As always, the purpose of this thread is to gather the community to explore a flavor and its many uses. And it's also to have FUN!
Post recipes containing this week's Flavor of the Week, as the star or in a supporting role, with or without development notes. Talk about other people's recipes that use it. Compare and contrast different manufacturers' versions of the FOTW. Ask for help using that flavor in general or to achieve something specific, offer advice, brainstorm ideas, consider substitutions, suggest pairings... really anything at all as long as it's on topic.
#This week's flavor is: SWEETENERS
How did that get to be the FOTW?
It was requested. If you're not interested in this FOTW, please take this opportunity and comment to request one that interests you (or send me a PM to do that).
Past FOTW posts can be found here
The NOTED podcasts, which are bascially video FOTWs, are listed on this sheet, maintained by /u/apexified
Next week's flavor will be: Cinnamon Pastries
The week after that will be: Vanilla
The week after that will be: Cantaloupe
The week after that will be: Honeydew
The week after that will be: Watermelon
The week after that will be: Menthol and Coolants
The week after that will be: Hard Liquor
The week after that will be: Pear
The week after that will be: Cranberry
The week after that will be: Mango
The week after that will be: Ginger
The week after that will be: RY4
The week after that will be: Honey
The week after that will be: Peanut Butter
The week after that will be: Ube/Taro/Yam
The week after that will be: Cookies & Biscuits
The week after that will be: Lemonade
The week after that will be: Mint
The week after that will be: Crème Brûlée
The week after that will be: International Creams (Bavarian, Italian, Devon, Vienna, Catalan)
The week after that will be: Domestic Creams (Sweet, Fresh, and just plain Cream)
The week after that will be: Kiwi
The week after that will be: Butterscotch
The week after that will be: Nougat
The week after that will be: White Chocolate
The week after that will be: Chocolate
The week after that will be: Pecan
Oh man, the puns for these have always been bad, but this was was particularly egregious. I winced so hard I think my pancreas ruptured.
Ethyl Maltol
In the last 3+ years I've explored all of the usual suspects, but these days I stick with the tried and true EM. In even small quantities it can add that extra kick of excitement to a mix. In large percentages of a mix it can come into its own.
To my palette the difference between good old fashion EM and something like Super Sweet comes down to the Pepsi vs Coke debate. Pepsi is sweeter than coke, so if you do the Pepsi challenge you might find you enjoy it more. But that is when you only take a single sip. Before long the overly sweet Pepsi becomes fatiguing.
There are some people who enjoy Pepsi. And those people have no taste. For the rest of us the phrase, "We don't have Coke, is Pepsi okay?" can and should only be answered with blinding rage. The kind where you can literally see red as the blood rushes, calling your body to action: Smite the heretic that uttered this phrase! There can be no clearer evidence that we live in a world without gods. Or perhaps we are merely abandoned by their justice. It falls to you now to right the wrongs, and face this scourge that haunts and torments our forsaken lands. END THE ABOMINATION!
... I've stopped using Super Sweet, because it can easily ruin a mix like that.
I always enjoyed Pepsi for the flatter syrupy drink over the way too gaseous more complex taste of coke. These days all I drink is water and an occasional seltzer with a twist. Once in a while I’ll drink a zevia. Now please tell me how this fits in your analogy?
I'll admit it... I almost never use sweetener.
But I do have a bottle of Sugar Daddy for the times I think I need it.
I still want to experiment some with various polyols and trace amounts of acesulfame K and reb A, and try to come up with something that doesn't use sucralose... but the time demands...
Where/how'd you get a bottle of sugar daddy? I read that wizardlabs is gonna stock them soon. Direct from the seller?
I almost never use additives, I don't feel the need to and I regard them mostly as a last resort to cover up flaws in a mix, since it tends to come at a price. Some ruin coils, some mute flavors and most will impart a flavor of their own. But if you have a sweet tooth it might be worth it, and some mixes really do benefit from added sweetener. If you're used to the sugar dripping commercial liquids out there, you might find DIY a bit bland without it at first.
VG, the main component of most mixes, is sweet on its own. It's even used in the food industry as a sweetener. Try a drop on your tongue if you haven't before. For this reason, juice tends to be inherently sweet and it's hard to get away from to the point where you might even find it annoying after a while.
But in the cases where I don't mind or even want juice to be a bit sweeter, I'll pick concentrates that are already sweet. A lot of concentrates contain significant amounts of sweetener and adding more can even cause issues.
If I really want to kick it up a notch, I'll reach for meringue, marshmallow, marzipan, honey, brown sugar or any other flavor that is specifically designed to add a dense sugary touch to a mix. This is more than enough sweetness for me.
However, there are mixes where none of those would work. They might interfere with the flavor too much or alter the mouthfeel. Then I will consider something like CAP SS, but one drop per 10 ml (about 0.2%) instantly drenches the mix in sugar for me, one drop per 30 ml is more reasonable. This is of course highly individual, some seem to enjoy 1% in a mix. RIP coils.
While EM technically isn't a sweetener and won't give you sweet lips, it adds a cotton candy flavor to a mix. It can have muting properties however, especially if some of the concentrates already contain maltol or ethyl maltol.
As you can tell, I'm not a fan of sweeteners, so I have no experience with stevia, erythritol, xylitol, etc.
You should have this saved somewhere for copy and pasting to the general/new Mixers questions thread
Haha good call, maybe I should make a bot spam it any time someone mentions sweeteners
Why is sweetener so frowned upon in the DIY scene though? There’s a reason that every commercial juice is full of it because it’s what the majority of people want.
Maybe I have a sweet tooth and I’m aware that it’s purely subjective but where has the 0.5% max SS (if any at all) come from in the DIY community?
I used 1% SS in a mix recently as I was craving something sweet, the most I’d ever used previous to this was 0.5%, and yes it’s sweet but it still hasn’t gunked my coils and cotton up anywhere near as bad as some of the ‘premium’ liquids do. Does anyone know for a fact how much they use without speculating?
Some people just don't like sweetener at all and they're pretty vocal about it. They might have even turned to DIY because they don't like artificial sweetener and DIY was the best way to escape it. Also, it really is hard to taste the actual flavors under too much pile of just sucralose sweetness, and people want their cotton and coils to love them long time, etc.
Sweetener enjoyment level is one of the most subjective things, I think. Another is tolerance for/enjoyment level of cooling agents. Both of them, people just seem to have wildly different sensitivities to.
So, personally, I love what 0.25% to 0.5% CAP SS can do to a recipe. Once I even liked it at 0.75% in a candy recipe. But I hate what happens when it's overdone. When it's overused, it doesn't taste like it belongs or is integrated into the recipe. It tastes tacked on. It tastes like you had a vape, then after you enjoyed that vape, you dumped a Splenda packet or part of a Splenda packet into your mouth. It's a lingering Splenda taste and to me, that is kind of disgusting. But if that sounds actually pretty tasty to you, eating Splenda packets, then good for you, doesn't mean we can't be friends or whatever. Unless you tell me that Splenda really does taste just like sugar, in which case imma call you a goddamned liar.
I've sold some recipes for "premium juice." They had sweetener in there, because that's what the client wanted, to the tune of about 1.25% CAP Super Sweet. I hated it, but I didn't have to like it, only the client did. Someone who has sold way more recipes than I have has said that "2% CAP SS is Industry Standard" and was not exaggerating.
I think this is some useful info for this thread:
https://www.reddit.com/r/DIY_eJuice/comments/8blh6d/are_sweeteners_necessary/dxaviuh/?context=3
Not sure how true it is, of course, but something to consider when we think about commercial juice. I personally haven't bought any premade juice since I started DIYing a couple of years ago, so I'm not sure what the current state of sweetners is.
The rampant overuse of sweetener isn't too surprising in vape juice. Ever since the "FDA Nutrition Guidelines", aka the food pyramid in the 50's, companies had to figure out a way to take the fat out of foods and still have them palatable. The easiest and most logical way of doing that was to add sugar instead. Now the food doesn't taste like cardboard.
With something like vape juice people don't have to worry about the caloric content of it. Any adverse side effects have yet to be seen with vaping sucralose but it is assumed that there is none.
Just like drinking regular soda or putting sugar in your coffee and going to a diet or non sugared coffee it's going to taste almost bitter in comparison. So no wonder most companies elect to just jump on the bandwagon and add sucralose to their mixes.
I just wonder if many these companies have attempted to sell well-crafted recipes with little to no sweetener vs. sucralose overload and found that sucralose overload simply sells better, for if there's quite a bit of "everyone else is doing it" going on.
I know there's quite a bit of "everyone else is doing it" in the industry. Take nic salts for example. Some of the smarter juice companies have created new recipes or reformulated old favorites for 25mg and up nic salts to use in these increasingly popular low-watt pod systems. There are also a bunch of dumbasses who have no idea what they're doing using exactly the same recipes and just dumping 25mg salts in there and selling them to pod users who then proceed to get shit flavor from them. Makes you wonder if anyone even tested them before throwing them up on their sites.
Some commercial juices are 3-4% CAP SS... clone attempts with that much have been pretty close to identical. Other juices taste sweet enough they could be 2% sweetener, even though they don't add sweetener... but when you consider the fact that a number of flavor concentrates contain sucralose and/or EM and/or stevia, etc.... using high enough levels of those flavors is just like using sweetener. And I've had commercial juice that could be mixed with an equal or greater quantity of unflavored and still taste almost the same (the owner claims to use no sweetener but admits using really high levels of flavoring).
I only use plain Sugar Daddy. It's a great sweetener; it tastes remarkably realistic and depending on how you mix it and what with, it can accentuate a fruit, ramp up a fruity sweet tea or leave a powdery icing sugar-like sensation on the exhale of a bakery ejuice. All of the hype about it not gunking coils at all is quite overblown; it doesn't gunk coils anywhere near as badly as any other sweetener I've tried, but it still does gunk them up more quickly than a juice without it.
Any recipes with all sweeteners?
I assume you’re kidding but this recipe comes to mind. Technically there are two flavors that “aren’t” sweeteners but one of them (FW Grape Soda) is supposed to be about 40% Sucralose. At 12% with two other supporting sweeteners I’d say this is the closest to an “all sweetener” recipe as I’ve ever seen.
JFC. Those Sourin Air pods are supposed to last for like 5 refills. I give them less than one pod of that before they give up the ghost.
If you think that's a killer, just look at the betty clone with 15% (yes!) sucralose...
edit: forgot a "t"
So I am hoping some experienced mixers can kind of give us noobs a breakdown of how and when different sweeteners work. So like stevia vs sucralose vs em vs marshmallow vs caramel. What are the common components and differences between the various flavor houses? Is there a certain situation in which you reach for FLV Sweetness instead of CAP SS? A few people have mentioned specific types, but I need more info! Oh, and things like how TFA Cotton Candy differs from straight EM. Do I really need to purchase both? Etc, etc, etc
TFA Cotton Candy is just 10% EM. Nothing else. TFA Cotton Candy (Circus) is different (and has some horrible off-tastes, like anise).
I recall someone mentioning Monk Fruit extract as being idea for use in fruit mixes. And I've heard small amounts of Xylitol are excellent with tobacco.
EM you want to keep to about .5% of a mix... so 5% TFA Cotton Candy by itself would put you there... flavors that contain EM already make life tricky if you plan to add EM, since higher concentrations mute flavors.
is there a way to know if a flavour already has EM?
If it's from TFA, yes. Usually they give a range (Toasted Marshmallow was 5-9% EM iirc) rather than a precise amount. If you look hard enough, you might find more flavor houses who release info... but considering FW makes it difficult to find out which of their flavors (like Yellow Cake) are actually toxic, you can understand not every manufacturer is equally forthcoming as everyone else.
TFA Cotton Candy and TFA EM are the same thing.
Sweeteners
TFA Sweetener:
Sucralose 5%
Maltol 5%
Water
FW Sweetener
Sucralose 5% (exact concentration unknown)
CAP Super Sweet
Sucralose 10% (exact concentration unknown)
Citric Acid
Sodium Benzoate
Potassium Sorbate
Water
FLV Sweetness
Sucralose 5%
Notes
- If we're talking pure sweetness, CAP Super Sweet is king. It coats the entire mouth in a sugary, almost sticky, sensation. This is also the most widely used sweetener in the industry, at concentrations anywhere from 0.25 - 2% with 2% being the "industry standard". I personally enjoy 0.25-0.5% and feel that concentrations any higher is where you run into diminishing returns.
- TFA Sweetener, imo, is the weakest of the bunch and has the highest probability of muting your recipes. This may be due to the maltol, but I'm blaming the water. Seems to just "water down" mixes, especially at 1 - 2% concentrations.
- FLV and FW Sweetener seem to be the happy middle. I've been using more FLV than Super Sweet mainly because it's not paired with any other compounds, no fillers, just sucralose. This allows much less room for muting as well as coil gunking. In fact, I don't notice much gunking at all from FLV Sweetness, at 0.5% concentrations.
- Sweetener is best used in situations where you need your recipe to act on the taste receptors on the mouth. This is the main difference between Sucralose and Ethyl Maltol. Sucralose also seems to be best at adding a lot of vibrancy and saturation to your vapes flavor.
Just finished testing a bunch of sweeteners and flavors that people use as sweeteners (anything's a sweetener if tastes sweet and you're using it for it's sweetness, though sucralose is the only thing I know of that works for mouth sweetness vs. olfactory sweetness). I vaped at least 5ml of 10 different sweeteners or sweet flavors all at 2% each to compare how sweet they are at the same concentrations. Not sure how I survived that, but, here we are.
FLV Sweetness and FW Sweetener both taste so much cleaner than CAP SS, it's no wonder that they don't cause coil gore, or didn't at 5ml of 2% in 70/30 VG/PG 3mg. Yes, I put nic in my sweetener samples otherwise there was no way I was going to make it through them. Stop judging.
I think I'm still going to stick with CAP SS, though because mom says she don't want no more grandbabies.
Yeah I've been leaning more towards FLV Sweetness as my sweetener, and adding in a touch of CA if I want to emulate CAP SS without the filler. But for some reason, to me at least, CAP SS's enhancement properties are still better. And yes, sucralose in vaping is the only "true" sweetener (save for erythritol etc.), anything else really just sweetens in the aroma, which isn't sweetness at all.
I know I'm replying to a 4 months old comment but... what sweetener would be your choice for a chocolate milkshake type recipe? I have EM, Cap SS and FW Sweetener aka sucralose.
Depends on what all is going in there. If the stuff that's making it creamy isn't already loaded with ethyl maltol, I'd try that first. If you happen to know it's already loaded with EM or if you try EM and that is just causing too much muting or or something or just not really making a difference, I'd try the FW Sweetener.
Surprised to see you posting so early. How's the hangover?
Fwiw my fav sweetener is cap super sweet simply due to its potency and it seemingly doesnt mute out flavors like EM. Need to try more sweeteners from other brands though,
For the second time in a week I've got one of these weird hangovers that seem to be fine when I wake up and slowly get worse. I think I might need to get my liver looked at.
CAP SS is my favorite too, because it has a preservative in there that has been linked to reproductive harm. Now, we all know the dose makes the poison. In order to get reproductive harm they probably fed rats nothing but that preservative for a year, and it's possibly perfectly harmless at levels used in vaping. I don't know.
I also haven't looked into what exactly is meant by "reproductive harm." But, I'm choosing to believe it means male sterility. I'm hoping it will hinder me swimmers. I like vaping CAP Super Sweet because a vasectomy is too expensive.
Obviously I don't have any scientific evidence. But, anecdotally, there have been no unwanted pregnancies since I started vaping CAP Super Sweet.
TLDR: CAP Super Sweet is my preferred method of birth control.
Oh dang didn't know that! Good info to at least be aware of. As for the hangover, maybe you were still a bit tipsy/pre-hangover stage of intoxication? I have for sure experienced that effect before, the whole flase sense of security that you aren't going to suffer a hangover, only to be dragged slowly down into the painful abyss as the day drags on.
Also, I aught to start selling juice with 25% super sweet to my local vape bros... Because ya know, no one wants those folks reporoducing haha.
>For the second time in a week I've got one of these weird hangovers that seem to be fine when I wake up and slowly get worse.
I’ve always taken that to mean I was still drunk when I woke up, then the hangover shows once the alcohol fully leaves my system.
Can usually get ahead of it if I start pounding water and electrolytes when I wake up.
> I think I might need to get my liver looked at.
When you went to the kitchen this morning, was it sitting at the table drinking a cup of coffee, and did it call you an asshole?
> I also haven't looked into what exactly is meant by "reproductive harm." But, I'm choosing to believe it means male sterility. I'm hoping it will hinder me swimmers. I like vaping CAP Super Sweet because a vasectomy is too expensive.
LMAO great way to see it! I might have to reorder a bigger bottle.
I find that I like a little super sweet in my fruit mixes. It can make them pop. It's easy to over sweeten though. Think of sweeteners as an ingredient and don't let them become a crutch.
I don't do a lot of deserts or bakeries , but sometimes I enjoy them. Most of the time I find the ingredients used for those profiles are sweet enough.
There if definitely an art to using Sweetner. And adding Sweetness with the ingredients you choose.
And that's the truvia.😳
What’s the next best thing to Super Sweet? Its been my go to for a while but the added ingredients / preservatives do unsettle me.
FW Sweetener. It’s not quite as much Sucralose as CAP SS but it’s close. Probably doesn’t have the shelf life of CAP SS so don’t get a big bottle.
Erythritol is a great sweetener that doesn't gunk up your coils too badly and tastes nice too.
I noticed nobody has mentioned FLV Sweetness. How does it compare to CAP Super Sweet and FW Sweetner?
I'm not entirely sure what's in there, but I think it might be just sucralose. If CAP Super Sweet is a 10 and FW Sweetener is a 7.5 on the sweetness scale, I'd put FLV Sweetness as a 5. The only reason I think it might have something besides sucralose in there is that it tastes noticeably cleaner than an equal amount of FW Sweetener, but that might again just be because it's less concentrated sucralose. It's definitely more of an oral sweetener like FW and CAP SS and not an olfactory sweetener like ethyl maltol.
Cheers Dave! By the way, I've just been eye balling your Lucky F$$kin Charms recipe on ATF and have just ordered some TFA Lucky Leprechaun to mix it. Need to use up my stash of FLV Whipped Cream. Good job on taming Cereal 27 cause it's a bitch to mix with.
I hope you find it sufficiently tamed to your liking. I'm a bit sensitive to overuse of it too. There have been a couple of recipes I've tried where it seemed like the mixer and other people who tried it were happy with the result and I was like WTF this is way too much cornflakes. Same with TFA AP, FA Cookie, INW Biscuit. I love all of those things but it always seems like the % used is too damn high.
|Flavor Facts - Sweetners| |---| |Noted - Sweeteners on YouTube| |Noted - Sweeteners on DIYorDie|
|Flavor|Company|Review|ATF|ELR| |---|---|---|---|---| |Super Sweet|Capella| - - - |On ATF|On ELR| |Cotton Candy|Delosi| - - - |On ATF|On ELR| |Mega Sweet|Delosi| - - - |On ATF|On ELR| |Sweet Original|Delosi| - - - |On ATF|On ELR| |Sweet Vanillin|Delosi| - - - |On ATF|On ELR| |Cotton Candy|Flavor Revolution| - - - |On ATF|On ELR| |Cotton Candy|Flavor West| - - - |On ATF|On ELR| |Sweetner|Flavor West| - - - |On ATF|On ELR| |Cotton Candy|Flavorah|by ConcreteRiver|On ATF|On ELR| |Sweetness|Flavorah| - - - |On ATF|On ELR| |Sweetner|Jungle Flavors| - - - |On ATF|On ELR| |Sweetner|Liquid Barn| - - - |On ATF|On ELR| |Cotton Candy|LorAnn| - - - |On ATF|On ELR| |Sweetner|One on One| - - - |On ATF|On ELR| |Cotton Candy|Purilum|by mysticrosell|On ATF|On ELR| |Super Sweet|Purilum| - - - |On ATF|On ELR| |Cotton Candy|Real Flavors| - - - |On ATF| - - - | |Ricks Sugar Daddy|The Broke Vaper| - - - |On ATF|On ELR| |Cotton Candy|The Flavor Apprentice|by TexasHex|On ATF|On ELR| |Sweetner|The Flavor Apprentice| - - - |On ATF|On ELR| |Fairy Floss|Vape Train| - - - |On ATF|On ELR| |Raw Sugar|Vape Train| - - - |On ATF|On ELR| |Sweetner|Wonder Flavors| - - - |On ATF|On ELR|
What trashbag human suggested sweetener be flavour of the week?! FUCK SWEETENERS AND FUCK YOU.
I’m guessing it was someone who watches Noted and knows the weekly profile for that show is tied to flavor of the week and is a sadistic fuck
It's probably someone that doesn't like you.
I can only image super sweet is what diabetes tastes like.
No, diabetes tastes like sugar. Super Sweet tastes like Splenda.
Does anyone here use Better Stevia Glycerite Now Foods - the liquid dissolved at 24% in VG? I have some and need to test it but thought I would ask if anyone has already figured out how it compares in sweetness to CAP Super Sweet? Should I use it one for one or I am just going to have to test the stuff? LOL