Hey everyone. Kind of took a break due to some personal stuff. I am back so I hope to help. I thought I would start with this. I really wish this didn't need to be said but lurking around this sub for a while and notice alot of people kind of getting put off by DIY. The main reasons being 1. Start up costs. 2. Thinking its hard. 3. They get into it and believe any recipe on here or elr is gold. 4. They get mad wasting product. 5. They just made a recipe and it tastes bad right after making it. There are a few more but I want to mainly get into these a bit.
1- Yes, this can be a bit steep for some people to enter into. They see people on here buying gallons of VG/PG and large amounts of Nic and dozens of flavors.
Don't look into that. Get your toes wet. Buy small amounts. For example BCV sell cap 13ml bottles for $2.50. 225ml of VG/PG for 4.25 each. A basic scale will cost you ~15 dollars. 100 10ml bottles should cost you 20 bucks. 2oz of nic is ~$5. The amount you can make for less than $100 dollars should last you a year.
2- If you can make a Betty crocker cake you can make your own e-liquid.
3- This is a big one I see alot. Not every thing you see on here or ElR is good. Most are crap to be honest. We(my brands)use elr to store a digital copy in multiple places, just in cause our lab burns to the ground and our hard copies get toast.
Just because the post has alot of upvotes doesn't mean its good. Most people haven't even made it. They look at the recipe and base their vote on how it sounds.
Tip- look for the people who are highly regarded in this sub. They usually make good things.
4- They waste product trying to make flavors that come out bad. What I say is welcome to the game. We waste a ton of liquid and flavors to come up with recipes.
http://imgur.com/JII7ffL That's last months rejects. All the bottles were 10ml. So we waste alot. But that's the game to try new things. It may sound good but taste horrible.
5- Let it sit!! No matter if the recipe has a million 5 stars/upvotes you need to let it sit. We give all our batches 2 weeks to sit and steep at least.
Let it sit for a month. Then try it. There is no magical way to make that process go faster.
I hope this helps some of the newer people on here.
If someone spends enough time reading through the sidebar and other top posts, I feel that the thought of getting into DIY becomes less intimidating.
Totally agree on the steep. I've made about 6 different things and only one of them was awesome right away.
The start up cost shouldn't scare people away, although I can understand how it does. I guess you just have to consider what you're currently paying for juice vs how cheap DIY is even if you have to dump some stuff. My bottom line there is: even if its kind of shitty, it still tastes and smells better than cigarettes.
>If someone spends enough time reading through the sidebar and other top posts, I feel that the thought of getting into DIY becomes less intimidating.
I agree but we do need to also look at it this way. This hobby(business for some) takes patiences from learning to steep time. You can't just jump into this and expect to make the best tasting juice.
>Totally agree on the steep. I've made about 6 different things and only one of them was awesome right away.
Yeah these are chemcial flavorings. They dont blend like food. You can't mix 5 fruits together and some vanilla ice cream and make a smoothie. Doesn't work that way in vaping.
>The start up cost shouldn't scare people away, although I can understand how it does. I guess you just have to consider what you're currently paying for juice vs how cheap DIY is even if you have to dump some stuff. My bottom line there is: even if its kind of shitty, it still tastes and smells better than cigarettes.
Yeah that is so true. It's sad cause people see the price of one bottle ~20 vs 100 for diy supplies that will last much longer.
I'm going to get into diy based on this and on the crazy taxes chicago has now.
That's why I'm getting into DIY. I'm in Norway, so everything is much more expensive, plus it takes forever when you order something. That being said, I've spent way too much in the last month on vaping gear and material. I got into this to save money, but with the amount i've spent in the last month, I wont be saving money for a while. Still, I've gotten into RDA's and DIY juice, so in the future it shouldn't cost much to uphold my nicotine habit. I'm also getting my mom into the game, which should save her 180 bucks a week, and save her health some.
If you've had others try your juice, and they like it, if you can afford to, you should consider starting a juice company out there.
I'm sure the shops pay some insane wholesale prices, some of the local shops here in the US are paying $8-11 for a 30ml of premium brands. If you could walk in, offer quality juice for a reasonable wholesale price, I'm sure they'd have no problem picking your line up.
Unless there's some crazy laws regarding DIY in Norway that I'm unaware of.
The state would have my head if it found out that I was selling anything containing nicotine. I could sell juice without nicotine, but even that would include a bureaucratic process, and it could open me up to all sorts of bullshit. We're a country were there's been raids to check if bakers aren't using too much cinnamon, per EU regulations, a political body we're not even a part of. Yet we have to obey 10000 EU regulations.
If I'll sell, I'll do so under the table.
I was stuck on #4 for awhile when I first started. Even forced myself to vape some of the shitty mixes I made. Totally not worth it, haha.
It's not. You're going to waste you're base products and your flavors but even after you waste so much its still considerably cheaper then going out and buying premium juices. And I'm a juice manufacturer so that statement is a bit of business suicide for me but let's face it we all know that.
I just write it off as a R&D cost that comes along with DIY. I'm only playing around with 5-6 recipes and not planning on making more anytime soon so there aren't too many throwaway batches anymore.
See, my problem is kind of 1, but the way you put it it doesn't make it sound like a problem. If, for instance, I had $100 right now to just start, get the necessities to start, I don't know where to begin. I have lurked here for months, but really just started lurking the past couple of weeks. All I have been through are different directions. I just don't know where to start I guess, and I am hoping I will shortly. Thanks for this post though, I actually found it helpful, especially since I am looking at just starting out & your comments are pre-warnings for me :)
Glad this helped. Hit me up(pm) and I'll try to help direct you where you should start.
I am working on making a post that should help direct new people where they should start. Just a bit more work than initially planned.
Where do you find 2oz of nic for around $5? Also would anyone have a rough estimate on how long a 15ml 100mg/ml nic would last if I only planned to use have my bottles at 3mg?
That would make you 500 mL of juice at 3mg/mL.
To get your desired nic level, you would only use 3 mL of 100mg nic per 100 mL of juice.
15 (mL of 100 mg nic you start with) / 3 (mg/mL strength) =5 x (100mL batches) =500mL total
Be sure to mix your nic (and all of your ingredients) by weight with respect to specific gravity.
EDIT: I would think your 2oz @$5 nic would only be like 24 or 36 mg/mL, meaning you would have to use more of it to get your desired nicotine level. I ordered a 120mL (4oz) bottle of 100 mg/mL from Carolina Extract for like $17 bucks + shipping.
https://www.e-liq.com/nicotine/e-liquid-nicotine/e-liquid-nicotine-2-oz
Well 3mg in 15ml bottles is ~.5 ml. So if you have 15ml you are looking at roughly 30 bottles of 15ml. Math can be off had some drinks last night.
>http://imgur.com/JII7ffL That's last months rejects. All the bottles were 10ml. So we waste alot. But that's the game to try new things. It may sound good but taste horrible.
Those are the exact same beakers I use, haha.
Hahaha they are inexpensive and come with 2 day shipping. I am more than happy with those.
The single biggest mistake I see people getting into DIY make is they try their first hand at too complex recipes and hence end up spending way too much money on the whole thing.
They dive into it on some super fancy 10-syllable-20-flavor-30-additives kind of recipe and then get put off when it tastes like Mr.Muscle toilet cleaner on the first vape.
IMO one of the most important things to DIY is starting out with a very simple, easy to make recipe that takes little to no further curing. A one or two flavour mix you know will taste great right out the box. Add a drop or two of EM, be done with it and enjoy the vape.
Something like a simple Vanilla Custard consisting of 7% CAP Vanilla Custard, 1% Dulce De Leche is so much better to start off with. It tastes amazing (still one of my three ADVs among 30+ different recipes in my DIY-Excel workbook), takes 5 minutes to mix a batch that'll easily last three months and takes little to no curing.
So my advice is always: Identify a simple flavour you really like, something along the lines of a straight up Vanilla Custard, a basic fruit mix or simple RY4. Start out with a single simple recipe and buy only the stuff needed to make that juice. Treat yourself to a big old 100ml bottle of that stuff. Then play around with that simple recipe. Add a flavour or two. For example, Vanilla Custard, you can add a dash of strawberry, voila. Add some Hazelnut, boom, you've got something new you really like and you didn't spend a fortune getting there.
TL;DR: Rule #1 start simple. Don't spend a fortune on uber complex mixes starting out.
On that note, try starting with super simple fruit flavors, they almost never need steep time to work themselves out. Avoid additives at first, because you will go overboard.
Once you get a feel for the flavors you're using, step up to 2-3 ingredient fruit flavors because again, it's hard to fuck those up beyond salvage. After getting a feel for how different flavors mix in what concentration, then go ahead and mix whatever you want, but keep an eye out for mixes that fly past 15% flavoring by volume, those tend to be the shitty ones (there are exceptions though, so not a hard rule).
My first juice was a combination of TPA orange cream and French vanilla and wasn't too bad. I don't remember the % but I think it was 5% orange cream and 2% French vanilla or something. Even after doing this for over a year I find myself mixing 2 and 3 flavor juices more than complex ones bc I'm lazy.
I just got around to making fizzmustards Nana cream the other day since it fits my simple recipe guideline but was pretty disappointed in it. I get no banana cream, pretty much tastes like plain strawberry.
> 1- Yes, this can be a bit steep for some people to enter into. They see people on here buying gallons of VG/PG and large amounts of Nic and dozens of flavors.
> Don't look into that. Get your toes wet. Buy small amounts. For example BCV sell cap 13ml bottles for $2.50. 225ml of VG/PG for 4.25 each. A basic scale will cost you ~15 dollars. 100 10ml bottles should cost you 20 bucks. 2oz of nic is ~$5. The amount you can make for less than $100 dollars should last you a year. >.
Don't forget Wizard Labs, they have 8 ml bottles of flavoring for $1.49 each. That's how I started, and I got a bunch of different flavoring for less then $40. Once I figured out the ones I liked, then I started getting larger bottles.
Nothing against wizardlabs just used BCV as an example. But any of the awesome vendors on here are affordable. People just think the need to order one of everything.
Bit late to the party, but start up costs can be next to nothing. I started with 250ml vg, 75ml nic and 3 bottles of concentrate. This cost me less then £20. I used a few empty bottles from my tailor made juice (cleaned of course) and some syringes I had from other things.
The first batch tasted like shit. I stuck with it and now have about thirty 30ml bottles in a shoe box on top of my wardrobe. 8 different flavours.
I'm just starting out with the basics but hope to start brewing with recipes soon.