Greetings /r/diy_ejuice, it's been a long time since I made a recipe post, and seeing this post prompted me to start writing the tale of discover you all will see below. I realized it was a bit long to be a comment on a thread, so I made a post to share my progress. The following is very lengthy, and the recipe is a bit more complex than my old one and fizz's, but will benefit any new mixers by showing multiple good ways of pinning down a recipe.

Everyone is aware of /u/fizzmustard's 'Nana Cream clone. It is as much a staple for beginners as it is for the experienced. And to his merits, it is a damn good recipe, and the first real progress to a respectable clone. Now this recipe that he came up with was close to the flavor, and good enough for most.

Not being satisfied with the missing parts in fizzy's clone, I decided to take up the mantel and continue picking apart nana cream, seeing as fizz was getting his juice line started when I came on the scene and couldn't be working on someone else's recipe. I noticed a bit of the "candied" flavor was indeed missing, but it wasn't a sugary candy flavor, but more like a generic fruit candy with ambiguous taste. This brings up one flavor that is extremely common in any fruit candies- apple juice. I ordered apple, it definitely wasn't the missing ingredient, but it had its merits. I marked it down as an oval trying to fit into a circle- almost, but not really. I stumble upon quince when I was simply looking for some weird, unknown flavors on TFA's site. As fizz pointed out on my recipe post, quince shares a lot of it's volatiles with other "possibles" that people have theorized, with the added benefit of a sort of tutti-frutti hint to it, that was missing from fizz's clone.

At the time, I was still very inexperienced with DIY, and this was the first recipe that I had every wanted to share, so I left well enough alone. It wasn't until I had multiple people messaging me and giving suggestions, seeking advice, and wanting to brainstorm over the missing ingredient(s) that my passion was relit. I had always been looking for preferential flavors, or making judgement calls on what flavor it would be; I had never mixed my passion into the development- science. So, in a complete 180 of my normal mixing methods, I joyfully set out to find the perfect ingredient. This is when I turned to TFA's specsheetlist. What a wonderful tool for the DIY community, giving you every ingredient that will be in your final juice, down to the chemical name and concentration. Hopefully other vendors will step up to the plate like TFA has, and have the transparency that TFA does.

I took all the ingredient lists from TFA for the flavors that either smell like they may be in it, or people say it tastes like might be in the authentic. I put them into an excel document, used a function to get rid of the unique ingredients in each flavor, and created a comprehensive list of ingredients that are shared between the possible flavors. I then removed any common ingredients like Ethyl Maltol, Maltol, and Hexane. Once those were out of the way, there were 4-5 volatiles that were in more than half of the flavors evaluated. After using the CAS# search in the spec sheet list on the 4-5 volatiles, I found one flavor that contains ~80% of the volatiles searched- TFA Apricot.

The Recipe:

• 8% TFA Strawberry
• 5% LA Banana Cream
• 1.5% TFA Apricot
• 1% TFA Dragonfruit
• 2d/10mL TFA Quince(~.4% by volume)

Good as a shake-n-vape, better after a week steep.

As I said above, this recipe is a bit more advanced than fizz's, using decimals of percentages and drops/10mL. For those of you just starting out mixing, use his recipe. It uses less flavors, and is a fantastic starter recipe.(Don't add the citric acid, though. Even fizzmustard said it's unnecessary and ruins the juice after a long steep.)

I started at 3% apricot, and that was a bit much, but I could tell the flavor was there. Apricot is one of the stronger TFA fruit flavors that I've played with, and at 3% it has a slight floral note. I cut the percentage in half, and seem to have hit the sweet spot. I'm positive this isn't the actual recipe of the authentic, but it is the closest I've come flavor-wise. As with all my recipes, this is a WIP and I will almost definitely do more revisions over time. If you have any questions after reading this, feel free to PM me and we can talk about those revisions.

PS I have a failed revision that turned into a delightful white gummy bear flavor that I will be posting with my TFA honey video sometime later this week or the next.

EDIT: If you feel the need to post this to e-liquid-recipes, at least link to my account on there, or this thread. That way people know who to ask if they have any questions.