Hey guys my friend and I have just recently decided to start making e juice. I have a few questions though. I'm looking at all of these different flavor extracts and I see Strawberry (LO) and Strawberry (TFA) and I'm not quite sure what the difference between the two are. Any advice or tips as to the do's/dont's of making e juice would be greatly appreciated.
The Green Bastard... from parts unkown
My 2 cents, only order small bottles of any flavors, regardless of how good it sounds or reviews that you have read. Unless of course money is no object for you. For example, some people really like TFA Grape Juice. I thought it sounded good too, and now have 29.5 ml that I'm sure I will never use. At least a dozen more examples in my stash that I wished I had just gotten a 10ml bottle to teste taste.
I'll expand a bit more than other posters.
You first need to search and read up on the big time flavor producers, as each has their own flavor tendencies - for example, some seem to be very potent, others not so much.
Then, research the specific flavors and what recipes they are used in on this forum and what the result they give is. Especially with strawberry, there are so many different variations it can be quite overwhelming to figure out which one is going to get you the effect you want.
For one, the TFA and LO refer to the brands, The Flavor Apprentice (also occasionally referred to as TPA) and Lorann's (I think, I know it as LA) respectively. Flavors will vary from company to company. Some taste spot on, some taste like candy, some even taste terrible, some good at 1%, some good at 10%, it really all varies. Take advice from below and check the tasting notes in the sidebar on the right. I use http://e-liquid-recipes.com/flavors to search up flavors and see what percentages they are typically mixed at, I'll even look through the recipes and see what levels they are mixed at in a recipe that is similar to something I would like to achieve, you can also find some tasting notes on the site as well. I was very happy to find this site last night and it gave me an idea of what I'm getting into as I too am new to DIY - http://mamajsflavorshop.com/headinclouds-my-notes-on-flavor-descriptions/
Good luck with mixing!
When first starting off(I could be alone in this mindset), I wouldnt focus my attention or money on Lorann's flavoring. There is def some jewels in there( banana cream, cream cheese frosting, amongst a few others..), but to get your bearings about you in the concentrate world, I'd recommend TFA/CAP/FA to get you going. Again, just my opinion.
What's the difference between TFA, CAP etc..
All the flavours from different companies Arn't the same. If you were to get a strawberry from cap and a strawberry from tpa, they both can taste like strawberries but be quite different. I'm not very familiar will all the flavour differences myself but I've read that cap is more of a sweeter fresh strawberry, while tpa is more like a candy strawberry. I could be wrong on these exact flavours. Just working on memory here (which is awful).