I'm pretty new to the DIY community. Been mixing for a few weeks now and I've been having this horrible experience of SUPER dry flavors.
No matter what mix I make it always makes my tongue feel like I just licked a pound of sand.
I've ordered a bunch of flavors from multiple vendors (spent close to a $1000 on extracts since I live outside the US and the shipping costs are outrageous, to say the least) and the issue still persists. Never getting that premium e juice mouthfeel.
So, after some research, I came across an article on juic.org and decided to test some of the advice from it.
It turns out that the dry feel I was getting was due to the ph balance of my juice. If it's acidic or basic it'll taste dry. The solution is to try and achieve a neutral ph balance of close to 7 (which is what premium e juice vendors strive to achieve)
So, some of the ph "balancers" and mouthfeel enhancers on that article were 0.9% sterile saline solution, TFA Brown Sugar and 5% white vinegar.
I got some of the dry juices I mixed laying around and added 0.5% of each and voila! There's a definite improvement in wetness/mouthfeel!
Has anyone tried something similar? If so, can someone test it and let me know if what I'm experiencing is factual or a placebo effect?
A word of warning, though, the flavor will be affected a little bit. I'm trying to find a workaround for that.
I'm, also, planning on ordering a high grade digital ph tester and validate my findings.
EDIT 1: 1.5% of overall solution (saline+brown sugar+vinegar) seems to be a good starting point. I added one drop of each (equivalent to around 0.15ml) to a 5ml e juice (resulting in a 3% of dilution) messed things up a bit. I guess that turned it into a basic or acidic solution and the dry feeling is back.
I have a similar issue. Sometimes juice just drives me crazy with the dryness. I recently cracked open a new bottle of nicotine and that seems to help a tiny bit. So I would say quality ingredients make a difference. I never thought of a pH balance making a difference, but that's a really good point. I haven't tried the saline, but I do use brown sugar in a mix and it never seems dry or weird at all.
My nicotine is from MFS. According to their lab analysis it's super pure.
I remember mixing a fruit loops recipe and that just killed my tongue for an entire day. I had to stop vaping for around 12 hours before it started getting back to normal!
It seems that the vinegar is the most important out of the 3 to restore pH balance back to normal. And, strangely enough, it doesn't affect the flavor at all. It's virtually undetectable.
Try it out and let me know.
On my next batch I'm planning to up the brown sugar and vinegar and reduce the saline solution because it seems to be diluting the flavor the most.
My only concern would be with the vinegar. Is it safe to vape? I doubt there's info on it, but it might be something to keep in mind.
This is very interesting. Does adding any of those 'balancers' change the flavor at all? Are you able to post the link to the article? Being a new mixer myself, this would be very insightful.
I believe if you don't go over 1.5%,maybe 2%, the flavor won't be affected that much.
I'm planning to do more testing after work today. I'll up the vinegar and brown sugar while reducing saline to maintain an overall dilution of 1.5%.
The sweetness of brown sugar should, in theory, enhance some flavors and add sweetness to the entire base.
Juic.org seems to be down. If you google "premium e juice saline solution" it should come up in the results. Use Google's cache to access the page if it's still down by the time you look it up.
I don't think those were meant to be used together. I mean salt water is alkaline and vinegar is acidic. Depending on pH you would want one or the other. Did you try to make three separate batches and than use each ingredient separately to test it's effect on mouthfeel?
Unfortunately even if we could confirm that it works, it would be different for each ejuice depending on specific pH.
He may have inadvertently made a buffer solution with the salt and the acid.
This would have made the solution resistant to ph changes.
What I did was I would add a drop of each to a 10ml bottle then shake it and vape.
Added saline -> minimal change Brown sugar + saline -> better with a bit of added sweetness Vinegar + brown sugar + saline -> Very noticeable effect
As far as testing each one of them individually, I haven't done that, yet.
I just ordered a PH meter and will report back with results. Also, saline has a PH of 5.5 and White Viniger has a PH of of 2.5-3, while PG has a PH of 9-10 and VG is nutral at 7. I most think most flavors could be alkaline because of PG
Awesome! Please report back on your findings.
Ordering a pH meter is gonna take too long for me since I'm outside the US.
If you have any premium e juice laying around test the pH of it and compare it to your own mixes. I bet it's gonna be interesting.
I'm curious on which pH meter you ordered? I'm considering the Apera Instruments line. They're expensive but highly rated.
Haha I did go with the Apera PH60S with Swiss Spear Sensor. Shipping will take about a week or so because I live outside of the US.
I havn't tried white vinegar or any kind if vinegar but i have to say i do feel my mouth more wet and my nose too with saline. I mentioned it quickly when i posted about it. It does change the flavors a bit but more often in a good way i've found
S'up doc. I'm bout ready to buy some saline. Can you tell me how to spot safe, vapeable saline in stores or online? Not sure if there are different purity levels or whatever, don't want to die ya know?
Hey T_Mace ! Doing well, hope you too ! I'm browsing canadian website for saline and as for now i've found some stuff beeing suitable but i think there is better here is an example of a good product but packaged too big. I'd rather you to take somehtin like 50x10ml than 1x500ml. Because distilled water can get contiminated quite quickly so even if you open a 10ml bottle let's say each couple of months out of your 50 it wouldn't hurt that much. But buying a 500ml i feel like it's overkill... Otherwise i've found this site in canada that sells saline, look at 2 first items, they would be good, but one more expensive than the other but in smaller batches so it would be your call depending on your wallet.
The main thing is distilled (purified) water and 0.9% of NaCl. Still looking for more links.
What i did is to go to a pharmacy/drugstore and ask for it (water + 0.9% NaCl) they'll know what your talking about as it's pretty usual stuff in medical area and it will cost much less, just ask for a product containing nothing more than those 2 things
edit: sorry my messy english i just came back from a beer "degustation" so you know... ;-P
edit 2 : I would have sent you a couple of my 10 ml packages but after check it's 18$ for shipping so you'd better buy at a canadian website anyway
edit 3 and more : http://www.hiliq.com/saline-solution looks good too
Thanks very much for the response and for taking the time to find Canadian links!! Really appreciate it! I'll check at my pharmacy and if not I'll get the ones for 16 bucks that come in smaller packages. Very exciting.
Also, some guy on YouTube (forget the channel name but he's a diy guy that's not Wayne) said as long as it's USP grade it's all good. Is that true or nah? He also said that saline can rust stainless steal coils. Any experience with that? I use SS coils usually so might have to switch to Kanthal I guess if I'm gonna mess around the saline.
weird, I actually can't make a dry juice for the life of me for my icare, guess making juice for rdas ruined me.
Interesting, care to share your nicotine base ratio? Also, the overall PG/VG ratio of your final e juice?
atm I'm using liquid barn nic select 100mg nic in pg, usually mix at about 70vg/30pg, but recently did a 50/50 batch for the icare with 100mg signature salts from nude nic, still moist clouds... I was trying to imitate the dryness of a juul too, like the dry hit on the mtl
I get this more often that I care to. I know short of getting a PH tester to sort it out I won't know for sure, but it does seem to make sense. What sort of dilutions have you made and what % did you add? Thanks for the info!
Right now, since I have no access to a pH meter this is all guess work. I don't know if my juices are acidic or basic. So, adding 0.5% of each has been working well so far.
Once I get a quality meter I can tweak the ratios and come up with more solid results.
For now, try 0.5% of each.
I find that TFA Marshmallow or Capella Marshmallow at 2% really helps with dryness. Otherwise, you could also try TFA Smooth at about 0.3%
Sucralose is the that premium feel makes your everydrop good and tasty. Go light like a drop per 10ml and you wont gunk coils to bad. 2 drops per 10ml is a suger rush with any flavor u add to it.
I wish it were that simple :(
I've tested Sucralose at various percentages from 0.5% all the way to 15%! And I'm still missing the moist vape I get from premium brands
How big of batches do you do? I recently did two 240ml batches of juices in mason jars that went completely unopened for 3 weeks and shook only occasionally. Those juices taste a miilllllliooooon times better then any of my small 30ml batches of the same recipes. The texture is better. It's more gooey and thick, consistent.
And the flavors really pop out too.....actually to the point where I realized the recipes could probably use some more work...
I can't say that I've had that specific issue. Adding saline has gained some popularity lately but I know of at least one vendor that's been doing it for years. They were an organic line (no PG) so I don't know if that's why or what. I've tried vinegar in the past and couldn't get passed the flavor, even in small amounts and I don't care for brown sugar flavoring.
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