Congrats and welcome to the wonderful world of DIY!

Hey can you tell me the quality you’ve experienced with nicotine river? I’m debating making my first purchase with them. Have heard issues with their nicotine.

Have you tried mixing it at a lower percentage? 20% flavoring seems pretty high these days. Perhaps take a 10 ml sample, dump out half and replace with VG/PG and see how that tastes?

Just checking that you do realise it's a concentrate - and that there's mixing instructions below the description on the site? It's meant to be mixed with VG/PG/Nic.

If you have already followed the mixing intructions then yes, you could definitely add 1-1.5% of your Bavarian Cream to lessen the sweet and sickly. Or simply add more VG. Or both.

Ethyl Maltol used low is good at rounding out harsh edges. Try it low, .5%ish, as it does mute mixes over time.

The fix to 'dry' is usually INW Cactus... EM and MTS Wizard tone down 'harsh'. All of these approaches have other effects tho...

I like CAP Lemon-Lime, but you are correct. Sour is nigh impossible.

You could just get some citric acid if you like sour.

Sour is almost impossible and more often than not it's just a placebo type of effect. The most tart flavor I've tried is Liquid barn pink lemonade, at least the most tart but still good flavor.

What was in it?

I think a lot of those are in the [flavor review wiki] (https://www.reddit.com/r/DIY_eJuice/wiki/index/flavor_reviews) under JF

I have tried the Yellow Cake and it tastes like FW Yellow Cake but without all the coil destruction included! I've subbed it 1-1 and it's been great! Mine included that Biscuit, Strawberry Sweet, Honey Peach, Honey Dew Melon and Lemon Juicy. Haven't gotten around to trying anything else yet.

Haven't tried the Pink Burst yet, outside of a recipe someone sent me at /r/mixersclub but I love the Honeydew, Biscuit, Lemon Juicy, and Honey Peach.

Honeydew fades badly so your best bet is to either shake and vape it or use it higher than you think you need and then let it settle down with a steep. It's delicious though. Lemon Juicy like a better version CAP Juicy Lemon, more juicy and natural tasting, and you can use more of it for more intense lemon before it starts getting Pledge-y.

Biscuit, Sweet Strawberry, and Honey Peach are some of my favorite flavors. Here are a couple of recipes I've made using those:

https://alltheflavors.com/recipes/34622#tootsee_roll_by_id10_t

https://alltheflavors.com/recipes/64399#peach_pipe_by_id10_t

MB Captain Rum is the only recommendation I have for you. I haven’t tried it, but I have tried other rum flavors, and there is no spiced rum flavor to those.

I would advise against getting a kit to start.

IMO, as far as getting started with tobaccos in general essentials would be:

Acetyl Pyrazine

INW Dirty Neutral Base

FA Black Fire

INW Tobacco absolutes

Kentucky Bourbon

Oak Wood

Others:

Red Oak

Oak Barrel

Wood Spice

Ethyl Maltol

Saline Solution

MTS

Smooth

Ozone

Bitter Wizard

Also check out: https://www.e-cigarette-forum.com/threads/know-your-enhancers.709743/

Its a slippery slope for sure. Can you describe the juice you are trying to recreate a bit more? I might be able to direct you to some stuff to try.

Knuckle test? You need to vape it to accurately test how the mix will work out.

FE Lemon. Hands down.

Chef's Flavors seems to be one of the most popular UK based vendors. For future reference most of the popular vendors are listed in the side bar under 'Verified Vendor List'.

For first order flavors, or most popular, look at this list in the sidebar 'My First Order Flavors'.

EM, TFA Peanut Butter, and pretty much any cream for starters. Some creams aren't as bad as others but they all seem to mute to some degree.

TFA Marshmallow, TFA Vanilla Swirl, TFA Strawberry Ripe, TFA Cotton Candy/EM.

There are others but those are reliable. Also flavor interactions are tricky. Some things will mute one flavor or type of flavor but not other flavors.

I like FA Torrone at 3%

FA Forest Mix

The list is long. Narrow it down a little. What's your preference, bakery or fruity? Maybe tobacco? Take some time to read thru the "flavor reviews" section to see some good feedback on a ton of flavors.

If you search for "single flavor" or "standalone" there's a ton that show up. My personal favorite is FW Jungle Juice, at I think 12%. I think CAP Cinnamon Danish Swirl V1 is pretty good too. I don't recall what % I used that at...

I've been trying to understand flavors lately so I've been vaping a lot of juices with only one or two juices... lately it's been TPA black honey or TPA greek yogurt and rose candy. Honestly I haven't made a bad one yet. Just pick two that sound good and try them together :)

CAP Sugar Cookie + CAP Vanilla Custard.

But it really depends on what you're into.

FW Butter Pecan is nice on it's own

https://www.reddit.com/r/DIY_eJuice/comments/60mhgw/feeling_berry_blue_need_an_fotw_to_cheer_you_up/df7m9pz/

It's berry good! Which blueberry do you have?

If you want juicy, buy yourself a 30ml of INW cactus. Add to any fruit mix at 0.25-0.5%

Use a calculator like the ones in the sidebar. This one is great for beginners: http://dot1ml.com/

Where did you order salts from?

What sweeteners are you concerned about and why?

Dark fruits for sure. Some blueberries, black currant, apricot, figs, plums and raisins.

Try mixing it with nuts.

And maybe a tobacco, if you like them.

Other staples that may work: marshmallow, nougat, marzipan.

I'm not a huge fan of apple vapes either, but I have found that a little FA Blackcurrant really helps turn the apple into something more enjoyable. Apple flavors alone, even FA Fuji, get annoying to my taste buds and almost sour or fermented tasting after a while.

I concocted Legend a while back, which is simple with enough complexity to keep me interested past a few draws. Use it for inspiration, or mix it up verbatim if you have everything and aren't turned off by FA Desert Ship.

Good luck, have fun :)

Amber always. Without droppers

Nicotine River has an unbeatable price on VG by the gallon so long as you can get the free shipping.

Essential depot on Amazon if you have Prime or Nicotine River if you're going to buy more than 50 dollars worth of stuff to get free shipping.

I've tried a lot of different brands and they are all really similar. Some are a tad bit thicker or thinner.

Bulk Apothecary has excellent prices, but the shipping is a bit on the high side. If you can catch them on a 15-20% off sale, it's definitely the way to go. I have yet to see them offer free shipping in the ~3 years I've done business with them.

Roughly double the amount, from what I hear. It's less potent.

There's a DIY beginners guide and a "first flavors" guide on the side bar (I think there's some vendor information too). The kit vs buy a few thing is going to depend on the kit itself (any savings by purchasing that way).

Also, check out
https://www.bullcityflavors.com/community-recipe-packs/
Find one you like and you can buy all the flavors conveniently and I think there's a bit of a discount.

Get a scale. Everything else is secondary

Unless it's one of the main flavors, it's usually better to omit than sub. Background flavors are often used for obscure reasons and attempting to substitute it without knowing what it does in the mix tends to defeat the purpose. When you sub, you alter the profile, and if it's from one strawberry to another then it's easily identifiable in the finished mix, thus plain to see if it worked or not.

Here's a couple threads I managed to dig up.

Some discussion on subbing

https://www.reddit.com/r/DIY_eJuice/comments/424gt7/flavour_substitutes/

Joy review with some flavor discussion in comments

https://www.reddit.com/r/DIY_eJuice/comments/4spm5r/fa_joy_flavor_review/

I think I remember reading a few more, but can't find them at the moment

FA Joy is a kinda yeasty flavor not just a sweetener. That said, I remember when Bronuts was released some mixers had a little trouble getting Joy (don't remember if it was a stock issue or just not many carrying it yet), so there were a few threads on here discussing possible alternatives.

It's funny you mention BRONUTS, cause I decided to sub in my new Jungle Flavors (Yellow Cake and Biscuit) flavors inplace of the Flavor West Yellow Cake and INW Biscuit. Well it's way better! It was a good flavor before but damn it's amazing now!

It’s not a sweetener. So you won’t be able to sub with those.

It pulls random flavors from what you have entered in your inventory and uses the average percentage used to populate the recipe.

Further reading into the algorithm would require the creator of the website to add additional input.

It currently picks a random number of flavors and uses their average recipe mixing percentages, with some "jitter" included to mix the values up a bit.

I have a version that uses markov chaining to actually "invent" recipes based on recipes people find popular on the site, but it's way too computationally expensive to deploy right now.

One of those projects on the back burner...

You should probably rethink your method of buying flavors. When starting out, it’s best to find highly rated recipes that sound good to you and buy flavors based on those.

Sorry to tell you this, but you should just throw away the three flavors you bought and start over. Maybe keep the Sweet Cream (DX) around after you purchase the regular Sweet Cream to see why you wouldn’t want to use it.

They're almost definitely PG, the majority of flavors are. Couldn't find any exact information- you might need to contact the manufacturer.

You can safely assume PG for most all brands, it's not very common to see VG as it introduces a lot of issues. Should it happen to be VG, you can tell by the viscosity.

Edit: To be clear, INW is PG based, so is FA, TFA, CAP, FW, FLV and most other brands I can think of.

CAP super sweet is sucralose. Sucralose is the worst at gunking up coils... you might try erythritol or stevia (FLV sweetness or diy). I'm sure there's others too.

Ethyl Maltol (like TFA cotton candy) and TFA meringue are often used as sweeteners too. I usually don't add anything personally, it's usually sweet enough for me already.

Sweeteners will cause gunking, but some are worse than others. Sucralose is probably the worst, but also the only one that will really give you that sugar dripping sweetness. EM will merely give you the impression of sweetness and tends to mute flavors. There's erythritol that may or may not work. You may want to take a look at stevia though.

I'm a proponent of using sweet flavors over sweeteners as you'll be getting smaller amounts of different compounds that add up to a sweet impression which leads to less gunking than using a lot more of a single compound. Some flavors are bad though, FW Yellow Cake contains fructose, I've heard that TFA Caramel Original contains corn syrup, etc, things like that will wreck your coils on top of being unhealthy.

Stevia (aka Reb A), Erythritol, Maltitol, Sorbitol, and Xylitol are less destructive than sucralose. EM tends to mute flavors.

Thank you all very helpful

Other than saying that I definitely used the (no pg) version to make Mango Tango, I don't know what to tell you. Haven't compared the various versions of TFA Cinnamon Red Hot to see what the deal is. Have you tried checking the components on TFA's website? You might actually have the right one without knowing it, sometimes different sites have different names for the same thing.

I would definitely not recommend 4% of it, ever. And FWIW, that was a contest recipe and I was required to use two Capella and two TFA ingredients and I think that profile could be done better using FLV Red Cinnamon around 0.3%.

Average total flavoring wouldn't be very useful- it differs too much between brands. It would be better to look at the average per brand. As far as retail juices, I don't think we have more than a few recipes.

I've never tried nude nicotine so I can't say.

• Average total percentage is a useless statistic. It tells you nothing.

• Better product? It’s more expensive but CXT is top of the line. I like Nicotine River better than NN if only just for the better CS.

Hi Neo, for what it's worth I find that with my juices, I tend to average around 7-9% total flavoring for DTL, and 9-12% for MTL. Of course this depends on what brand of concentrates you are using. FA/INW/FLV are often stronger than TFA/FW/CAP. But as Edible said:

> Average total percentage is a useless statistic. It tells you nothing.

Some of those are flavors and the rest are additives. If you don't see a description you can check the flavor review wiki or search ATF/ELR to get a better idea of how they're used.

But basically not all flavors are named after what they're trying to taste like.

You mean best DIY recipe creator or flavor line?

We have a clone request thread, but as with any clone, buy some flavors that you think might be in it from different manufacturers, and sample them individually and see which brand matches what you taste in the commercial juice. Work your percentages from there.

If you know approximately when the commersh juice came on the market vs when certain flavor companies released certain flavors, it might help narrow it down. Most of your commercial juices that have been around a while are going to be primarily FW/CAP/TFA, and maybe some FA/INW/LA, or less likely but possibly FLV or HS.

The fun part about cloning is that a lot of times you come up with something better than what you are trying to clone.

I'm not a mango fan (although I love eating actual mangoes). Whenever I'm looking for a starting point I check here and over at ATF and ELR to see if anyone has put something together. Sure enough there are several attempts at ELR/ Here's one: http://e-liquid-recipes.com/recipe/1595952/Amazing%20Mango%20Remix%20%28Naked%20100%29%20v1.

We have a Clone Request Thread

Buy some white grape flavors and some lychee flavors and start testing individually. I'd venture to guess there's a champagne flavor in there somewhere too.

FLV Pink Guava 1%

I can vouch for my Backwoods Lemonade recipe for use with a higher concentration.

This should cover everything.

I haven't tried it. Looks like there's only a few studies on it and the only side effect they found was stuffy noses (in half, so pretty significant).

Xylitol is about 1:1 for sucrose and sucralose is 600:1 so if you can't find anything for xylitol I'd look up diy for sucralose and work from those ratios.

/u/juthinc seems to have some experience with it

Higher concentrations of nic are more cost effective, but they're also more dangerous if you spill on yourself or accidently add too much to a mix.

As far as I'm aware, nic salts contain more of the compounds found in tobacco, so they'd good for people not finding regular e juice satisfying enough. They've got a higher bioavailability so they give a harder hit. Someone else can probably give a bigger rundown on salts vs freebase(regular nicotine liquid) since I've never used the salts. I bought 48 mg/ml nicotine for my first order and that's been working well for me.

Pg vs VG nic: pg nic stays good longer than vg. It also is easier to mix.

As far as size that depends on how much liquid you go through. You don't want to buy too large of a size since nicotine can go bad. You can also get larger sizes and store them in the freezer.