I've been mixing by volume since I started syringes with 30ml batches and with graduated cylinders for anything bigger.
Is there a fundamental benefit to mixing by weight over volume?
You do you, if it works for you go for it. Personally, I love mixing by weight, I get a consistent product with minimal setup and teardown time and minimal cleanup. Bottle on a scale, everything in dropper bottles, tare, tare, tare, shake, done.
I've been tempted to try! I'll buy a scale and all when I nail down some of my recipes to go much bigger scale!
I want to try, just haven't seen the light I guess :)
Just get a little $7 100gx.01g scale from amazon. That's what I started with to be sure I liked it. Works great for up to 30mL glass. Can do 60mL plastic.
This totally . I bought a cheapo fast tech scale and it's still going great . No matter how much you mix a scale will make it so much easier . Drip straight from your flavour bottles into your mixed product . No middle steps involved and no cross contam or cleanup required
Get good bottles with easy access tops so no syringes or pippettes needed. Start putting all of your flavors into these new bottles.
I use these
https://www.sks-bottle.com/340c/fin42.html
http://imgur.com/a/YJ7Jq
I've seen group buys on here for these bottles before but i didnt get into it and got hit with normal prices. I would like to get another group buy together for some of these bottles. I know personally i would like an assortment of the different kinds all i have right now are a bunch of the 4oz which are great for the flavors since that's what i normally order. I'd like to have some of the 8oz for VG and the 1oz for nic when im making small batches.
EDIT: Forgot to add that measuring by weight using bottles like these keeps everything very clean and sanitary. Also makes everything much quicker and much more precise. Things like koolada and menthol i have to add only a very very small amount to make things work for me the way i like. So having a scale that measures everything accurately will also help you in pinpointing your exact likes.
Also the scale can be used for cooking, dieting, drug deals, postal weighing, and many other things.
For me, little to no equipment required besides a scale and occasionally pipettes (limited storage space in my place) and no clean up. If I want to mix up a quick 10-250ml batch, I'm done in a few minutes with no syringes/graduated cylinders to clean and put away, and the equipment is the same regardless of batch size.
A scale and pipettes aren't going to sent me back, I guess I can invest!
Plus a scale is very useful in baking!!!!!
Yeah, I have the american weigh lb-501, great scale with an ac adapter and its only like $20-30 on amazon, it takes a few moments for the weight to stablize when adding drops and doesn't seem to register below .03-.05g though, only really an issue when I'm mixing 10ml or less batches with a flavor at less than 1%
edit: I also recommend picking up some larger squeeze bottles for pg/vg, and transferring flavors to dropper bottles if they aren't already in them (bull city sends them out in dropper bottles if you get 10 or 30ml sizes, i believe gremlindiy does as well.) I really only use pipettes to transfer from 4oz flavor bottles to dropper bottles, and transferring my nic from storage bottles to a small dropper bottle I mix with, but you can get 100 for $3-4 shipped on amazon.
I've been wondering the same thing! I'm guessing that mixing by weight is something that comes in to play more with large-scale/commercial quality productions of juice. (?) I've heard people say that it produces more consistent results on top of being faster overall.
It's hard to imagine that mixing by volume is fundamentally bad, though, especially if you're just doing your own thing.
Seriously, just try it. You'll hate yourself for all the time you wasted with syringes. I still think everyone should try the whole volume thing instead of weight, but only so you really appreciate the ease that is mixing by weight.
It's great for 5mL samples all the way up to a huge batch of your adv. Unless your adv batches are incredibly massive and then volume is accurate enough.
I still use a syringe to measure nic, then measure a second time by weight as it actually goes in the bottle. I have no use for syringes in any other aspect of mixing.
I feel like it's the opposite. Scale is great for smaller batch size but once you get above a certain threshold the margin of error with a scale could lead to inconsistencies in batches. Might be wrong seeing as I only do small batch personal stuff but that's what my intuition tells me, I'm sure some of the peeps who sell commercially could chime in here.
This could also be true, especially if you accidentally add too much of one thing and throw the whole mix. I'd be really interested to hear what some of them have to say on the matter. I'm genuinely curious now.
It goes like this in order of accuracy, from what I've seen/read
Volume by drops. -- just basically guessing
Volume with syringes -- poor for small batches, meh for medium
Volume with good quality graduated cylinders -- ok for small to medium batches
Weight with .01 gram accuracy scale. -- very good for small or medium batches
Auto pipette system (volume) -- excellent, only worth the money for commercial/industrial scale batches
Obviously YMMV depending upon equipment quality, but this seems to be the basic progression.
One of my favorite things about it is it is fairly mindless. You just drip flavor in to your bottle until the scale tells you you're done. Measuring liquid in to a syringe or pipette is additional work your brain is doing that it doesn't have to. Seems lazy, but I'm sure we've all heard the saying "Work smart, not hard."
It really comes down to what you're most comfortable with, but I think it's a good idea to try both methods to see which you prefer. Like you said, if you're at all inclined to try it, you might as well get a scale, it's very useful in the kitchen
I tried it for a few days then returned the scale. IMO it's less accurate and takes more time than mixing with syringes.
Can you elaborate on that
Less accurate: My 1ml syringe has markings in .01ml, so if I eyeball "between the lines" my smallest unit of discrete measurement is about .005 ml. The droppers, pipettes and most of the prefilled mfr bottles average about 6 drops per .1 ml, so my smallest discrete unit is about .0167 ml, or about three times as large.
Less accurate #2: with weight you can only add, never subtract. If I draw too much into a syringe, I simply squirt the excess into my waste container and move on. In weight, if I overshoot, either the mix is ruined & you must start over, or else you just move on with too much of that ingredient.
More time: As in the last point: you have to creep up on your target. If I want .5ml, I give it a big squirt, wait for the scale to settle, then creep up on the target drop by drop, hoping not to overshoot. Much faster to draw .5ml into a syringe, add it to the mix and move on. If I draw .55 ml, just waste the excess flavor, not the whole mix.
More time #2: the "cleanup time savings" is a myth IMO. If I have 5 flavors, I use the same syringe for all 5 without rinsing in between (no reason to, they are all going in the same mix anyway). The only step I take in between flavors is to wipe the outside of the needle with a damp paper towel. Unless it's a massively overpowering flavor preceding a light one (say anise then vanilla) the minuscule risk of cross-contamination of flavors is negligible. When I'm done, I rinse the syringe 3X by filling with distilled water and emptying into my waste cup, then once or twice with 151-proof vodka (disinfectant / sterilization), then set aside to dry. Cleanup per mix takes 15 seconds tops.
Im a syringe/volume guy myself and have never tried weight...but recently i am starting to mix 150mL to 300mL batches in jars. My largest syringe is 20mL and sucking up 82mL of VG seems like it would be a lot easier if I just poured it into the jar. But less accurate, and prone to mistakes? yes.
It sounds like you're saying it is faster to use a syringe as long as you don't care about cross-contaminating your flavor concentrates. Personally I think mixing by weight is much more sanitary, because things are only ever coming OUT of the bottles, nothing ever goes back in them except for air. Doing syringes "properly" takes time.
If I have flavors that don't come in squeeze bottles, I use a disposable LDPE pipette, which does have some markings on it that are helpful for eyeballing. Helpfull when you know you're going to need at least X ml of something, you can get that really quick and then weight out the rest carefully. Mixing by weight is fast once you get a good feel for your scale.
It's "more accurate", no need for syringes (less need), some people find it easier especially for large batches.... I personally stick to my syringes. I don't do high volume mixing so I just see no point.
I might as well, I could use a scale for baking anyway.
I just have to find a way to collectively find the specific gravity of all my flavors!
Yeah... Lol. That's too much for me.
I think that is the part that annoys me the most about mixing by weight. With volume, I know that x percent contributes to so many millimeters of flavor. Temperature change wont cause that big of a density shift for my flavors.
Not all flavor manufactures freely give out their SDSs to gather this info.
I have LDPE dropper bottles for all of my flavors, eliminating the need for pipettes/syringes/etc. I grab the flavor I need, add the requisite weight, put the cap back on and return it to the shelf. Lather, rinse, repeat until all of the ingredients are in the mix. I have an 8oz squeeze bottle for VG, and I keep the squeeze bottles with nicotine in a secure box in the freezer.
Everything gets mixed in a clean erlenmeyer flask, stirred/shaken/heated as the recipe demands, and then decanted into either glass bottles for long-term storage or plastic bottles for immediate use.
I mixed three batches (different recipes) that came to just over half a liter of juice yesterday in under an hour, every bottle turning out just like every previous bottle of that recipe turned out.
For me, mixing by weight is about time investment (low), cleanup (easy), and consistency (high). I could probably duplicate two out of the three mixing by volume, but I am very comfortable with my current process.