Title
Thanks
Sarcastic answer: sweetener
Serious answer: glass bottles
Oddly enough, my favorite brand (Naked) uses glass bottles, but they're really cheap. 60ml for $20 typically, depending on the store markup.
Expensive
I gatherd that much mate. But why?
"non" premium eliquid is usually a single flavour like strawberry which is produced fast and cheap.
Premium liquids are complex flavours, recipes that are made by themselfs
More time/money/quality = expensive Goes for anything in life
I'm going to completely disagree with everyone else here.
Premium to me isn't about price at all though, yeah, oftentimes its more expensive than the 10 120's mls for $100 that seem to be all the rage these days.
Its not about marketing or fancy boxes or anything like that. Its about quality. Its about people dedicated to their craft. Its about people putting the time and work into making a meticulously crafted recipe.
There are a lot of brands out there who like to market themselves as premium and charge a high price for it. Those aren't the people I think about when I think about premium e-juice. I think of all of Clay and Evan's wonderful extracts from N-E-T.com and RTE and their wonderful CS. (The First time I ordered from RTE about 15 minutes after I placed my order I got a call from Evan who wanted to make sure I had gotten what I was looking for and after talking about what I like and don't like he suggested some other flavors and threw them in at no charge) I think of the vanilla extracts from Nicoticket. I think of Kite In Cloud who put out an outstanding and complex juice and refused to put out a bunch of other juices that weren't ready even though they could have made a ton of money on it. I think of all the companies who spend a long time developing unique and complex recipes instead of just pumping out the same tired flavors everyone else is. Companies like Gordona, Zucker, TVK, and 2Ohm6.
I think the same is true in the DIY world and I think we're actually in a position to see how difficult it is to get something perfect especially when trying to create something that has a real world equivalent. There is a whole sub dedicated to finding the perfect PB&J. That should tell you something. Its not hard to make good recipes but it is often hard to make a great recipe and even harder to make a perfect one.
You can slap something together and think, "damn, that's good" but right after you are most likely thinking I could up this, lower than, add this, sub that and develop 15 iterations or more before you get it just where you want it. That's the kind of thing I think of when I think of premium juice. People who don't settle for good enough.
I'd consider some of the recipes DIYers make to be premium as well. You can tell when someone has put a lot of work and a lot of time in the recipe. It shows in the recipe notes and it shows in the ingredients that these guys have put some serious effort, and often some serious cash, to develop these recipes; you can see the passion behind them. People like /u/id10-t, /u/hashslingingslashur, /u/chemicalburnvictim, and /u/skiddlzninja all come to mind though there are many more.
Sure, we all use the same ingredients but what we do with them is where the difference is made. Michelin starred chefs can take the same ingredients everyone else does and turn them into something you wouldn't be able to come up with not because they have some innate talent for it but because of their passion and dedication to their craft. Its true for pretty much any industry and its true here as well.
You are wrong, tho...
In any endeavor, the truly great do not just have skills and drive, they also have innate talent. Raw talent can propel someone with limited skill to great heights, but rarely does a talentless hack who has accumulated insane skills succeed at the highest levels.
I completely disagree. I never said innate talent doesn't exist just that having a natural talent isn't what makes people great; its their passion, drive, and hard work. A "talentless hack" by definition isn't going to have insane skills and someone with a natural talent who doesn't put in the hard work and who isn't passionate about what they are doing isn't going to be very good either. Having a natural flair for something helps but at the end of the day it is hard work, passion, and determination that comes out on top. Its not Jiro Ono of Sukiyabashi Jiro's natural born talent that makes him great, its the decades of hard work and his passion about his craft and he says as much himself as does pretty much any great chef. If you read The Devil in the Kitchen, Knives of Dawn, Life on the Line, and Ferran or watch Inventing Cuisine, Step up to the Plate, or A Matter of Taste and they all say the very same thing. Their talents don't come to them over night they are all developed over many years through dedication and countless hours spent honing their abilities. Limited skills cannot "propel someone to great heights" without passion, years of hard work, and dedication. I think, if anything, its even more true when dealing with flavors because almost anyone can develop their palates, learn about flavor combinations, etc and especially true when dealing with e-liquid because you cut down the variables a lot when you remove preparation, textures, and visual appeal, and there is nothing really technical or innovative about ejuice when compared to something like cooking. There isn't really much in the way of innate abilities when it comes to making juice other than having a refined palate and a knack for flavor combinations, both of which can be trained, and spending time doing those things as well as hours and hours of testing flavors, making notes, and making mix after mix in search of perfection goes a lot farther in developing something great than someone who has a great palate to begin with and a natural talent for combining flavors who doesn't have the time put in or the skills because as we all know there is a lot more to it that just saying chocolate goes with cherries and just mixing a chocolate and cherry flavoring together. You have to know what it is you are wanting from each one and spend the time picking your flavors and testing based not on what the juices taste like individually but how each of them works together as part of a whole.
better marketing. better packaging. more expensive.
same deal with clothes, basically. why is nike premium? marketing, packaging, price.
Nike shoes are premium. Nike clothes are trash.
> Nike shoes are premium.
Yes, because of marketing, packaging and price.
The same as eliquid, those shoes are pennies on the dollar to produce.
I would assume most "premium" eliquid is manufactured in a more controlled environment (ISO lab, no pet hairs in juice, etc) with better controls on the quality and consistency of the ingredients (hopefully, but very debatable) and thus the finished product. All said though, there are no real manufacturing standards and "take our word for it" is the only apparent guarantee for the dollar hike.
That said, the marked does seem to be saturated with over priced, flashy labelled, weirdly named, and often over sweetened products these days - some chase clouds, some chase flavor, and the rest are there just trying to cash in.
I have over a dozen animals living in and around my house (not my decision as of yet) and I've yet to have a single hair fall into a bottle. There's also hair everywhere, and I mean everywhere. If you don't wipe off a surface once a day it's covered in dog and cat hair. The difference between juice made in someone's kitchen and in a lab, is most likely nill unless you're blatantly careless.
Fingers crossed on the home loan though.
I mean... I don't give a shit if I accidentally make my 3mg batch into a 3.2mg by overdripping the nic and being too lazy to get it out, but that shit would not fly if I was intending to sell it to someone else.
The main difference between a proper lab with filtration and positive pressure, as well as proper clean room procedures for the people going into it is... if you shine a sunbeam across it, you aren't going to see human dander, dust mites, their feces, carpet dust, wood dust, dirt, spores, pollen and all the other fun stuff (looking for a warm moist dark place to grow) that winds up in the air even when hepa filters are present and working.
Now, would I vape something somebody made in their kitchen? Hells yeah! As it stands I mix my own (dirt cheap at this desk) and just accept there is a certain level of contamination I simply can't avoid. Wouldn't call it premium though either, even when it's better than what can be bought - I'd properly dignify it and call it "small batch craft ejuice" :D (keep in mind too, ejuice industry was pretty much was born from a kitchen!)
For all I know half the juice I see in an online store being hawked as 'premium' is made in a spare corner of mad chemist's dirt floor meth lab who happens to share the barn space with 12 cats, 3 donkeys, 5 guard dogs, a flock of pigeons, a small horde of rats and... an emu... and knows a guy who knows a guy who got them on the ISO certification list.
Good luck with the loan!
just like premium ice cream.
just a name
I'm calling bs on that. You definitely get what you pay for in ice cream. Texture wise, favor wise, etc. Generic ice cream is typically artificial flavor, more likely to have ice crystals, more milk than cream, and so on. No comparison to a premium ice cream made the way it's supposed to be made.
i completely agree that there is ice cream that is waaaaay better than your average store brand ice cream.
However, there is no criteria that must be met for a brand to call their ice cream "Premium". This allows any ice cream company to say their ice cream is premium just because they feel like it. The same can be said for e-liquid. Some are much better than others and use high quality concentrates and highest quality VG/PG, use a flavor chemist for recipes etc. but there is no criteria that must be met to call it "Premium e-liquid".
Premium liquid is generally super sweet (over sweetened) juice that is literally no different than someone's diy jucie in terms of vape quality ext. Aside from marking up prcies for the sake of greed, they also put alot of money into marketing, iso approved labs (hopefully), marketing, packaging, and marketing. It's the same stuff you can make at home, it's just hyped and put in a pretty package to make you justify paying out da ass for it.