Hey guys, so this shop just opened up the next town over from me and the mix their own juices in a clean lab in phx. Cool cool. Well they're actually really good and have plenty of devices, rebuildables, name brand juices and loads of accessories. Well the part that I've been boggling my mind for the last month now and I've done a ton of thinking and research and still coming up empty handed is this:
They offer their juices premixed, like just grab off the shelf and it's ready, OR you can get it in a few different vg/PG ratios at 3 or 6mg nic and they give you a 15ml flavor shot that you dump into the bottle to make it a 60ml, or two of them, so 30ml of "flavor" to make a 120ml bottle of juice.
I tried the SNV version it was only 3.50 for the 15ml and used my own vg/pg/nic and it was BAM in your face flavor. The guy told me the juice on the shelf is around 5% sweetener, but the flavor shots don't have any. After mixing for a few months and vaping for 5 years this just doesn't add up.
So do you think they have their recipe and the flavor shot is at the designed flavor %, say 10% or 20% or 4% or whatever, and they just top the bottle off with PG?
Or do you think the guy is misinformed and there's still sweetener, and it's still whatever % for the recipe and they again top it off with PG to simplify the pour into the base?
I can't stop thinking about this and it leads me on to:
Would this simplify at home mixing?
I have a few recipes on stand by now that I've already tested in 10 ml batches and went full scale and already vapes through 100mls of and I know I'm going to go back to them, so could I just mix up like I think they do and put my flavorings all together in tiny bottles, add PG, to make it an even 15mls, then mix up a large quantity of base and just be able to do two pours whenever I need juice and not have to break out my scale every time?
Would combining flavors in this way "steep" them together and cut the actual steep time down when I mix it with my base?
And lastly, would mixing flavors together in this way and keeping them in a cool pitch black place for upwards of a year degrade the taste at all?
I get super ocd when mixing and if I could just whip up base and flavor shots in this way one time and have a good long Supply, it would make things so much easier for me.
I apologize for the wall of text and obligatory formatting on mobile.
Thanks in advanced, you guys are the best and ANY help or input is greatly appreciated!
Juice does not steep unless it's juice.
Do the juices you've made with the flavor shots taste sweet at all? It sounds like the guy at the shop was misinformed to be honest. It would not make sense to sell one-shots versions of the pre-made liquids without the sweetener the pre-made ones have. Either way, there are differences between different brand of ejuice sweeteners, and although it's common among commercial juices, 5% is crazy high for my own personal taste, so you're better of with adding just the amount you need rather than the whole 5%.
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And in my own experience, steeping flavors together in one-shots before adding them to PG/VG doesn't do much really. Flavor molecules need to bind with VG/PG and that is the actual steeping process that ejuices undergo before releasing full flavor. But creating one-shots can come in handy if you don't have that much time reserved for mixing.
If you decide to make one-shots, make sure there's as little air as possible in the bottle, as it can speed up the deterioration process of flavors and mixed liquids, especially if they have nicotine.
Yeah, and the shots are basically 25%, so that's got to be filled the rest of the way with sweetener and PG, because 25% total flavorings seems extremely high. I used it at 15% this time around, because my gf gave me some of them as a bday present and I didn't have the time to mix my own up and it's still super sweet at only 15%. I'm probably gonna use their method though for simplicity sake as I'm working two jobs right now with very little free time inbetween. Thank you for your input!
I guarantee there's a ton of sweetener in it and many of the flavor concentrates already have sweeteners in them as well even if they don't add extra sweetener. I don't even buy commercial juices anymore because there's always way too much sweetener and it clogs up my coils or their overuse of flavoring chemicals gives me a headache.
I can make a gallon of nicotine base for less than $40 and it lasts me all year. I go extremely light on the flavorings which are also extremely cheap. My coils last two to three months.
Exactly my thought. That's why I wanted to hear some other opinions on it, because if there wasn't any in it, then I've been mixing ALL wrong for my flavors to not come out like this lol.
Yeah, I was using Lemon Twist brand for a bit and the juice straight up would burn my Fireluke mesh coil in 2 days, and if I got a 6 and made it a 3, doubling the juice, it'd still burn it out in a week or so. My current coil is already past a month on the same setup and same coil head. I've got about 2-300$ invested so far wi h gloves, labels, bottles, flavors, nic salts, freebase and a scale, but with just what I have so far I can make a ton of different recipes and yeild about 2 gallons of stuff!
Was going through about 120mls about every week and a solid whole coil a week, so about 120/ month for juice and 20/month on coils, so investing my 2 month supply funds I now barely have to spend money on anything vape related and can do other stuff with that funds that aren't being spent now! I'll never go back to store bought juice again.
I do this from time to time, but rather I try to get the flavor shot to the right pg/vg ratio, so when I need it I just add nic base of the same ratio and I have my 50/50 juice. Personally it seems well steeped enough for me.
>Would combining flavors in this way "steep" them together and cut the actual steep time down when I mix it with my base?
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Great question to ask! While it may help flavors to blend together, it won't cut down steep times too much. Two things will reduce steep time. One is heat and the other is agitation. AS you learn more about DIY, you'll discover that some folks will put their vjuice in ultrasonic cleaners. It probably saves them from needing Tommy John surgery from manually shaking ALL of their mixes :) As to heat, it has a detrimental effect of reducing the shelf-life.
Thanks for the info! I've tried speed steeping with a batch before and found out later that heat will make freebase nic oxidize and be harsher/darker, so that bottle was a super heavy throat hit, so if I'm ever in a crunch in the future I'm just gonna speed steep the flavorings and vg/PG, then add the nic in last when I take it out of the crock pot and it's still warm/cooling off.