8 I started taking the "end" row out and testing it. Then it goes back into the front of the queue along with the current night's yield and it will be pulled again in another week. When you test it, make a decision and either call it finished, put it back in to sit longer, or toss it and develop a new revision of the recipe. Replace the old revision with the freshly mixed revision in the queue.
Hope that makes sense, let me know if it seems like a good strategy to you.
Edit: For flavor bases, I only make them once I have a flavor down pat but I know the feeling you describe, sitting on a hoard of steeped bases that are still only 10-30% of the final volume.
So, this explains mixing 2 flavors at a time yes? How would you use this to develop a more complex flavor?
Ok. It hits the dequeue position. Tastes good but needs something more. Do you then remake that same flavor each day, adding something different the next?
Interesting though. I like it. It becomes a routine and you always have a fresh flavor to try.
Sorry, to be clear, if I said "flavor" I really meant "recipe" - each vial has multiple flavors in it, it's a whole recipe that gets iterated by tweaking flavor ratios, overall strength, etc. As an example, last night I worked on a strawberry cream and a fruit candy - two vials for the night, but each one has several flavors/PG/VG/nic inside, a fully made recipe. The recipe will change from week to week / month to month as I iterate on it.
I already added the VG to my flavorings.
From what I understand, steeping is for dispersing the flavors throughout the thick VG. No? I thought that's what took time.
I basically increased my recipe size from 30ml to 175ml, and simply didn't add the nicotine.
Ah shit. Now the math is going to be wrong if I add something, correct? Say the base flavor is 10% PG, then I add 90% VG. Now, if I add say 5% more flavoring to that 100% mix, how do I figure the math on the total % of the base flavorings?
105% Total now...
Multiply the % added (.05%) and subtract that number from the base flavor %?
SO the base flavor percent would reduce by 5%? So it would now only be 9.5% base flavor, instead of 10%?
My understanding is also that "steeping," is mainly about evenly mixing the flavors with the dilutents. But I think there is also something to just heating the flavors themselves and letting them oxidize a bit, so imo it's worth "steeping" the flavor bases.
Erm, ok so if you have 175ml of 10% flavor, 90% VG, then you have 17.5mL of flavor. If you added 5% more flavor you'd be adding 175 * 0.05 = 8.75 and would end up with 105% of your original volume (check: 175 * 1.05 = 175 + 8.75 = 183.75) Your new total 183.75mL is the new "100%" - now just divide your total flavor mL into that to get the new percentage. 17.5 + 8.75 = 26.25 / 183.75 ~= 0.127 So your new flavor percentage is ~12.7% - if you add flavor the flavor percentage cannot decrease.
- Figure out your total juice volume
- Figure out your total flavor volume
- Divide (flavor / total)
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####	 Queue (abstract data type):
>In computer science, a queue (/ˈkjuː/ KEW) is a particular kind of abstract data type or [collection](https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Collection_(computing)) in which the entities in the collection are kept in order and the principal (or only) operations on the collection are the addition of entities to the rear terminal position, known as enqueue, and removal of entities from the front terminal position, known as dequeue. This makes the queue a [First-In-First-Out (FIFO) data structure](https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/FIFO_(computing_and_electronics)). In a FIFO data structure, the first element added to the queue will be the first one to be removed. This is equivalent to the requirement that once a new element is added, all elements that were added before have to be removed before the new element can be removed. Often a [peek](https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Peek_(data_type_operation)) or front operation is also entered, returning the value of the front element without dequeuing it. A queue is an example of a linear data structure, or more abstractly a sequential collection.
>====
>Image ^(i) - Representation of a FIFO (first in, first out) queue
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