I have the feeling that this might be a pretty unpopular question and this really shouldn't be a dick-measuring contest, but: how big is your flavor stash (= how many differnt flavors)?
I am vaping for 3 years now and mixed my own base and dilute some premixed concentrates and switched to 100% DIY 4 weeks ago. I am already at 75 different flavorings (CAP, INW, TFA, FA, FW, LA) and my ELR list has 25 recipies in the queue I want to try.
Do you settle at a certain stash and start to substitute flavors? Do you start to combine what you have instead of buying new flavors all the time?
It seems I am a bit addicted to this now like I am to hardware. When I see a recipe that sounds good, I go ahead and buy exactly the flavors listed. Not sure if I should just continue doing what I do or better get to know my existing stash a bit better.
Thanks for any input and thanks for this nice sub with tons of infos and hints :)
I mean, if we're measuring. Mine is not the biggest but well above average... 425 flavors and counting.
I still have to sub things on occasion. There's always a recipe you'll want to try that has one ingredient you're missing. It never ends.
One Hundred Sixty One. I'm sure most who have been doing this as long as I have are in the 200s by now. Some might have 1000. I realized early on I wanted ALL THE FLAVORS NOW and this was going to be a problem, so I set a personal limit of 10 flavors per month. If you haven't done single-flavor testing and taken good notes on all your flavors yet, stop ordering more flavors and read this:
https://www.reddit.com/r/DIY_eJuice/comments/4fdevi/modest_monday_reviewing_flavors/
I keep telling myself that I should stop ordering until I have done notes for everything have... but I keep finding things that I want to try.
Also trying to clone stuff means that I now have tons of the same flavour from different manufacturers as well. My white whale is the original nakla double apple shisha flavour. Starbuzz cloned it and i love it. 5 different apples and 6 or 7 licorice/anises.
I now have over 100 differnet concentrates and I still have not got any tobacco flavours yet.
Tbh I use the money I would have spent on shop bought juice on flavours and I know I am still saving money.
Edit: spelling
Looks like I'm somewhere in the range of 219 lol, and probably still have at least 30 on my wish list.
One thing I've noticed is just how different "similar" flavors are. Yogurt for example, I have 6 different yogurts and they are all way different from each other. If you want to make people's recipes 1:1, you're going to need a lot of flavors.
That said, I'm sure having upwards of 75-150 flavors would get you most of the different profiles you need to create just about whatever your heart desires if you've shopped well. I know I've probably got about 20 that I've not touched once lol.
Edit: Yep, 209 flavors, 27 untouched.
How in the hell can you not touch your flavors?! They come in, the first thing I do immediately is open them all and sniff them. Then if I can't mix right away for whatever reason, I spend the the whole next day distracted because I can hardly wait to get home to try them.
Twenty-seven poor, sad, neglected flavors :(. Touch them right now, and post flavor reviews or comments on pre-existing flavor reviews. You touch those favors! Or send them to me and I'll touch them for you!
366... It's too much but I don't know. It's addictive and flavors are overall cheap. I keep inventory at EliquidRecipes because it's super simple that way. I've tried doing the old school method of writing them all down but it never ends well. Anyway, there are still flavors that I want. It's a never-ending quest.
I got into diying to save money but this is not the case as I keep buying more flavors. I've only been doing this for 2 weeks now and I have 90+ flavors. I keep seeing recipes that sound good that use flavors I don't have. I should start subbing instead.
I found that really only works with fruit flavors i.e. Shisha Strawberry^my^favortie and a few cream/custard
What percentage do you like Shisha Strawberry at? I bought this flavor because it was raved about but so far I've been less than impressed. I may be using too high of a percentage.
> It seems I am a bit addicted to this now
it's the secret they never told us before we started ;-)
only been DIYing for about 2 1/2 months and have 163 flavors 18 on my wish list and it keeps growing
save money they said.. so cheap they insisted.. ahhh ya, DIY, yaayaayaa.. 1 month deep and I've spend over 3 hundred bucks on flavors.
See you at the next DIY anonymous meeting. "Hi I'm T_Mace and I have a problem. I'm addicted to trying stuff."
'Properly' DIYing since 11/2014 and only 125 flavourings.
Would probably be a ton more by now but it's pricey to get flavourings to NZ so I'm careful what and how much I order.
Should actually be a few less than 125 now, a decent chunk of my flavourings are from my original 2014 order, most seem to have held up pretty well, there's a few I need to discard though.
Somewhere around 415, the 400 mark being the point at which I really really slowed down. About the 300 mark was where I experienced being able to make your average recipe that didn't have anything too obscure. I didn't do much settling with substitutions, the hard part was keeping track of which flavors I needed to add based off of recipes I'd seen over the past 3 weeks since my previous order, shoulda just got better at making lists because there was always something I'd forget. I don't regret the size of my stash, it's still plenty cheaper than what I'd have spent on cigs the past year.
Maybe worth noting that all these were obtained a little while back over the span of 5 or 6 months, I've gotten maybe 10 new flavors in the past 3.
I'm just under 100, but unfortunately some of them either won't get used before they go bad, and others are going to be empty very soon and I will have to order more. I must say that since I have been testing single flavors, the few recipes I've come up with are amazing, only needing a small tweak or two.
Sometimes things run out, and yes, there is typically something to replace them. It's not an exact matched taste in the end, but you can definitely tell how much a 1-2% substitute can change a recipe.
Probably around 100 but many have not been touched in over a year , i like to buy flavors that i know i will actually use in my recipes based on my preferences.
I buy only my most used ones in 30 ml sizes , some 4 oz sizes but most are 10 ml sizes since they rarely are used.