So I've seen a few posts saying that , for example, apple flavor is actually stronger at 3% vs 10%. I've heard a few various explanations, but in my personal experience more flavor % usually = more flavor. Can someone explain this to me, I may be wrong, I've heard taste buds get overloaded. I just want to understand this. I have some flavors that are definitely strong at low percentages. I know this is chemistry not cooking, just curious as to the real reason behind this or if it really is a thing at all.
Try this for experiment:Two bottles
- TFA Honey - 10%
- TFA Honey - 1%
This is the comparison that really opened my eyes. Try it, and you'll answer your own question 😎
You know how garbage men, sewer technicians, and hoarders get through their daily lives? You'd think that the stench of their daily surroundings would drive them mad. But the human body has a defense for nearly everything. In this case, that defense is referred to as "olfactory fatigue." In essence, if you're consistently around a specifc aroma(or any sort of stimulus really; sound, light, physical vibration, salt, sugar) your brain interprets that aroma to be background; static. It then removes the body's response to the aroma. So a grabage man will be able to ignore the stench of his job without any conscious effort on his behalf, a hoarder will live in a house filled with cat urine because to them, that's normal.
This all makes a lot more sense when you correctly attribute to "flavor" from vaping to your olfactory senses, instead of your taste buds.
Or how we used to smoke 20-odd cigarettes a day and hardly notice the smell. Now I can smell a smoker from 20' away even if they're not smoking.
The worst are the traffic smokers. Man that shit drives me up the wall now. Nothing worse than being stuck in traffic with someone else's smoke drifting in to your car from two lanes over. Drives me up the wall. I shudder to think of the 1000s of times I did this to other people unknowingly, because I never knew as an adult, how ridiculously strong that odor is.
Furthermore: When you throw together a mix you're basically creating a soup of chemicals and they all react in ways you might not predict and most of us don't understand.
In some cases reducing a certain flavor is required due to how it interacts with other flavors in your mix.
For example, it took me more than 15 iterations on my "Nutcake" juice before I finally homed in on the percentages that kept the hazelnut in front of the vanilla and honey where I needed it to be. Paradoxically enough, the amount of hazelnut flavor halved during that entire process, because it turned out there's things happening between the three that almost completely killed the distinct hazelnut flavors at the percentages I was using them.
It's very weird sometimes... and there's many cases where more can become less and vice versa.
Quoting /u/abdada: >Aroma volatiles give the impression of a flavor in generally a very specific range of PPM in concentrate. Going over that range can change the flavor.
>For example, the aroma volatile of jasmine is the identical aroma volatile of feces at higher concentration. Also, the aroma volatile of butter flavor is the identical aroma of vomit at higher concentration.
>Flavor concentrates are typically built with 3-12 different individual volatiles, so adding more concentrate to a mix may end up increasing some or all those volatiles into the feces/vomit range and then you end up with problems.
>Whenever I think I found a great mix, I'll actually try that mix again with less total flavor to see if it still works. Helps to reduce vaper's tongue and also is easier on the wallet. Some of my mixes ended up being cut in half or more. Some professional eliquids I like are diluted by me by 25-60% before I vape them as they're overflavored!
Source: DIY Mythbusting
The initial impression of a higher % can be a stronger flavor if you shake and vape, since it takes a bit of time for flavors to blend with PG/VG. What you might find then is that after a few days, it's almost unbearable because you get hit with the full amount of flavor, which is now outside the useful range.
I suppose one of the more important factors to what you're asking is that concentrates vary greatly in strength. Maybe you like 8% TFA strawberry ripe, but I can sure as shit promise you you won't like 8% INW Strawberry Shisha. The thing with the whole tastebud overload is very true(see: olfactory fatigue), but when mixing a recipe, balancing/fine-tuning is very important. Most of the time, it's not as simple as "turn up the flavor percentages". It's a lot of "turn this up 1%, reduce that .5, remove this flavor entirely, and maybe try subbing in this one". When I first started mixing, I was dedicated to nailing a certain cookie recipe. It took me months and months of wasted resources and time to learn this lesson that I had already read on here- less can indeed be more.
Actually 7% SS is pretty damn tasty after a 5 day steep
2 months ago, I made two batches of the same recipe, one with 18% flavor and the other at 30%. I've been vaping both for the past 2 weeks and honestly, I like it at 30% far better than 18%, gives much fuller creamier vape. Mix what tastes right to you, don't let the rules set by some folks on the Internet clouded your creativity, take it as a grain of salt.
While the top comment here is a fantastic way of saying what is happening with more flavor...I do have to add one thing.
That isn't the case with all flavors, some flavors you need to load up on before you even taste it at all.
For example, a favorite of most - Strawberry (Ripe) TFA. This flavor is fantastic but if you put less than 3.5% in a recipe you won't taste strawberry. You will taste something slightly sweet but that is it. When you go to 5% you taste powerful strawberry. But if you go to 7% then it gets gross and the flavor is then muted again.
Don't listen to what someone says and then apply that to everything.
This is a science and you have to play with every flavor to see what it's characteristics are because one rule does not apply to all flavors.
I have found that I can't make complex recipes at all when using too much concentrate.
For example if you want to make a "Cherry Ripe" - Chocolate/Coconut/Cherry, then even a drop of something like inw melina per 15mls is enough if not too much to overpower the subtleness that the recipe needs.
I'd like to see more recipes that use 5-9% total concentrate.
It also helps with juice rotation. I like to drip and it's so much better being able to just drop my next flavour on the wick and there's no aftertaste of the previous flavour.
I imagine it kindof like aspartame (synthetic sweetener) vs sugar. Aspartame is estimated 200 times more sweet than sugar, so it it easy to use too much of it, if you do, you start getting weird off flavors, mainly bitter.
I imagine the flavorings are sort of like that, it is easy to use too much (like eating 20 apples at once instead of one) and in that case you start getting weird and unwanted off flavors (usually chemical or perfumy).
I thought I'd written this post for a minute, lol. Been there but have yet to fully realize if it's true. I was using max VG see so that was why I was getting no flavor at all.
One thing to note is, have you ever dripped two liquids consecutively and the first is really in-your-face with one particular note, then you drip a different liquid on the same wick, and even though that old liquid has wicked out and gone, you STILL taste its top note at what must be a ridiculously now %. But that's probably an extreme example.