I see a lot of posts out there from newbie mixers who are very frustrated with mixes that don't turn out well. The common complaint is "I don't know how to combine flavors/i dont know which flavors work well together and at what %'s"
When i started DIY (~5 months ago) i was very much in this boat. Before i would even touch a new concentrate i would do extensive research on what percentages it was used at by others and what types of flavors people used it with. Even after this research, some of my mixes would completely flop. It was all very frustrating, especially because i started selling to my housemates very early on in the process. I wanted to make juice that was my own and yet still have it taste good. My housemates ended up accelerating my learning because i was given more money to toss around at flavoring and the freedom to experiment as i pleased.
5 months down the line, i'm still by no reasonable measure an "expert" when it comes to DIY but i'm happy to say i can finally "eyeball" it and have it come out good. What I mean by this is that I know my concentrates well enough that I can say "I want a _______ flavored juice" and write some %'s down and the end result almost always comes out well. This is very exciting because it opens up the possibilities for what I can make.
Anyways, I just wanted to offer some encouragement to the people who are new to DIY and are struggling. And remember, TAKE NOTES.
Just started diy myself about a month ago. Can definitely agree. I have stocked up on a decent amount of flavours and always do some research before mixing. One of the best tips I have found so far is use a notepad or excel and always take notes of your mixes. Note down what works, what doesn't work and what percentages you are using in that mix. Start off small with 5ml mixes if you are unsure of a flavour. And just because a mix tastes like crappy or weak don't just throw it out, some concentrates take a few days steep before you really get the flavour out of them.
> Before i would even touch a new concentrate i would do extensive research on what percentages it was used at by others and what types of flavors people used it with.
I've been DIYing for two years. If there's one thing I've learned, it's exactly this.
I've been trying to do this, but get super frustrated because you see one person say 3%, another say 12%, then some other jackhole puts down 20%. Some of the percentage amounts I see on stuff are so out of range it's like the person has never even worked with it before.
Yeah that was a thing I hated too! But now I assign percentage fluctuations with what they are probably vaping out of. For example, under 7% I typically think it's someone with a replacement tank or Kayfun. 7% to 15% more than likely an RTA or sometimes an RDA. Over 15% most likely only a dripper. So far every recipe I've tested this theory on seems to be accurate.
I don't know. This sub in general seems to lean towards "BLAST YOUR FACE WITH FLAVOR UNTIL YOUR TONGUE BLEEDS". I've made a few recipes on here, and on every one of them, the flavor was so strong that it saturated my tongue. I had instant vape mouth and couldn't taste any other juice nor food/drink for some time afterward.
Personally, I tend to lean towards the AiV flavor approach. Subtle is better. This sub tends to leans more towards DBLiquids approach of "FLAVOR PUNCH TO THE MOUTH BITCH!".
INW Peach? Oh, we use it at 2% for stand alone flavors. Holy shit guys, anything more than 1% of INW seers my taste buds closed. Anything more than 0.5% dominates any other flavor you attempt to mix it with.
That's a good way of looking at it. When I see things in 20% or above though I just cringe.... I'm like, either that's way way to high (most likely the case), or that flavor company needs to make their concentrate a bit more concentrated.
I've yet to use any one flavoring at 20%. Although I'm still super new.
I have insane memory recall, so I only write down recipes, the flavor notes that I've posted are purely for you guys to help find new flavors. So notes aren't necessary, but highly suggested for almost everyone. But what helps a ton is also just reading everything in a thread; not all of the information will be in the selfpost, and some of the best ideas I've had came from the comments section, usually a good distance down.
The common complaint is "I don't know how to combine flavors/i dont know which flavors work well together and at what %'s
Solution: Don't make anything besides "proven" recipes for the first 6 months and only slightly change percentages on the existing notes.
Quit getting it in your head that you will make some new flavor that is the next big hype. Taking that chance as a novice will just be you wasting supplies.
I would like to know how much juice was wasted to finally discover some of the mixes that have street credit on here. I would guess that it was quite a bit of supply. Especially if your not doing very small test batches.
It takes time but depending on how much you work with certain flavors and how much time you waste on bad ideas (my favorite thing to do) you can get really good at eyeballing some stuff for sure. By "eyeballing" I mean thinking of a recipe off the cuff then carefully measuring it w a scale. I have a friend that likes for me to do just that. He throws a flavor, color or idea at me. I mix him up 5ml without vaping it (I'll taste a drop bc wtf who sends out a total wildcard to friend) and the craziest part is he usually likes it better than 95% of the house juices out there. Granted that's a low bar, but still. It's fun.
Yea basically this. It's taken me a bit but after about 4 years of DiY'ing I've finally reached the point where I've stopped even writing stuff down. I've had the same couple dozen flavor combinations for a bit and even when I get new concentrates I smell/taste them then note in my head whether they are low/mid/high percentages. I make juice for friends all the time usually they describe what they want and I will just come up with the recipe on the fly.
Made my first mix last night. I measured wrong, and it all came out tasting like shit. I mixed some more tonight nd got the measurements right. Hope they turn out ok after a bit of steeping. I envy those of you that can come up with a recipe off the top of you head. I will be glad when I get to that stage.
Only speaking for myself, but the biggest bummer is when you make a mix - leave it to steep for a week, two weeks, while vaping "shake and vape" recipes that aren't *that great and then you finally see how the steep is going and its just trash or didn't come out how you thought...
I think once a mixer gets to the point where they have 1 or 2 SOLID recipes AND a good reserve of these recipes is when you really start enjoying the experimentation. As of today, I'm looking at about 10 bottles of stuff I just dont want to vape or shouldn't because I want to see how they turn out. So I'm vaping my vendor juice from the "don't like" drawer...
I legitimately almost quit DIY last week
Yes that is going to be a bitch if my steeped juice sucks. Bad thing about it, is I prefer custard juice so anything I make other than shake and vape will have to steep. I do like pineapple so I did mix juice I can vape now. MUCH better vaping fresh juice than the oversteeped crap at my local B&Ms.
Noob here, can anyone tell me why my juices have terrible throat hit? 3mg/ml. wizard labs glycerin and proplyene glycol, and tfa flavors are what im running. please help ok taste is great but the throat hit is killer ok. thank you.
I'll second that, my first batches had a strange throat hit at 3mg and i didn't know why, wondered if it was my pg/vg ratio then i had the brain wave and realised I'd forgotten to shake my nicotine. Now everytime i pick it up i give it a good shake and everything tastes much better, smoother.
/u/Eizooz Thanks for the information but could you please advise how to make very creamy juice? Any idea. Thanks a lot
just edited my response to you for clarity (added bullets). All the flavors i listed are great creams that I use very regularly. Each has their nuances and you can only really understand by tasting yourself. You can also search "milkstone" and you'll get some interesting cream bases.