I've been doing DIY for a few months now and love it. Big shout out to this sub, Discord, and DIYorDIE. I have made some highly rated recipes from ELR, ATF, and even come up with a few I'm really liking, but there is still something about premium juice that's more flavorful than what I'm getting from DIY specifically when I use a tank. I've tried letting mixes steep out longer, adding sweetener, even turning up all the percentages of flavorings (most mixes range from 10-16% total flavoring) and everything I mix is flavorful but lacking that really mouth filling flavour I get from premium. Is there a technique I'm missing to really help my juices have that full on flavor?
To be clear I'm not really talking about depth or complexity, but about getting a really potent flavor flavor from a profile like strawberries and cream, sugar cookie, vanilla custard etc.
Sweetener as people have said but maybe a bit of placebo. Premium juices put a lot of effort into marketing and design. Kind of like those studies that show wine tastes better if it's come out a fancy bottle.
Yea, as long as you have flavor, mouthfeel and sweetener checked off, the rest is just down to expectation. Put the juice in a nice bottle, slap a fancy label on it, come up with a mouth watering description and imagine you paid a lot for it, bam, "premium" juice.
Are there good ways of making nice labels? I always wanted to do that for my mixes, but I just resorted to using a label maker (which is obviously pretty crappy looking). I don't have a fancy printer or anything, just your standard type deal.
I just write on masking tape, lol, but the topic has come up a lot.
I got these from onlinelabels.com. They print great on my Canon inkjet and it's your typical consumer printer, nothing special. They have a bunch of sizes and the quality is just as good or better than a lot of retail juice labels.
What fancy bottle do you recommend buying to improve my sugar cookie recipe?
No way is it placebo for me. My favorite shop has I've been going to for stuff for a year or two now is definitely of a lesser quality than the stuff they I buy already mixed and a store just adjust mg on.
I can't wait for my stupid UPS ground shipment to finally arrive so I can see how my own compares.
They also have super clean rooms and very consistent and sanitary steeping conditions.
I feel like it's harmful to say that the only thing that differentiates triple-A juice and diy juice is sweetener & branding. DIY juice is harsher unless very properly and patiently steeped. Professional juice is almost always more fuly homogenized, other than some discount juices I've tried that my buddy gets online. It tasted just like my diy juice, very slightly harsh compared to Cutwood or Conspiracy Liquids or whatever else with a different consistency as well.
Yeah, you're missing something: shitloads and shitloads of sucrolose. It's one of the only "flavorings" you actually taste with your tongue and not your olfactory nerves.
It's also hell on your coils, gives you nasty vaper's tongue, and tastes burnt within hours.
"Specifically when I use a tank" - people are giving you pretty complex answers I don't 100% understand but I think this is the issue. There's no ingredient that can just be blanket dropped into all juices for a quick fix.
Drippers provide better flavor than tanks any day of the week, premium juices are made with smok's tank of the week in mind, diy juices tend to be written for, and tested on, drippers. They may be more nuanced but they physically have less flavour.
That's honestly pretty true. I've mixed juice that has tons of flavor, put it in someone's tank for them to try it and get the "it has no flavor". Of course it doesn't in your cheap tank.
Tbh, Smok tanks do have alot of flavor though compared to alot of others.
But I do agree that premium companies are mixing with consideration that their customers are using tanks and setups that don't deliver flavor so they over compensate on flavoring and sweetener.
> Drippers provide better flavor than tanks any day of the week,
Is this the common sentiment now? I remember when everyone used to say dripping was for clouds, tanks were for flavor....feeling old!
Good on you though to catch the important part most here seemed to overlook, "specifically when I use a tank", which (to me) says it's likely more an issue of viscosity than the juice itself, I mean what other factor could so drastically effect taste when switching among drippers & tanks?
(Edit: Unless OP misspoke and meant especially, not specifically, as that'd change the entire meaning of what I was replying to!)
I suppose I did generalise, my kf5 is a hell of a lot tastier than any of my cloud orientated rdas, but a good RDA build, or to be fair any of the smaller rdtas, is way more suited to my tastes most of the time. When I read tank I thought generic subtank type, which I don't rate for flavour at all.
This is not necessarily true in that there are certain tanks that can outdo the flavour of rdas and, I'm not talking about crappy smok tanks or serpent minis here.If you throw a whole packet of skittles in your mouth you can argue your getting much more flavour that eating one at a time. I have always used both tanks and rdas and taking the doggystyle rta as an example there Is no rda that can beat this on flavour. Equal it for flavour yes but not better.
Without delving into your recipes, a few things might help you get on the right track. Saline will help your flavors "pop" while adding a better mouthfeel. TFA Marshmallow will help with mouthfeel. If your juices seem a bit dry, try testing the pH levels, and adjust it from there...citric acid, citrus juice, saline, white vinegar, and malt vinegar will help move the juice in the right respective direction. Of course, all of these should be used in small amounts (.2% to 1%) in this application.
Also, if this is only an issue in tanks, consider adjusting your carrier ratios.
+1 for saline and pH testing. I've been doing pH testing for several months now, and I feel like that's a big part of why commercial juice tastes so... clean? Or clear? Do you know what I mean? So long as the recipe is right. Haha.
Whoa broah! I think you just almost told me why people only ask for my shit when they are broke.
Haha. It could be. Snag a pack of strips from Amazon for like $5 to just try it out. I use a digital meter, but they cost a bit more. Who knows, you might try it and think, "That dude was full of it!" Lol
Edit: Getting the HIGHEST quality ingredients you can find makes more of a difference. Superb VG, PG, and nic is 100% necessary for that clean, crisp taste.
I agree that marshmallow can work wonders as can experimenting with different creams.
Kind of new here, is that tfa marshmallow the flavor apprentice or the other tfa whose acronym I can not remember (flavor arts?)? And if it is The Flavor Apprentice , is he referring to DX regualr or toasted marshmallow?
Been diy for abit, could you explain the ph and saline? Literally never heard of it before
A while back i ordered some VG off ebay. The seller mixed up my order and sent me Propanediol instead. Had to look it up and found out it was a PG alternative and that Five Pawns was using it. I noticed my fruit flavors were a little sweeter and a whole lot smoother. I'm not a throat hit guy so i instantly became a fan. Made two exact batches 1 with PG and 1 with prop. The prop batch was a bit more flavorful. Now i'm not a scientist or DIY expert but i was surprised how not only different brands of base liquid changed the taste of the vape but even a totally different alternative changed the profile as well.
> Propanediol
I get dehydrated off PG so I'm curious about this. It is good at binding flavors without the throat hit and mixed with VG? How is the vapor production on it?
I dont notice a huge difference in flavor from PG. I think its a tad bit thinner so ive found than mixing has been easier for me. For cloud production i couldnt tell you for sure. I'm not blowing giant clouds or anything. I'll just say i'm using an OBS Engine on a IPV D3 and i've never felt like the clouds are weak.
Me too, I want all the flavor straight in the face
Grack juice does it, them molecules are so instable they go through the bottle and it fills up the room. If there is grack juice hidden in the house you can literally find it with your nose.
Try mixing a few premium clone recipes that are highly rated. Nana cream, monster melons are two that are really popular.
Maybe try upping your game to make it feel more premium to you. Get some swanky bottles, a cool label maker. Maybe make some art for them, get creative with it. Take some ownership and become passionate! It will taste better. Remember that whatever you put in that bottle is no different than any juice company out there.
Edit: grammar and oh yeah, add some sweetener too
This is also something that I have been thinking about recently and like you slightly upping percentages , raising the PG percentage or adding some sweetener isn't making the difference. I have noticed that certain flavours and recipes perhaps work better for getting that premium type flavour and I think maybe layering flavours can also help sometimes. I can think of plenty of so called premium juices out there that also seem to lack in the full on flavour department, even in rdas so, it's not just down to diy juice or trade secrets perhaps. I think this is an interesting topic and I hope some of the more experienced and respected mixologists have something to say about this.
One thing I've liked is adding INA cactus, just a small amount can help the mouthfeel and potency of a flavor. It just makes the vapor feel "juicy" in the right amounts. Start at .5% and tweak it from there.
I am extremely sensitive to INW Cactus and I've not tasted it in many commercial juices. I wish I tasted the same things in cactus that many people do. More often than not commercial juices use sucralose to turn a mediocre (sometimes amazing) recipe into something that stands out when you're on your 4th sample at the vape shop. It's great for the first 5ml then you can't taste anything for awhile. There are plenty of standouts of course but some of them are ridiculously over-sweetened.
The premium taste is in your mind, try placing your mix into an old premium bottle.
Not always. Take the top 10 recipes from your favorite recipe site and I'll pick 10 commercials of similar profiles. I bet in a blind test most of the time the commercial will at least get picked out as commercial. Not saying better or worse but the commercial-ness is pretty obvious most of the time.
I'm not saying you're wrong, but assuming the outcome of a hypothetical experiment doesn't get anyone anywhere. I am disgusted by about 99% of commercial juice compared to the DIY juices I vape now. I wouldn't think twice about picking a DIY recipe over a commercial one.
Especially now-a-days when commercial juice is about 15% of a single flavor and 5% sweetener. Seems to have gone full circle, starting with single flavors and moving on to more complex stuff, now back to the single flavor mixes with sweetener. If you really want your juice to taste "commercial", add more sweetener than anyone here would add (in their right minds), and let it steep for a month properly.
Sometimes yes, but I have yet to mix up an ANML Looper clone that I've fell in love with. I feel like some of the commercial companies have better ingredients to work with/make their own? Anyways thank you to the people who have taken a stab at cloning it. ICU shrine
Aside from the great advise others have offered, consider your vg/pg ratio. Most "premium" juices are in the 70/30 range, whereas the majority of diy recipes and in the 80/20 to 85/15 range (if you're mixing straight vg + vg nic + flavorings). Try using 5 to 10% pg in your base and that should help carry the flavors better and may help you get what you're looking for.
Try boosting your sweetener by 1% in a test batch and see what happens.
I've played with TFA Sweetener and FA Meringue for this purpose lately. Both can help certain mixes a lot, from 0.5% to 1%. I like Meringue better but I just started being able to really taste it a few days ago. Even though I've used ~70ml of it over the years...
I've found that adding sweeteners usually requires upping the other flavors. The result can be great, sometimes.
maybe placebo but i think glass would hold the flavor better then plastic. kinda like a glass bottle of soda vs the plastic today. when i can afford glass bottles ill make the same juice in 2 different bottles to compare.
If you don't have glass bottles to begin with I would highly recommend getting them if you're interested in saving money. At least where I live glass bottles pretty much cost twice as much as plastic. In my case if you wash and reuse a glass bottle 3 times you've already saved money.
I've had the same glass bottles for ages, and I figure I've saved quite a bit of money in the long run already.
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