I've been vaping for nearly two years now. My first year and a half was consisted of buying only store bought juice. Once I started DIY I haven't bought a single bottle of juice from the store. Not necessarily because of the price difference but because of how much better DIY juice is compared to top named brands. I could pull out over 50-100 recipes from the sub that are better then any store bought juice I've ever had. Many companies have juices that taste like wet socks and make me want to gag instantly. How do some companies even stay in business with all their juices tasting absolutely horrid?
Stores sell bread. Cheap bread, and expensive bread.
Stores also sell flour, yeast, salt, sugar, butter... so you can make your own bread for 1/10th the cost.
Some people buy expensive bread, others buy cheap, nasty bread. Sometimes nasty bread is the only pre-baked option, but most people can't be bothered making bread from scratch.
Bread is a great example. Around here the artisan bread wave has not actually happened so alongside the cheap bread is more cheap bread packaged as "premium" bread. There is good quality artisanal bread, that is more expensive (for reason), rare, and the experience offsets the cost. I have not enjoyed a store bought vape in well over a year. Not every juice is awful but none of them are worth the cost to me.
Bread is a terrible comparison. Hell, I just grabbed a random flavor off my desk that I noticed I hadn't tried yet when I was bored earlier. Tossed a couple mls into some VG and nic, bam, juice in 2 minutes. Blowing clouds with it right now. Now if after doing that, I shoved it in a closet for 2 weeks to let it steep, bam, premium juice. Baking bread is a mess that takes 30 minutes just for the initial prep, followed by hours of proofing and baking. If I want bread right now, I'm not gonna spend 2-3 hrs waiting on it. If I need juice right now, it would take me longer to drive to the nearest B&M than it would for me to mix up some simple flavor.
What people are really avoiding when they don't DiY is the learning. Why spend all those hours experimenting, reading guides, reading recipes, tracking down places to buy bottles and materials as we all did when first starting out. Sure the time between making your first bottle of juice and your second is two minutes, but the time between making your first bottle of juice, and deciding to make juice is about 2 weeks.
Professionally trained chef here, who has worked as a baker and patissier, and strongly disagree. Bread is a perfect comparison. Only an amateur makes a huge mess, because they don't know what they're doing. I can make the crustiest, flakiest, most sexy sourdough bread you've ever eaten without a recipe, and it takes me about as much effort as you throwing a few drops of flavor into some juice. My mess for bread is two bowls, a dough hook, and a pan. Because I know what I'm doing, there's not really much of a mess, they just need to be lightly soaped and rinsed. And one paper towel to wipe up any flour sprinkles. Making bread requires time, but it can be likened to steeping, shaking, heating, etc. Whatever you have to do to make a juice taste decent.
No such thing as premium juice. Most all juice makers use the same flavors, nic, pg, and vg that diy'ers use. Few days ago, my brother let me try some juice that was with a catchy name and fancy bottle. Soon as I tasted it, I knew right away it was Melon madness from Nude nic. After he told me how much he paid, I just laughed at him. I told him if he liked that juice, I'd make him a 60 ml. of it for $5.
Taste is subjective
Indeed! I once had a kona cream that tasted exactly like saltine crackers.
It aint THAT subjective
Yes, it is.
Yea I've been making my own juice for years and have never found a recipe that tastes better than premium juice. Idk how they do it.
Steeping and sweeteners. Also gotta find those perfect recipes.
I don't use sweeteners at all. Though very few recipes on here call for them. Steeping is tough to do but for desert type flavors I usually let them steep a week.
I've made some juices that didn't taste that great until a month had gone by. They were only okay before that. The time can be taken down with much more shaking, but I'd usually rather just wait. This was true especially for desert flavors and coffee flavors. Using an RDA instead of a tank also really brings out the flavors. Which do you use?
Have you checked the flavor of your PG and VG? If you have a bad base... you're going to have a bad time.
Try making a mix of PG/VG/nic and vape that. VG generally has a slightly sweet flavor, so if your base mix tastes like crap anything you mix with it will also.
That wet sock flavor you're tasting is usually because they fuck around and use additives (like smooth, for example) which end up clouding the flavor while it steeps.