Okay, /r/DIY_Ejuice - I've never been extremely active as a poster on this subreddit, but don't worry, I've been reading every day, and collecting all of your valuable information. now it's time for me to give a little something back, and that's my method for creating complex juices and knowing exactly how they are going to turn out before ever mixing a single drop.

• Background

I spent the better part of 15 years working in and around restaurants and bars, most recently running an extremely high end cocktail bar in a very popular neighborhood in a major city in the United States. I also love to cook in my free time, and enjoy the return to scratch cooking, local ingredients that is the age that we are in now.

When I got into ecigarettes, I was immediately enthralled by DIY Juice and got into it right away. I've been mixing for a while now, and have recently transitioned into running a small juice business which has just launched this past month. Enough about me, let's talk about making complex juices.

• The basics of a recipe

Now, I go into creating a recipe just like I would create a cocktail. Almost all cocktails are built using the same basic recipe idea:

• Main flavor/spirit
• Secondary flavor/spirit
• Enhancing flavor/spirit
• Garnish/textural element/background flavor

Let's take a Margarita as an example

• Main note - lemon/lime sour
• Secondary note - tequila/agave
• enhancer - triple sec (orange)
• garnish - salt/sugar/lime

There's a reason drinks are made this way. the main ingredient either is enhanced by the secondary ingredient, or they are so opposite that they work in concert to please the sensories. The enhancer, in this case triple sec, smooths out the main flavor and ties the secondary ingredient further to the main ingredient. The garnish in a cocktail is almost always to add a textural element, further enhance the combination of ingredients, and usually adds a visual element.

In order to follow the same successful patterns to make a successful e-juice, you'll have to follow the same basic recipe ideas. First and foremost, you'll need to have a basic understanding of ingredients and how they interact. A fantastic source if you don't already have this baseline knowledge is "The Flavor Bible" by Karen Page. There's also this great webpage if you just want to jump right into an idea. My point is, you don't have to know every combination that works in the world - you can simply have an idea of an ingredient and use your resources to find items that are either complimentary, or are so drastically opposite they compliment each other.

Now in the bar world, we always had what we called Wildcard ingredients. You grab a bottle of Plymouth gin, you know you are getting a dry, juniper forward gin that's consistently the same everytime. You grab a lime out of the cooler, well every lime has a different amount of tart to it. That lime is a wildcard, because you never know exactly what intensity of flavor you are going to get from it until you try it.

You have to taste your wildcards, everytime, because you already know how much you need it to be prevalent in the recipe, so once you know what level of ingredient you are working with, you know how much to add.

On a brand+Flavor level, Flavor concentrates are not wildcards. You know that Capella Passionfruit is going to taste and do the same things in every recipe every time.

However, you can't substitute TFA Passionfruit for Capella Passionfruit blindly, because you do not know how it will react. Also, many of our flavor concentrates are not as cut and dry as Strawberry. You have strawberry ripe, strawberry, strawberry candy, sweet strawberry, strawberries and cream......

The other major factor that is different with ejuice than making a cocktail, or cooking a meal, is chemical reaction and time to consume.

Each flavor concentrate is a different chemical mix, which reacts to other ingredients differently, and reacts to things like Oxygen differently as well. Most people don't wake up, mix their juice for the morning, vape it all, and then mix their juice for mid-day, vape that all, then mix up their evening juice. (I'm not going to lie, I'm doing this tomorrow.)

You need to know, going into making your recipe, how the ingredient you are using falls into the data set. The data set is:

• What does it smell like?
• What does it taste like freshly mixed/shake and vape
• What is the mouth-feel like?
• What does it smell like after x days?
• What does it taste like after x days?
• What is the mouth-feel like after x days?

Generally, the chemical bonding that occurs when making juice happens in the first 14 days for almost every extract I've been exposed to. Yes, some things take a bit longer to fully mature, but 14 days is generally a safe amount of time to get a sense of the development of flavor of any concentrate in your arsenal. The idea of creating a data set for each ingredient you own and plan to use is simple. Rather than suffering from the frustration of a pretty good mix that's just missing something - you'll already know exactly how to adjust your mix to get that missing flavor or mouth-feel by using your data set.

• Building a Data set

I follow a pretty simple method with every flavor concentrate that enters my workspace, before using it in any form and factor.

30pg/70vg blends mixes for all, because that is my preferred ratio, in a clean and sterilized 5ml bottle. You should use your preferred ratio. The slight change to a 20/80 or even a 40/60 will be pretty easy to predict the outcome of, and will only slightly affect the flavor/aging time.

1. mix - 2% 0mg nic
2. mix - 2% 3mg nic
3. mix - 5% 0mg nic
4. mix - 5% 3mg nic
5. mix - 10% 0mg nic
6. mix - 10% 3mg nic

I label each bottle with the name of the concentrate and the number of the mix.

Then I create a page in my notebook with the name, flavor, and down the left side, I copy the above numbered list, and then I make 5 columns across the page - initial impression, 3 days, 1 week, 10 days, and 14 days.

Then after mixing and a quick shake, I write down my thoughts of:

• initial smell
• initial taste on vape (I use the same set up and device every time)
• Initial mouth-feel

Then I repeat on the above schedule on each of the specific days, and collect the same data. At the end of two weeks, I have detailed notes on how the flavor has developed over time at varying percentages, with and without nicotine.

A quick note about nicotine. Yes, it changes the overall flavor of your mix. However, some concentrates react differently to nicotine, and can cause a drastic change in how they mature. This is why I test with and without nicotine. IF you are simply making juice for yourself, you can skip testing both, and just use the method you will be mixing.

Now right now, you are thinking - this is a LOT of work. It is. It's a serious piece of dedication to build a flavor set, and keep doing it after you order more flavor concentrates. But, you are also cutting out a lot of trial and error time later.

• How to use the data

Once you have spent two weeks getting to know all of your flavors on their own, you'll have some serious data to pull from. I put a summary at the bottom of each page of my notebook that corresponds to the flavor, as a quick reference. It goes something like this:

• Strawberry Ripe, TFA

At 2% light, barely there strawberry flavor, would work great as a balancing agent in a strong mix doesn't change significantly at this % over time. no discernible mouth-feel.

At 5% clear strawberry flavor, definitely over ripe, as a strawberry would taste when it starts to soften. Slightly candy-like sweetness. As it matures, the ripeness of the strawberry becomes slightly more pronounced. no discernible mouth-feel.

At 10% strawberry in your face. Very forward, clearly strawberry. Becomes slightly more pronounced with age, while maintaining a sugary sweet finish. no discernible mouth-feel.

• now it's time to actually plan a recipe

Again, to my notebook of data. A new page is created. First, I put down on the top line what the flavor I seek is, built just like my cocktail:

• Main note - Grapefruit
• Secondary note - caramel
• Enhancer - citrus punch
• garnish, textural element, background flavor - marshmallow for mouthfeel

Then I visit my data set for each of the flavors.

Grapefruit - I use Capella, it's harsh initially but rounds out after 14 days. I set a top level for a main note ingredient at 10% knowing I will likely dial it back to 9% or 8% before I get down to mixing.

Caramel - I have a few options here, but knowing that I want to add some sweetness to the grapefruit, to enhance the flavor and give it the appearance of a big juicy red grapefruit, I go with TFA Caramel candy. My notes tell me it will add a touch of sweetness without being overly candy. I set my secondary flavor at 5% knowing I'm likely to end up dialing back to 4%.

Enhancer - citrus punch. I know the grapefruit I am using is not what I would describe as round. I want to give it a bit more of a bite, and I know from my data set that citrus punch at a low percentage is going to enhance the grapefruit without overwhelming the mix. I put that down for a 2% mix, knowing I may go back to 1.5% or even 1% depending on my initial testing.

Enhancer - marshmallow. I know based on my notes that I've achieved a nice full round flavor, with the amount of sweetness needed for a balance, and that my caramel ratio is going to play really well with my grapefruit. I also know from my notes that none of the other ingredients add what I call the "wet" or "thick" feel to the vape. Marshmallow, based on my research will give me that, and at a small percentage won't even be detectable as a flavor in the mix. I set that at .5%

So my recipe looks like this:

• Cap Grapefruit - 9%
• TFA Caramel Candy - 4.5%
• TFA Citrus Punch - 1.5%
• LA Marshmallow - .5%

Now I mix up a batch, shake the shit out of it, load up a new wick in my testing device, and give it a vape, and put down my initial notes. I'm really only looking for any anomalies from what my data set has told me I am going to get based on the percentages I used.

I'll test that recipe on mixing, 3 days, 7 days, 10 days and 14 days and write down my thoughts each time.

The only wildcard I've left room for here is either A) Too much or too little of a flavor (though I've made a very educated guess) or B) a strange chemical interaction between the ingredients if I've never mixed them before.

I find 75% of the time, I don't have to change a thing from my initial guess, though sometimes I do tweak things a bit, usually because a main ingredient ratio isn't working, or because of a strange interaction.

If the balance of flavor is good, but perhaps the overall flavor is too strong or too weak, I can tweak the overall flavor percentage, since I've already set ratios. In the above example:

• Grapefruit - 18 parts or 1/1
• Caramel Candy - 9 part or 1/2
• Citrus Punch - 3 parts 1/6
• Marshmallow - 1 part or 1/18

This makes my total flavor base very easy to scale even without a recipe calculator.

In the event that something strange occurs in the mix as it matures, I add a reference note to that flavors page in my notebook, so that next time I'm using that ingredient, I can keep this in consideration when testing the recipe mix.

• Conclusion or TL;DR

When mixing a multi note recipe, It's important to go into the creation with a focus on flavors that enhance each other, while minimizing the wildcards available that can make your recipe bad, by documenting concentrate tendencies over time, and keeping notes on each concentrate you have in your wheelhouse. Once you've done the initial research, the only thing you'll need to Guess in a recipe is the total overall flavor percentage, and that will be a very educated guess. Your only wildcard will be strange interaction between the chemical compounds in the flavor concentrates.