I've made several different juices. Prob about 15 different ones I created and 5 or 6 of top recipes. Comparing it to Phillip Rockes creme de la creme, I've noticed my flavor and scent is much weaker. Even juices that have steeped for a month. I've had flavor percentages between 12 and 22 and I've noticed it on all. Can anyone explain why and maybe explain how to get "more flavor"
Often it's not lack of flavor. You have three distinct parts of the equation:
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Balance of flavor. Everything should be in tune, the strong flavors balanced in lower percentages to the weaker flavors and everything in tune. Once you fine tune the ratio of concentrate to concentrate, then you can focus on how high of a percentage to use in the final mix. Scaling is very real when making juices.
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Mouthfeel & Texture. Little things like adding a touch of marshmallow, hazelnut, cream, or other fruit bases to increase the mouthfeel when you inhale and exhale. Texture is a big part of taste. A juice that taste like pear is cool. A juice that taste like you just bit into a pear and you'd swear you can feel and taste that skin is superb.
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Counterbalance: Alright, cool. You made the biggest richest custard in the world. Well about three puffs and your palette is dead, it starts to taste like...nothing. You need to counterbalance that richness with acidity. Not a lot, maybe barely detectable, but enough to get the mouth watering, and make it feel fresh. The most common counterbalance is mint, but of course you can't always use that.
Those three things, in conjunction with an appealing mix of flavors, and you'll have better than premium juice.
This is not just mixing a few concentrates in a bottle and diluting, sure you can do that and many people are very happy to do this and save money. If you want top level juice, it takes time, practice, experience, technique and knowledge to get there.
is someone cutting onions? ...beautifuly said.
No kidding. /u/skiddlzninja needs to have the bot paste this into any thread asking about premium juice. /diy_ejuice
Not sure what's going on with the bot right now. Either people caught on to using flair and have been adding it immediately after posting, or the bot is lagging by a few hours. I know I've had to flair a few posts myself because the bot didn't show up.
I'd be really interested in your thoughts and experience with scaling. Do you have a rule or run on trial and error?
When you say scaling, you mean once I have a balanced flavor base and want to figure out what % to flavor at?
No, sorry, what I meant was I am finding that if I am making larger batches I am having to scale up my percentages.
A simple 3/2/1/1 recipe will work well in 30ml and 100ml batches, but producing a 500ml batch seems to require that I bump all my percentages by an extra half a percent. I understand that accuracy in small batches like 30nl can lead to errors in actual percentages, but I feel like there is something else going on.
It doesn't have more flavor. It has more sweetener. It gives the illusion of flavor because you have an expectation of what the profile is going to be, and your brain paints the vague sweetness with made-up flavors.
And it's entirely possible the juices you've made just aren't that good. It's nothing that can't be fixed by hard work and practice, but for every person who makes juice that's better than premium there's 2 others that make juice that tastes like shit.
I agree but there is a second point that I think is important and frequently overlooked.
Just because you have 22% flavoring in a recipe doesn't make it more flavorful. It's what that percentage of flavoring actually is. If you have 22 flavors all at 1% it's going to be a muddled mess.
Something I learned in my cooking background is that you want no more than 3 primary flavors in a dish. Adding more players into the mix just takes away from your stars.
Also with flavorings more is not always better. Going higher percentage of a flavoring can kill a recipe just like adding too much salt to a soup.
This is something I often talk to my girlfriend about. One of her biggest complaints on retail juice has always been how sweet it is. After debating why they would do this the only thing that we've been able to come up with is to try to prolong the amount of time until you lose the flavor to Vapors tongue. I've noticed I have to drink a lot more water with my DIY juice to be able to continue to get really good flavor. I don't mind this because I realized I was dehydrated most of the time before starting to DIY, but would retail juice you can taste it even when you're starting to get dehydrated due to the amount of flavoring in it
Unprofessional source: recently picking up my guilty pleasure retail juice at $20 for 30 milliliters. And quickly realized that I can taste it it doesn't seem overly sweet when I'm dehydrated, but taste like syrup at full strength regularly
I know exactly what you mean but unfortunately I don't have a real solution other than sweeteners. I think these sweeter/intense juices use a sweetener base - not just EM or sucralose. Did you see this post for centerfold BB? https://www.reddit.com/r/DIY_eJuice/comments/3uh49a/the_centerfold_bb_recipe_now_with_more_notes/
Its 5% sweetener and 15% flavor - I've never tried the original, nor do I have all ingreds to make this recipe. But I mean, this is a verified, bottled and sold juice (before it was retired) that I assume has the intensity/sweetness/flavor you (and I) are comparing to and its got more sweetener than anything I've seen posted. Most recipes here and on ELR seem to rely on the sweetness already in the flavorings (which is fine) and rarely do I ever see a 4/5 star recipe with anything more than 2% sweetener (marsh/sucralose/ethyls).
So, in short... make some basic guidelines for the sweetener in your recipes. It will probably be too sweet for most people here but as long as you like it that's really all that matters right?
So, I own an ejuice company, and I can assure you that "premium" is only a label that people put on it.
Most people are getting flavor extracts from a few main distributors, and PG/VG is the same everywhere as long as it's food grade.
The main differences that you're going to see are in the methods that you are using to steep your juice.
Like, if you're trying to steep your stuff in a crock pot (how I first started), it's going to be a bit different than if you're using a magnetic stirrer with hot plate (Like this one: http://amzn.com/B010LSM4Q8).
You can still get the same results from other methods, it just generally takes longer and most people don't have the patience to wait for 2 weeks for juice to properly steep in a crock pot (or rice method).
EDIT: Also proper amounts of sucralose is fucking key, but don't overdo it... http://amzn.com/B00I28OQ7K
Hmm...interesting. Just curious, do you have a set amount of sucralose that you add to every recipe that requires it or is it different for every juice?
The bottle I linked is a 25% sucralose, but generally you want a 10% so that it's easier to measure, ESPECIALLY if you're doing 10ml bottles for testing (which you should be).
Because 1 drop of that (.05ml) in a 10ml bottle is too much.
The amount of sucralose will depend on the flavor that you are going to make, but I put it in nearly every one of my flavors (except tobacco).
You pretty much NEVER want to go over .3% of sucralose total per bottle.
I usually chill around .15%ish just depends.
EDIT: formatting
Cool! Thanks for the info. I have sucralose now but never use it. It's a 10% solution and I noticed that if I put more than 2 drops per 10ml it overpowers everything and has a nasty aftertaste. I guess that's what scared me away. I wonder if all sucralose (once diluted to the same percentage) is created equal.
In addition to what was said here, keep in mind big brands like Philip Rocke and Five Pawns probably spend months with a team of people working to perfect a single recipe - sometimes with equipment and flavorings and extracts not available to the hobbyist juice maker. R&D is what often makes a really amazing recipe.
I have never made a recipe that taste as full, strong, sweet as "very good premium ones" and I mixed more than 1000 recipes. They have some sweetners that we dont know about them(I am 100 % positive about that).
I made a around 10 very good ones and the one thing lacking is the sweetnes and fullnes(which I believe sweetners or additives that they use would cover that).
So now we are all looking for that F.... cherry on the cake :)
Stevia bro..I have been told the defacto is stevia. I have some on order to try.
How would you do this though??
In a solution use Crystals... apparently and who the eff knows but Cuttwood is a notable that uses Stevia "supposedly".. that would make sense since most of the sweeteners in wide circulation/use don't seem to match and generally taste off to me. EM being the worst offender
I am using this formula from Open source vapors: Organic Rebaudioside-A (Stevia Extract) / VG (120mg/mL). I did not get an exact formula so I hunted this down. This is DIY it should be pretty apparent if Stevia is a big win and then just tweak it out.
Why try to reproduce a Whopper from Burger King when you can make a delicious grilled hamburger at home?
Making an e-liquid clone is a fine way to learn flavors, and some clones are pretty close and pretty tasty. Keep mixing and improving your craft.
Have you tried this? Clone de la Creme (80/20 VG/PG)
- 2% FA Hazel Grove (Hazelnut)
- 2% CAP Hazelnut V2
- 2% CAP Pralines and Cream
- 2% TFA Dulce de Leche
- 1% FA Fresh Cream
- .5% FA Dark Bean (Coffee Espresso)
- .5% FA Irish Cream
You may want to think about the difference in Smell and Taste.
Smell is odor molecules. Taste is bitter, salty, sweet, and sour.
So are you thinking the juice isn't sweet enough or do the actual flavors not taste like how you want them to?
You may want to look into sweeteners or other flavors that will work in the background to give volume to the juice.
My favorite concentrate that gives volume is TFA Banana Swirl.
I'm late to the party and also new to diy but am very curious about this exact question. I found a popular cereal recipe on here that had great reviews bought the seven flavours and waited eagerly for the mailman. Mixed up a batch shook it up excitedly and to my great disappointment I could barely taste it. Set it aside and steeped it for two weeks shaking daily only to find it hadn't changed much in taste
Sugar.
I've tried adding TFA sweetener. Doesn't have the same effect.
suclarose isn't the only flavor enhancer out there. as others pointed out, there's ethyl maltol(EM, or tfa's cotton candy), acetyl pyrazine, malic acid, citric acid, and I'm sure I'm forgetting some.
tl;dr - there's other stuff that can go into a juice for the purposes of flavor enhancement.
The reason I started DIY was to eliminate the sweetner from my juice. Not really much help on adding it.
Did you know you're using too much flavouring? The high flavour percentage shuts down your taste buds and overloads them. Try less concentrate! You shouldn't be using more than 10% TOTAL flavouring even if you're using 5 different flavours in a mix.
You're overloading your olfactory senses. "premium" juice uses as little flavour as possible. Plus it's not really known if you should be vaping a really high amount of flavouring so they keep it low.
Less is more with DIY elkquid
I've got 2 years experience. Some other experienced diyers will back up or add to my claim.
I'll definitely disagree here. 10% isn't some steadfast rule.
Every concentrate is different, therefore every blend of concentrate is different.
Yes, you can have too much flavor. But a blanket statement of 10% being the maximum is silly, as there are thousands of concentrates and billions of possible combinations.
I will agree to the fact there is a threshold and everyone's is different.. Some people 10% other people 20%.
Some people hear better, some people see better, some people are more or less sensitive to touch.
Things can affect these senses just as things can affect taste and smell.
I really think these recipes should NOT be recorded with VG/PG base in the equation I think the Recipes should be listed as Flavor only base. (Another reason to NOT publicly record mixes as Flavor/Base percentage is the fact Flavor is different from Subohm Dripper to say EGO Stick.)
I think the VG/PG base ratio "ex. 70/30 ect.. " its self should be listed separate as a guide for what is used for best taste by the mixers opinion.
Along with opinions on how much percent of the flavor base should be used when adding the two bases together. I have added PG to Max VG juices and liked them more. It is just a matter of flavor threshold.
People get so hung up on percentages and they mix exactly what the recipe calls for. So even if someone likes the flavor they may think the recipe is shit because they didn't mix it to their threshold.
The reason I know my threshold is lower is that I myself can't stand the commercial juice unless I thin it out with a whole extra bottle of VG. "Usually" sometimes less.. It is always way too sweet and too much flavor, but the flavor is fine when I do thin it. ( I am sure another reason is because I drip to a Subohm)
I somehow doubt everyone agrees with me on the threshold because most people just think their threshold is the only threshold. So I am sure that the Recipe format will stay the same and I will continue mixing recipes without using anyone else's opinion on total flavor.
Taste and Smell - Another thing that should be kept in mind. Taste is not the same as Smell and everyone should read up on it to better know if their juice is not sweet or lacks actual flavor.
I just tried whipping up my strawberry fruit snack recipe I been working on, changing everything to equal 10%. And it is tasteless. Taste a bit of gummy and no strawberry even though its mainly strawberry and gummy only .75. So I think that rule is not as set on stone as you say.
I disagree with you. People are attracted to high percentage flavors, most have been smoking a long time and a drawn to what they see as flavorful. Concentrate packed juices. (Especially non sub-ohmers) As others have said it also has to do with a lot of sweetener to mimic flavors.
I would agree with you if were talking about higher quality flavorings like flavorah, you couldn't touch 10% with pink grapefruit or peanut butter.
However with a manufacturer like Flavor West, you will need more because they're not as concentrated. This also depends on how many flavors you use. If you do a single flavor of a weak flavor, you may need more then 10%, same when mixing maybe two weak ones together 5% and 5% might not cut it.
After mixing my own, i can try others at 15% and it tastes like flowers because they overdid one flavor, but its their most popular flavor in the store.