I've been into DIY for almost a year now and I didn't really go head first until the last couple months. Early on I tried making my own mixes but they were all muddled and just an over flavored mess by the time they steeped. When I decided to jump as far down the hole I could go, I spent hours researching flavors, interactions between flavors, reading flavor notes etc. I eventually decided, screw this, I'm going to mix each flavor individually and create a "flavor library" of sorts. I mixed 5ml samples of EVERYTHING.
Since I've done that I have made some pretty fantastic mixes. Testing each individual flavor allowed me to be able to place a flavor idea to specific concentrates.
For instance, Nonna Cake. That stuff makes for a hell of a custard base. Without testing it, I would of never known. I bought FA Blackberry because I thought "FlavourArt is pretty great quality stuff" so I tested it and I'm glad I did because its like drinking musk cologne mixed with rams urine all in one. So instead of blindly tossing it into a mix , I was able to rule that flavor out from future mixing.
I'm at the point now where I can't create a recipe without knowing how each individual flavor tastes by it's self. This, I think is the single most important step to creating good tasting and well balanced flavors. As a new mixer, I wish someone had told me that earlier on!
I'm becoming more active in this subreddit, helping out when I can and gaining significantly more knowledge each day by crawling posts and making notes! DIY is exciting and frustrating all at the same time but if this little tip reaches even a few people and helps them advance their mixing abilities, than I am happy!
You're right. I know you're right, and I hate you for it. Started right about 2 months ago and I already have over 100 flavor concentrates which fill two nail polish racks on my mixing table.
I can hear them mocking me
The only thing I've mixed and steeped by itself is RF SC Baja, because I was in a weird Mountain Dew Baja Blast mood that consumed me for a week.
The thought of mixing all my flavor concentrates is daunting to say the least. I know I need to experience each one for myself... but man I love /u/ConcreteRiver 's reviews and he's better at it than I am, so...
And now I'm depressed. I'll be in the mixing lab, curled in the fetal position under the table.
I totally agree. The funny thing is: since I started doing this, I noticed how much I like the single flavors.
Now I am 90% of the time vaping single flavors or a mix of only 2 flavors.
I used to think for the longest time that juices will be better if I follow the super complex recipes that get posted around with 6 ingredients or more. When I started single flavor testing, not only did I realize simpler is better, but also whenever I see a recipe with too many ingredients I just groan and skip it because it is such a headache to mix them.
I really wish we had a better library of recipes on this subreddit that just focused on 3 or less concentrates. I think it's really misleading for people just getting into mixing, that they think they need tons of flavors to get started when they see all these complex recipes.
I was kinda the same way. When I saw stuff like Grack Juice or that strawberry shortcake ice cream bar recipe that's like 10 ingredients in tiny amounts I was like "this has to be good!" No, not enough to deal with that shit. Now my adv is Mother of Dragons Milk. 4 simple flavors and I have my 20ml ratio memorized. And as I write this I realize I put an extra 10 ml of VG in last night. Well that's why it seemed weak lol.
I'm a big fan of single and dual flavor mixes, too. I used to try other mixers recipes, but I've found that I rarely like mixes of 6 to 12 flavors.
I've noticed a trend of newer vendors offering more complex concentrates, and I'll bet this continues to the point of making mixing unnecessary for new vapers. Essentially they seem to be moving closer to 'one shots'. While I'm not a fan of the 'one shots' currently available, I wouldn't mind the pros making something wonderful.
I have been preaching this for literally years.
I hope people aren't making the mistake of substituting the excellent flavor reviews available here, mostly by /u/concreteriver, and elsewhere, for the work of doing your own single-flavor testing. That's not what they're for. They're for helping you decide whether or not that's a flavor you actually want to buy, and they also help with usage % and pairing ideas. But they can't substitute for doing your own tests.
I agree 100%. I do commercial juice reviews over on the Canadian subreddit and while I provide as much detail about what I am tasting, it is only a guideline to better help someone spend their hard earned money more wisely and find something they love vs buying a bottle blindly and hating it. Taste is very subjective in both DIY and commercial stuff. I find Blueberry Extra to be really harsh yet my buddy absolutely loves it and doesn't get any chemical harshness from it. So yeah, /u/concreteriver does an excellent job of providing a good blueprint for flavor concentrates but people also need to experiment on their own.
A scale is easier. mix right out of the bottles.I wish I would have done that, but I kind of dislike mixing but it saves a ton of money , so I do it.
I bought the scale at the same time I picked up the starter kit. It makes mixing so easy. I know a few dudes who actually prefer mixing by volume and can do it really well but not for me. When I first started mixing and creating recipes I was really excited, but became really unmotivated when they were turning to garbage. Luckily, I review tons of juice so I have lots of commercial stuff on hand but other than the odd review, I've been vaping strictly my own mixes. It only took one really good mix to spark the drive I needed to continue on and do more. I always wanted a perfect Blueberries and Cream, something that tastes like authentic Blueberry pie filling/jam. It took me a few revisions but I eventually got that one "Oh hell yes" version. I'd been looking for the perfect BB and cream since I started vaping and never found it in the hundreds of juice I've tried. So the thing I love about DIY is the ability to create something exactly how you want it and the mistakes and continuous development cost way less than buying 20 bottles of commercial made stuff to not find the one you're looking for.
> I know a few dudes who actually prefer mixing by volume and can do it really well but not for me.
Been doing this shit for years and I still mix by volume. It works for me so I never switched to mixing by weight.
I'm friends with some people who mix commercial stuff so I'm always in awe when I'm watching him mix a gallon at a time and just grabbing bottles,pouring, another bottle,pour..in like ..dude..wtf? How do you know that's right? To which he says "I just do" ahha.
Will you post that B&C, or pm it to me? I haven't bought any B yet - mainly because I was never able to find a non-chemical one from professional sources. Since you seem to know exactly the taste I'm trying to avoid, I would really appreciate if you'd point me in the right direction. And I have read the flavor reviews I'm just still hesitant... I find it hard to believe there can be a natural blueberry. Plus, I've decided to work on other things because of this belief so I bought a whole ton of other flavors.
As far as your suggestion, the main period of this post, I'm also reading all the time and have filled up half a notebook of different sections such as "flavors that go well together" and who recommended the pairing so I get to know individual usernames here. Another section entitled "vial juices" so I don't buy them by accident. Of course a shopping list and an "in stock" list. The in stock list contains columns for how much it cost, where it came from, the date I bought it, what milliliter I should replace it, and any notes I come across while reading - especially single flavor mix amounts and recipe mix amounts. And of course pages and pages and pages of recipes to try out - mainly gotten from the Best of 2016 & 2015 recipe contest winners/runner-ups, and recipes that some of those usernames I've come to respect rave about.
I'm curious to know other mixers methods of cataloguing and research...
I guess I'll have to buckle down now and do the single flavor testing which I dread because I, too, have 76 different flavors already (with another shipment on the way) so I better buckle down.
Mind sharing that "oh hell yes" recipe? I too have been chasing the perfect blueberry vape.
It can be tedious mixing and testing all of your flavors, but the task has always yielded tastier mixes in the long run for me.
That's what I just said to someone earlier. I've even gone to breaking down the layers of a mix and mixing then separate than once I have them the way I want, I make the full mix. I did it for the first time with a Strawberry Rhubarb Cheesecake. I didn't want conventional Graham Crust so I made a base of Biscuit,Cookie with some custard and a few vanilla. Its so damn tasty and I vape it solo regularly. Than I moved on to the cheesecake portion and developed that until I got it where I wanted. Than just tossed the fruit into the whole mix. Turned out really really good. Its a too heavy fruit cheesecake. Cheesecake is light but it's definitely there and the dark buttery cookie biscuit crust finishes it off. Mixing can really be an godamn art form.
How did you make the custard base with Nonna Cake?
I really try to do single flavor testers when I can but thank god for the flavor reviews on here and the flavor wiki. Since I can only mix in my spare time these have been an amazing resource.
While I have you all here... can anyone tell me the best place to order flavors from? I've been getting them from liquid barn and they're alright. But it's time to branch out and I'm always worried I'll order some nasty shitty shit on accident.
Bull City, though Nicotine River is pretty awesome because they have great prices and free shipping over $50.
This is outstanding advice, and something I wish I had done when I first started mixing instead of just blindly throwing flavors together in hopes of concocting a wonderful recipe. To do it right (testing flavors, with and without nicotine, over various percentages and steeping times) is a very daunting and dedicated task.
I tried doing it this way after I'd accumulated about 50 or so flavors, and became quickly overwhelmed, both with my taste buds and my brain. I feel like I have a hard time mixing up a single flavor, picking out certain notes on it, and describing it's flavor. But when I take that same flavor and read someone else's description as I'm vaping it, sometimes that switch flips and I can say to myself "There's that note they were talking about, and that one too". This is a large reason why I value the information provided here and various other places so much. Always helps to give me a starting point of where I want to go. At the end of the day I don't have the time, or the palette to test all my flavors individually, and I thank those of you that do.
I've settled into a place where I'm very familiar with a lot of my flavorings now. My goto method is to taste a drop of my flavorings straight up on my tongue, and it will usually give me a baseline of how strong something is and what it theoretically should taste like. Accurate? Fuck no. But it's worked for me thus far.
I feel like it's a lot easier for me to mix up a recipe that sounds good in my head and vape through it and say to myself "Okay, this isn't the right strawberry for this recipe, or I need to tweak the percentage of this flavor up or down" and go through various renditions until I hit what I'm looking for. This is usually how I'll find flavors I do and do not like.
Sorry for that rambling, incoherent mess.
Everyone is different in how they mix. I just found this to significantly help me in developing mixes that actually taste good and make my friends say shit like "Jesus,you made this?". Blindly throwing flavors into an mix doesn't work for me anymore ahaha. Some of my earlier mixes were like 25-30% flavoring and I've since gone back and gotten them down to less than 15. I truly believe that stronger, better quality flavors makes a massive difference, I use Flavorah and FlavourArt in all my mixes and it really helps keep the % down and the flavors all around are better, at least for me. While I do believe that TFA and Cap serve a role in some spots, I usually use them as support flavors and enhancers vs using them as primary note flavors. But like I said, Everyone is different!
Very good advice and advice I need to put into action myself haha. Have done some single flavor testing but never have enough bottles to test my flavors and also have some recipes ready to vape. Just gotta suck it up and order a shitload of 30ml bottles haha.
So... Since you've vaped your entire library, you think you'll be doing any flavor notes to share with the community?
Actually, I've recieved the 27 new flavors from Flavorah, I also will be doing FlavourArt reviews for FlavourArt and I just recieved today the entire line of Great Lakes concentrates so I'll be plugging away at them. I haven't decided how exactly I want to do it yet, I've got a few ideas. I was thinking developing recipes with a mix of all 3 companies and at the footnote of the recipe, provide individual flavor notes in the form of a review. I know many of the flavors have been reviewed already but I'm the kind of person that likes to take from multiple sources to gather as much info as possible because at the end of the day, especially with flavoring, taste is really subjective and different people will interpret then differently. Single flavor testing has changed the way I review commercial liquids as well, I find myself picking out certain flavors from certain companies now, for instance, I had a berry crunch cereal flavor recently and I easily picked out the malted Milk and Cereal 27. Its pretty neat.
TLDR: Yes, I will be posting flavor notes in the form of a review just not sure how to go about it. I want to make it as original as possible.
I wouldn't bother with reviewing FA , nearly all their flavors have been reviewed to death and most are very familiar with them.
TFA , Capella and FW have also been reviewed to death .
What we need is people reviewing flavors from Flavor Revolution, Wonder Flavors, EU flavors , more Liquid Barn flavors and some of the Lorann flavors that 'Shockingly' still have never been reviewed.
What you just mentioned "Great Lakes" would be a great choice for reviews if thats a new line that flavor retailers are selling .
Yea I've only been mixing for a few weeks, but realized this when I tried to mix some of my own recipes.
So last night I mixed up ~40 single flavor testers. I've only tried a few, but can already tell how much this will help me become a better mixer
What size are you doing the individual samples at? 10ml, 15ml? I just put in my first order yesterday and want to start off right, I picked up 8 items so this would be a good time to start. Also, I'm trying to mimic a recipe I saw online vs just buying a bunch of stuff.
Start with 5 or 10ml and dont stick to the recommended concentration that are on the bottles, go a lot lower. Flavors that sound really pungent, like menthol,tea,strong tobacco, coffee rarely need more than 3%, especially in a mix.
Great, thanks! But first I need a scale that will measure below 1g, as it turns out mine doesn't. Off to the head shop!
No need for scales, just use milliliters. I use THESE. Arts and crafts stores usually have mixed 10-packs with 1ml,3ml,10ml. Thats more than accurate enough.
My biggest issue is getting the motivation to figure out the VG and pg for all of them, I might just make a big batch of 70/30 then fill them with it and call it close enough :/
I mix all my samples 70/30! Makes it easier for shaking I guess. That's just what I've stuck with.