More specifically, My buddy mixes his own juice. One of his adv is an 80vg/20pg mix, with all of the pg coming from flavoring. He uses 20% flavoring.
That seems incredibly high to me, I asked him why. He says because he wants an 80/20 mix but he never uses just pg.
My question from this, is since pg carries flavor better than vg, is it possible to make the same 80/20 mix, but use, say 12% flavoring with 8% added pg and have it still taste the same as 20% flavoring with no added pg?
not sure if that makes sense entirely, he uses 20% flavoring because all his pg comes from flavoring alone and he wants 20% pg, but doesnt want to use any pure pg.
Taste the same? Without knowing the recipe I have no idea. If he uses 20% total for all juices that's likely too much. You don't calculate total percentage before you make a recipe, it comes from the flavors you use at the correct percentages...
let me try asking a different way:
say, just as an example, (and Im just throwing something random out here, I dont know exactly what percentage you should use this flavor at) you want to make a simple juice, 1 flavor, capella sweet strawberry.
if you used 7% capella sweet strawberry, and 93% vg, would that produce a juice with a weaker flavor than 7% capella sweet strawberry, 13% pg, and 80% vg?
if so, would (other numbers I have no factual basis on, just example) 11% capella sweet strawberry and 89% vg produce a juice with the same strength of flavor as the 7% strawberry, 13% pg and 80% vg?
It all depends on the flavor. Some will mix at a higher %: others will taste like crap. You can't just decide to use 20% flavor so that you don't have to add PG.
Echoing what others have said, the 12%/8% would probably taste different from the 20%< but the former is much more cost effective and allows for a lot more flexibility in recipe creation. The design process should be more "how little of each flavoring do I need to get the overall flavor I want" then take that flavor % and 1 = %VG + %PG + %Flavor
solve for either PG or VG based on the one you want to hold constant.
EDIT Minuses are pluses sometimes...
so, exactly, how do you know how much flavor to put in, my friends do exactly that, 20% flavor that comes in PG, and the rest is VG, how would we know how much flavor is to much flavor?
Why is your friend using VG base nic?
If all your extracts are in PG, then yeah, you'll be adding less to the mix to get the right ratio. I use an online calculator that adjusts the amount of PG to add to get a 20/80 or 70/30 ratio based on the assumption that all my extracts are PG-based and it always calls for a little PG after everything is said and done.