Like most people, I starting mixing my juice by volume using syringes. And it was going just fine. Sure, I had to be extra careful to avoid cross contamination -- basically, having one syringe and blunt needle for every flavor I would use in each mixing session, with another for nicotine and VG. I had to deal with the mess of having ingredients often dripping a drop onto the table, my hands, or the outside of the bottle when moving the syringe from the ingredient bottle to the target juice bottle. I had to thoroughly wash and dry every syringe and needle after every mixing session. I had to paint a coat of clear nail polish over the markings of each syringe to keep them from rubbing off after just two or three use/clean cycles.
It was a bit of a hassle, but I didn't think too much about it. I always made a bunch of juice at a time, at least 4 or 5 recipes, and often much more, because it would be a waste of time to have to clean the syringes and needles after mixing just one or two recipes. So this meant that whenever I thought of an idea to try, it had to wait until I was ready for another mixing session.
I decided to give mixing by weight a go, because people are always saying that it's so much easier and less of a hassle than mixing by volume. But mixing by volume is already easy and not all that much of a hassle, so how much better could it really be?
I had some unused credit from Amazon, more than enough to buy a scale and some 4 ounce squeeze bottles for VG. I went with the standard AWS LB-501 scale, and it was delivered yesterday.
And I am amazed. It really is so much better than mixing by volume. Just drip in each ingredient directly from their bottles into the target juice bottle one by one. No dealing with syringes or having to clean them afterwords. No mess unless you're really sloppy (or just sloppy drunk). It only takes two or three minutes to mix even a 7-flavor recipe. Recipes with just two or three flavors can be made in about a minute. I can just grab the supplies when I get an idea for a new recipe, and have it mixed and everything put away in under 5 minutes. And I no longer have to deal with trying to draw up thick VG into a syringe, which even through a 14 gauge needle takes effort.
So to anyone who is still mixing by volume, do yourself a favor and just buy the equipment needed to mix by weight. Do it right now. It really is that much better. And the AWS LB-501 makes a great kitchen scale too.
The squeeze bottles for VG are a must, I stupidly went without when I first started mixing and as a result dreaded every new batch.
What's really nice is having squeeze bottles for every ingredient :)
I'd love to find a source of squeeze tops that fit on BCV's 4oz bottles. Those and concentrated nic are the only thing I need pippets for anymore.
I have these on all my 4oz BCV bottles. They work great.
If you're making 100+ml batches like I do, you will be refilling every 2-3 batches. Recommend getting the big 16oz behemoth squeeze bottle for your VG.
This was the biggest change I've made so far since I started mixing. I can make a whole bottle of liquid by weight in the time it takes to suck the VG up in a syringe for that same bottle by volume
Exactly! Isn't it great not having to wait over a minute for the VG to "catch up" to how far you've pulled out the plunger on the syringe?
My problem with mixing by weight is when you're using 10ml bottles and trying to make 120ml batches.
I don't understand. You would have the exact same issue trying to mix 120 mL in multiple 10 mL bottles by volume.
If you want to make 120 mL of juice, mix it in a container that holds at least 120 mL, then distribute it into smaller bottles if that's what you want.
10ml flavor concentrates. I don't buy big ones until I know it's gonna be a staple flavor
How exactly do you mix accurately this way? Liquids of different densities aren't equal in weight. I guess you could take the time to figure out how much x ml's of y ingredient weighs and jot it down.
The only component I don't use the actual density on is flavor. With that I, and many others, use 1g/ml. As long as you always use 1 for the density of your flavors any adjustments will still be reflected. Liquid you make from recipes of others that use actual density will be slightly off, but not super far off and can be adjusted.
ELR has the option to use manufacturer specific gravities as well as letting you enter them in for each flavor in your flavor stash. I prefer to pretend all flavors are 1g/ml because most recipes are formatted that way and the real 1.026g/ml isn't really going to affect anything unless you're making really large quantities of a recipe where the creator was using the proper gravities.
Sidebar man. Botboy141 Guide to Mixing By Weight. Great read that started me DIYing, never did it by volume thank god. Download a calculator, makes it so easy. Here's his chart:
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Weight of PG: 1.038 grams per ml
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Weight of VG: 1.26 grams per ml
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Weight of Pure Nicotine: 1.01 grams per ml
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Weight of 100mg in PG: 1.035 grams per ml
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Weight of 60mg in PG: 1.03632 grams per ml
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Weight of 50mg in PG: 1.0366 grams per ml
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Weight of 48mg in PG: 1.036656 grams per ml
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Weight of 36mg in PG: 1.036992 grams per ml
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Weight of 24mg in PG: 1.037328 grams per ml
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Weight of 100mg in VG: 1.235 grams per ml
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Weight of 60mg in VG: 1.245 grams per ml
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Weight of 50mg in VG: 1.2475 grams per ml
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Weight of 48mg in VG: 1.248 grams per ml
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Weight of 36mg in VG: 1.251 grams per ml
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Weight of 24mg in VG: 1.254 grams per ml
This is great except my current vg is 1.47g per ml and some people I have spoken to measure everything as 1g/ml which obviously doesn't end well. Although most supplies put the density on what you've bought. So just need to remember to adjust accordingly
Even if you are lazy and just use 1 g/mL for every ingredient, your mixes will be super-consistent from batch to batch with little to no effort. It only becomes a problem when sharing recipes, but even with that, other than VG (or VG-base nicotine or the rare VG-base flavorings), you'll get quite close to the recipe maker's exact results even if he built the recipe using the actual PG density.
/u/sargeant_utestemme took the time for us, at least for TFA
I think I've seen a link for FW specific gravities somewhere.
If you use these values when you make anybody else's recipe it wont be the same though because virtually everyone uses 1 for flavor. So it's just a ton of extra work using these values and it will end up making problems for you and give you no extra benefit over just using 1.
Do you use a website to calculate flavor ratios and such? If so, which one? My roommate just told me he wants to start mixing juice so we're going to dive right in.
I'm not sure I understand how to measure by weight. I'm doing a fuck ton of research before I start. Is there somewhere I can get pointed to measure by weight instead of by volume? Thanks in advance
Botboy's Guide to Mixing By Weight
Also watch Wayne's video tutorial.
The above guide is awesome, that and https://www.e-cigarette-forum.com/forum/threads/new-calculator-to-try.480587/ calculator. Will even tell you how much a bottle cost to make.
Rod's Recipe Calculator is the most awesome app around but it's a bit of a sledgehammer for most users. But once you've got your head around entering all your ingredients and building your recipes from there, it's incredibly easy to use.
And there aren't many developers around who welcome criticism, questions and suggestions for improvements as accessibly as Rod.
What about when you're like me and make liter batches? Sure mixing 10ml batches is a nuisance, but that isn't even a thing for me anymore. I always mix 30ml testers, and I have a fast and easy method. I use bottles with measurements on the side to measure my VG and sometimes flavorings. Lately I've been making concentrates of my flavors for simple mixing.
Mixing my weight is fine for small batches.
Mixing by volume using a micropipettor is pro level.
I want one. Would this be expensive?
Depends on what kind of longevity you want. Cheap micropipettor is like a $50 200W box mod, expensive micropipettor is like a Dicodes.
I have a few sets from 5-25ul up to 1000-10,000ul. The adjustable ones are awesome. If I need 6.5ml of flavor, I pop my 1000-10,000ul in, set it to 6,500ul, and that's exactly what I dispense (weight confirms it).
Amazon sometimes offers a cheap Chinese one using Prime through a vendor -- I believe $45ish. It's not bad. The higher end ones run a lot more ($600 a piece or so?). I bought a set at a medical auction, brand new, for cheap. Probably worth $1800 for the set, but it took forever to find the damned thing at auction.
How accurate do the scales need to be? Down to 0.1g?
0.01g unless you're doing huge batches
How do you guys get the VG into bottles?? I use a 30 ml syringe but like 25% of the time it shoots back up and goes all over the bottle.
A bottle with a drip tip. A funnel if you must.
I wanted to start by mixing by weight, but I couldn't find a calculator for the Mac. Anyone know of one?
The rumour is that Apple made a policy decision to remove all nicotine-related apps from iTunes because smoking!
So I'm afraid Mac users are limited to web-based apps, the most popular of which is www.e-liquid-recipes.com to manage their recipe calculations.
I'm on a Mac too. I don't use or even know of any dedicated juice calculators for OS X, but I have a Numbers spreadsheet that I use that does everything I need. I enter in the ingredients and percentages, my nicotine base strength and percentage, and how much juice I want to make and it spits out the amount of each ingredient in milliliters and grams. You can add or subtract ingredients by adding or deleting new rows, and all of the calculations still work. Send me a message with your email and I'll send it over to you if you want to give it a try.
We get all up in arms on this sub when people don't read the sidebar at all. How about we do the same for people telling us to use scales instead of syringes. We get a post about this very often link. We get it, mixing by weight is awesome for you guys but we don't need to hear about it all the time on this sub.
Because people who don't read the sidebar might not even be aware of being able to mix by weight, so they wouldn't even know to search for "mixing by weight". And nobody forced you to click on my post. I'm just sharing my experiences -- if you aren't interested in that, then don't click on the post and whine.
Naw fuck that shit. Not any faster than measuring flavors out with a syringe and clean up isn't a big deal.
To each their own though.
It is much, much faster. I can mix the entire recipe in the amount of time it takes to just draw up the VG required to mix the same size batch by volume. Squirting flavorings into the target bottle on the scale is also markedly faster than drawing up the amount needed into a syringe then squirting it into the target bottle. It's combining two steps into one -- how can you say it's not any faster?
And I already stated in my post that the cleanup for mixing by volume isn't a big deal. But when mixing by volume, there isn't any cleanup at all unless you're sloppy.
Quicker, cleaner, and easier...what's not to like?
I can say it's slower because I bought a scale and I've done it both ways. Also, I buy in bulk and bulk sizes don't have spouts.
If you're drawing your vg instead of using a squirt bottle to top off, you're doing it wrong.
Well of course if you hobble yourself and have to use pipettes to get the flavorings out of the bottle, it's not going to be faster. Put the ingredients in the right tool for mixing by weight and it will be faster. Get a bunch of 4 ounce squeeze bottles for your bulk ingredients, or just pour out a portion into 30 mL dropper tip bottles to use.
And I have juice bottles from several different manufacturers, each with their own capacity (always a bit larger than the stated capacity) and therefore it's own "fill point". So one type of 30 mL bottle might hold 30 mL when the level is at 1 mm below the neck, another at 2 mm below the neck, a third at 1.5 mm below the neck, and so forth (I have bottles where 30 mL is over 5 mm below the neck, and others where the neck needs to be 2 mm full to hold 30 mL). Most people want to keep things consistent, so that means actually measuring the amount of VG and not just eyeballing it with a squeeze bottle. Otherwise, your 30 mL batch might be anywhere from 28 mL - 33 mL or thereabouts, and you are throwing consistency out the window.