Hello guys, I'm quite new to this sub.
I've just put down a £150 investment on all equipment and 20 concentrates to start my adventure into DIY. Whilst I wait for it to be delivered at some point this week, I've been finding recipes for juice that I would usually purchase at the store and setting everything up in the Juice Calculator
After using said popular recipe calculator, I was shocked to find out that in order to make 30ml of what is essentially my all day vape will cost me just £2. I usually pay £14.99 for 30ml at the store. I usually spend about £200 a month in juice.
Surely, it isn't THIS CHEAP? I feel like I've made a huge mistake somewhere....
Yes, yes it is. Welcome to the light. :)
Whilst I really like going to my local B&M store, I can't help but feel a bit foolish for spending so much money there for 2 years....
I just hope everything works out nicely and I can nail it relatively early! All thanks to all the information in this sub.
Don't feel bad. There are many things you can do yourself that you pay considerably more for at the store. Think about it like this: You can go to the grocery store and buy the materials to make a meal for two people for $10-15.. Or you can order from a restaurant and get a similar meal for two people - But it'll probably cost you $20-30.
What you aren't considering is that you're paying for people's time. When you make something like DIY eJuice a hobby, the time investment doesn't matter because you're enjoying it!
All that being said.. Many juice companies are still a MAJOR rip off.
Not foolish at all. You have the advantage of no real estate, no payroll, rent, insurance, etc etc... I know a lot of B&M WAY over charge, but there are days when you want something special. I'm forever comparing it to going out to eat. Day to day, it's just not practical to go out to eat EVERY day, but now and then, everyone does. Especially when you can buy something and fall in love with the flavor, you can make attempts at getting pretty close at home (and most times make it better because it's yours!)
Have fun, and ask lots of questions! Start with single flavors and get used to them individually and it will help know how much to mix with others for a good balance of flavor.
Early on you'll want to make loads of 5-10ml testers so that you can test the concentrates on their own and you'll find that a few of them are perfectly acceptable to vape just as they are. They won't have the complexity of B&M juice, granted, but considering that they cost a fraction of the price I found the trade-off perfectly acceptable!
Find a few recipes online that you can copy and that'll get you going as well. Even if you don't have the exact brand of concentrate you can usually muddle something vapeable together at first.
Once you get into it a bit and start buying PG/VG in litres or larger then it gets even cheaper! I just received 1l of VG today that cost me £7...
Just dont forget to do meticulous note-taking, so you can reproduce your astoundingly cheap recipes!
I ALWAYS forget to tell people this one simple thing! Yes, This! I have a notebook FULL of things Version 1, V2, V3, V4, Etc.
Don't forget to include how much your free time "costs" you.
For almost everyone, the time spent mixing juice is a net gain. When I mix - twice a month for two people - I "make" ~$200/hr after accounting for cost of materials and comparing against retail/commercial eJuice cost. I earn a really decent salary, but it's nowhere near $200/hr. That's approaching lawyer rates.
What about the time you spend on here? Or researching? What about the time you spend prepping or the time you spend maintaining tools and cleanup?
Depends how far you're taking it. At some point it just becomes your hobby and you can't count your time this way anymore, it's something you do because you enjoy it.
If you take me as an example, I barely research anything, don't try to attain some mythical quality, I just mix up a batch when I run out. Takes me about 10min to get 50ml done (if even that, I'm seriously not joking), and then I go back to my life.
I know I'm not doing anything special with my juices, but for my tastes it's enough, I get vaper tongue big time anyway and quickly don't taste a damn thing. DIY doesn't necessarily mean countless hours spent doing it.
My prep and tear down takes 10 minutes. As for the rest, that's just highly variable. Once you've settled on a few great recipes, any time investment becomes minimal. Perhaps exploring a few testers every two or three weeks. So even if we're liberal with our estimates, we're still looking at "making" far more per hour than most people can spending their time in other ways. There's not much someone can do to pick up $50-$200/hr work on demand, on their own terms.
This of course is all moot if you're the kind of person that has gone way down the rabbit hole and invested serious time and energy. You get that, because you're one of them. That's why I'm VERY grateful for your (and others') contributions here. I understand the time-and-materials investment you guys are making on a daily basis, and then basically "open-sourcing" to the rest of us.
It's what makes this community one of the best I've ever been a part of, and it's what enables people like me to sit down every now and then and have a backlog of proven recipes to test mix. It's also, frankly, a massive enabler for the DIY industry at large. I suspect that without the online DIY community, the supporting vendors wouldn't have nearly the sales they do.
TL;DR: Thank you!
What's even crazier is knowing that somewhere theres a vendor mixing up 1 flavor FW juice, at 0 NIC and 80% VG they got wholesale, selling it for more than $0.30/ML. Welcome to the land of opportunity.
And just think, somewhere there's a McDonald's charging more than $4 for a fifty cent hamburger. (hehe)
Those burgers aren't even worth 50 cents. They're made from the shit that didn't make the cut for nice restaurants/stores.
> Those burgers aren't even worth 50 cents. They're made from the shit that didn't make the cut for nice restaurants/stores.
While I agree that they're crap, I think you underestimate McD. They're the single largest buyer of hamburger (minced meat), and the single largest buyer of potatoes. They do have some quality control, and not everything makes it into burgers. Again, I agree, the burgers are crap! :D
Yep, makes you realize how insane B&M markup is. If someone told me a year ago I could get 120ml of juice for ~$10 I would've called them a liar, but here I am today doing the math to justify my bulk buying to my wife. :)
Just like anything. You can buy a biscuit at the drive through for $4 or buy $4 worth of flour, some bacon and eggs and make a couple dozen biscuits. All those premium juice vapers are paying for is hype.
> All those premium juice vapers are paying for is hype.
Where I'm from the shops use clean rooms that are inspected, everything is sanitized to a food-safe standard, and then juice has to be distributed to the shops. I'm not saying they're not making a profit, but there definitely is more to the markup than greed and hype.
yeah, it is definitely a shock when you realize the production cost vs how much you pay for premixed juice. i mix my juice for about $0.05 per ml buying my flavoring, vg, and nic in bulk. even not buying in bulk, it would still only be about $0.10 per ml for diy.
my wife and i went from spending $22 (plus shipping) for 30ml of our ADV flavor, to making our own clone (which we can make modifications to as desired) that tastes just as good, if not better, for about $1.50 for 30ml.
I am looking to start DIY too, can you give a list- point to a resource/website where I can get a total setup like this in the UK? I assume you are from the UK with the £ sign..
Of course!
First, I looked at available recipes, using the sidebar. I went through pages and pages of archives, clone threads and monthly flavour threads. Some of the external links are okay too, but all I found where from this very sub. Any flavour I liked, and was recommended by others I noted the concentrates required to make it. I spent attleast 4-5 hours on this alone.
I then searched this Sub for the keywords "UK". That lead me down a rabbit hole which I emerged on the other side with the following links:
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A cheap DIY Kit with most of what you will need. This was based on the amount of recommendations for quality and service of the seller, and of course price! However, you should also note that what also sealed the deal here for me was for the recipes I found, this website also had MOST of the flavors I would need to make them. Therefore, reduce multi website purchases. (This kit has everything if you want to measure by volume, more on this later....)
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There were still some remaining flavours I needed so I went here and here. Again, based on feedback from other redditors when I looked through every thread with the search term "UK".
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Some point late yesterday, I decided I would actually start mixing by weight from the outset. It seems a LOT of people do this and there are a lot of advantages. So, I purchased these scales with the intention of them not lasting very long. They are cheap but I was having difficulty on sourcing a larger one which ticked all of the boxes. So this is very much a stand in for now.
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I then realised I didn't have much mixing containers to mix LARGE quantities, especially since I found a good clone of my ADV. So, I purchased this 50ml measuring cylinder
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Then I panicked and though "Jesus, what if I spill 50ml of shit. I should probably get gloves like everyone recommends"
If you haven't already, honestly take the time to read the Begginers Guide. It is literally awesome, and helped me a lot.
Good luck! And have fun! I've had a blast just finding recipes, and I'm already building a shopping list of more concentrates to purchase.
Smart Weigh SWS100 Elite Digital Pocket Scale 100 x 0.01g - Black
|||| --:|:--|:-- Current|£3.16|Amazon UK (3rd Party New) High|£7.99|Amazon UK (3rd Party New) Low|£3.16|Amazon UK (3rd Party New) ||£6.76|(30 Day Average)
Price History Chart and Sales Rank
GLASS MEASURING CYLINDER (GRADUATED BOROSILICATE GLASS) 50ML
|||| --:|:--|:-- Current|£3.14|Amazon UK (3rd Party New) High|£6.35|Amazon UK (3rd Party New) Low|£3.14|Amazon UK (3rd Party New) ||£5.24|(30 Day Average)
Vapable is a good place to go, Perfumers apprentice flavour concentrates are like £1.49 for 10ml right now and they're pretty good. 72mg Nicotine in 100ml is about £12, PG and VG are about £3 each.
Depending on how many flavour concentrates you want to buy and if you need to buy bottles, syringes or even a scale on top will vary your cost but maybe take a look at ELR and find a few premium juices you want to replicate, buy the necessary ingredients (let's say you buy 12 flavour concentrates) you could get enough to start yourself up for about £50.
The nicotine is high strength so can last ages, PG and VG are cheap enough to not have to worry about replacing (and VG can even be bought from chemists, Lloyds and Boots stock Care+ brand glycerine which is about £2 for 200ml)
When it comes to DIY the world is your oyster, my friend. You can be really tight and still keep yourself stocked up well enough with one or two trusted recipes or you can loosen the purse strings and buy everything and experiment.
We have a list of EU based DIY vendors over on /r/ecr_eu. I'd recommend checking out the following sites:
Concentrates
- Chef's Vapour - Largest selection in the UK
- FlavourArt
- Vapour Depot - Stocks Flavorah concentrates
Nicotine
PG/VG
- Mineral Water LTD (EBAY)
Don't forget inawera flavours - especially their garden range - less than £2 a bottle, but so concentrated you only need a couple of drops per 5ml. Now that's cheap juice.
They're great too although they're delivery is shit. Don't order if you're in a rush.
As a tip, I buy glass essential oil bottles with eye droppers, that way I can wash and sterilize the bottles when I am done with them. VG is super cheap, flavors are super cheap, nicotine isn't too bad. Bottles would be my biggest expense if I didn't re-use them.
Edit: glass bottles cost about $1/bottle
Yes, I noticed that this would be essentially the most expensive thing on the shopping list when the plastic ones included in the kit are thrown away.
I was wondering, could I reuse these ones? I have a few of these glass ones (and probably about 5 more in my car/around the office) but, they are clear. Will that make a huge difference? I noticed the ones in your link are blue, which I have had juice in similar styled bottles before
The brown and blue bottles will protect the nicotine from the light better, making it oxidize slower. As the nicotine oxidizes, it darkens the color of the liquid, and often adds a harsh or peppery note. Some flavors this is okay, some flavors become absolutely hideous.
Nothing wrong with the clear ones, though. I never manage to make a bottle last long enough for nicotine oxidation to be a problem!
Personally, I prefer the plastic bottles with the thin tip. I've had way too many times when some jerk (probably me) forgot to screw the cap down on the glass bottle, and one lazy grab later, here's 30ml of juice on my lap! Since I'm only making stuff for myself, I just rinse the bottles really well in hot water and hang them up on a drying rack for reuse.
Yeah, color won't make a practical difference unless you are storing it for long periods of time. Similar to beer, sunlight can break down mocules in the nicotine(well, alcohol in beer) and cause them to oxidize or whatever. Don't store juice in direct sunlight and it won't be an issue. If your buying bottles, might as well buy the blue ones. But I have re-used several clear glass bottles and they are fine. And yeah I save all the bottles from vendors and re-use those too.
£2 per 30ml... You can shave a bit off of that once you get going. The biggest money sink is small quantities of flavourings, which is unavoidable when you start, as you naturally want to try everything. When you get a few favourite recipes down that you want to make fairly frequently, you can get those flavourings in larger sizes at a much lower cost per ml. You'll also find that you end up needing much more of some flavours, particularly creams, bakery notes, and other stuff that you use as a foundation for other flavours.
Congrats on taking the leap! It's a great hobby in itself, aside from all the hardware and coil related stuff. Get a nice lil dripper if you haven't already, for testing your experiments.
You are correct! I started with a DIY Starter Kit, which cost me a little more in the beginning, but now I am saving so much money. Even with my local B&M store having 2 for $20 Tuesdays (30ml bottles) I am still saving a lot. Not to mention, once I found a flavor my wife and I both liked, I can make 200ml batches and just refill bottles as needed. I really like not having to drive to the B&M all the time.
I will say it becomes fun. I have always found a flavor I liked and just stuck with it for months and months. Simply because I didn't want to risk spending $20 on something I didn't/wouldn't want to vape. Now, I want to experiment and try new flavors because throwing out a 10ml tester, that I made, is not a big deal.
Welcome to the club.
Most things that are DIY are cheaper than retail. You arent accounting for manpower put into making/experimenting/overhead from a B&m.
I do all my own home improvements and car work. Changing an AC in your car would run you easily 1000$, where my doing it myself I am only out the cost of parts, materials, and time. Compressor costs 2-300, 30 for the freon, and an afternoon of doing the work. I already have the tools and knowledge, and thats a huge part of taking anything to a shop.
I sometimes make DIY jewelry, if I buy wholesale jewelry making supplies, I think DIY is cheap. While if there isn't any wholesale and discount, I think DIY is a little expensive.