Without sounding like an asshole, I don't think quitting DIY would be a logical step. Nothing wrong with being picky, but wasting $5 of VG is a lot better than however much 250ml of premium juice is nowadays. I recently got back into DIY after taking a break out of laziness and lack of passion, and funnily enough candies are what made me want to start again! Watch this episode of Noted and get back to work friend, you'll only get better! https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=PDmmVTNkDVA

Come to the discord if you want live help. We will get you straightened out

Try getting the regular Honeydew and see if it works out.

IMO drop the Sour and Cotton Candy, see if you can get Capellas Super Sweet and use it at around 0.25% and MAYBE some TPA Dragonfruit (~0.5%).

I have never found a vaoe juice I LOVE. Nor have I ever been able to make one that I LOVE.

Its either good, eh, or bad

Honeydew is an odd flavor: I have never encountered a flavor that is so different from company to company. What you may have to do is buy small samples of each maker and taste test them to see what suits you best.

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Odd note: I did a search on diy-ejuice dot com for honeydew flavors and in the results they also included CAP Candied Watermelon Flavor (apparently it has honeydew in it).

When we smoked cigarettes we care less what they taste like, we have two option, menthol or none.

Who cares about copying stupid flavors, just mix something that works for you and be happy with it.

I’ve been vaping a long long time and years ago I tried DIY. Gave it up and tried a ton of different mods and tanks, making my own coils, etc. went from recoiling Vivi Novas to trying Clapton’s, and all sort of stuff in between. I’ve finally found what I feel is a fantastic combo with a kanthal double mesh coil set up at around 60 watts and a juice vendor that makes a few flavors I find to be fantastic. Dense, good flavor. Recently got back into DIY in hopes of copying some recipes and maybe creating a few. Went with a strawberry cheesecake and a couple others. Same deal with me. Weak flavor and the nic seems peppery. Even after week plus of steeping. Ordered the DIY kit from NicRiver so figure it should be good. All flavor from TFA, Capella, etc.

Bottom line, I think I need sweetener in my juices to get them where I like them. Not sure if the commercial stuff I buy has it, but it absolutely blows away whatever it is that I made. Not even close. I was so disappointed. I figured, here we go. Got my fresh flavor and a highly ranked recipe. I thought I would be floored by how good it tasted. I wasn’t. It was bland. My only other potential issue is I have difficulty picking up strawberry flavors in vape juice. I believe it’s been that way in the past. So I’ll try with other flavors. Good luck dude. Hope you figure it out. Hope I do too.

Best advice I can give is to try searching elr and atf for watermelon flavors and sorting by highest rated. Watermelon crack was a highly cloned juice and might be up your alley sans the menthol. You can also enter your flavor stash and have either site find recipes you can make.

I got lucky and out of the 5 clone recipes of my favorite juice I found one close enough to be satisfying. However I have made probably 20 strawberry milk like flavors and not one has been what I want and have another 7 steeping. I'm still far from an expert and have a lot to learn.

I've been mixing for 6+ years and STILL got discouraged, so much so that I haven't mixed anything original in a year or two, haha. Stick it out man, you'll get it down.

As others have said, come to the discord. There's always someone there to help. As for my own advice: Be careful how much VG you put in your mixes. I regularly go over the suggested amount that my calculator recommends, and that totally throws off the percentages and flavor profiles. I mix in 30 ml bottles and even going over by like 2 grams of vg drastically changes the flavor of the final mix. It's a process that takes time. Good luck.

Diy can be super frustrating, however what gave me hope was getting my stash and sniffing all of them and just making something safe-ish. I made a dragonfruit strawberry lemonade sort of thing, and it was a shake&vape and pretty palatable from the get-go. With the recipes I got here, steep time is massive(it’s unvapeable right when you mix it but becomes nice over a month). A mid-way would be to buy premixed flavours and dilute them yourself-pretty failproof and much cheaper than premixed liquid. Also what I do is use the pure concentrates I have to vamp up flavours I already have-I have Coil Hooch Nice Lemon Slice, which was meh for me. Added some CPA Lemon Sicily and now it’s gooood! I’m also a weirdo with flavour, I need ALOT. Most of the premade flavour concentrates you should use at 5-10%, I do 12-20%. People gawk at me but then they taste it and want more 😂

As good as TFA Honeydew is (it's in regular rotation with some of my recipes), JF Honeydew is the true king.

All I can say is that I never really liked any honeydew flavor. I could never really enjoy it no matter how much I had in there. A very strange flavor to work with.

I currently vape on this http://e-liquid-recipes.com/recipe/84459/HIC%27s%20White%20Tic-TacIt's not melon in any way, but it is candy-like. It's simple, yet refreshingly good. I never get sick of it. And I don't even like licorice which is basically the flavor that Anise gives.

Edit: if i'm feeling really funky I even add TFA Koolada.
Once you've seen tons of recipes, you start to notice a pattern of what flavors work well at certain ratios. At this point in my DIY career I wing it, and sometimes I'll create a dud, but most times it's at least tolerable if not great. (If I'm just throwing some flavors together that I have left. Otherwise I usually just copy other peoples recipes that taste fantastic). It's all about learning your preference on the amount of flavoring honestly. Not all recipes will be strong enough for your tastes, or can be too strong. That's the beauty of DIY. You decide how strong you want it to be. Throw 20% of flavoring in there if you want, no ones stopping you. Maybe you'll like it. I digress lol.

I use Honeydew II. It's pretty strong. We just had a big honeydew thread. Try it at 5% if it's coming up weak for you. Also, your taste does change, even from morning to night. I have 2 retail juices I loved and can't stand now. They just sit there collecting dust while I vape my diy juices.

One, are you certain that you mixed correctly? Two, have you changed the vgpg ratio? Three, you said last time you tried it was two years ago? You quit smoking, taste perception might be quite different. Four, people's taste change with time, you might just not like it anymore.

My first juice was a pineapple, mango, cooler thing and I loved it and it got me off cigs, but 14 months later I bought it again and now I can't stand it. I vape perhaps 4 ml and threw out the rest. I prefer simple tobacco mixes now.

Of course as others say, trying the exact recipe first is probably not a bad start, but also, mix smaller batches until you know you will like it.

Keep it up, you will find something vapable. Then it startbeing fun again. For me it got fun once I mixed up all my concentrates in small single flavor bottles and got an RDA to sample them.

This is the best DIY Watermelon I have found.

https://diyordievaping.com/2017/07/05/water-malone-diy-e-liquid-recipe/

https://alltheflavors.com/recipes/53215

He also sells this as a one shot. Chefs Flavours had it stocked last time I bought some at £7.50 for 30ml and I think the recommended % was 10% so still great value.

Have you tried building it up from the start?

Try just some PG to see what that is like. Vape pure VG. Try your nicotine in PG and in VG. Make your base. Vape that.

Test all your flavours as single flavour mixes. Throw some of them together, and try it like that. Add some more of this or that flavour.

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A lot of recipes do not work out for me either. But when you know what your single flavours taste like. You can start playing around with it, you can recognize what you do and do not like within it. Then you'll know yes it is this honeydew II which destroys this mix for me. Or hey, I really like or dislike this type of Watermelon, let's add more or less, let's see what it is like when I do that.

Few things I'd note:

1. Are you using the same atomizer / vape as you did back when you vaped your reference?

2. Honeydew 2 you're using is not the same as in the recipe. At that point you can throw the percentages from the recipe out the window. Try upping it if too faint. You may also have to adjust the rest of the recipe as the new aroma may interact with it differently. Try adding a few drops to your mixed bottles. Nothing much to lose there, yeah? Might aswell experiment with them.

3. When you start out with vaping, everything tastes more intense. It's part excitement for this new experience, and your olfactory not being used to it, with a dash of nostalgia mixed in now. You may never get that old sensation back. Don't get too hung up on it. If the recipe doesn't work out, make something else that tastes great. And keep the recipes simple!

4. Mix a 10ml batch of every flavor you're using. Test them. In doing so you'll probably discover your problems with your desires mix.

Another entirely different tack - instead of trying to clone off the bat, try something solid in the easy recommended recipes that is not a melon. For instance, you can't go too far wrong with 5% LB ice cream and a recommended fruit ...

I have the same problem. Tried several recipes for years, but no taste at all. Is there a secret ingredient?

Watermelon candy? Watermelon Crack clone by /u/Vurve

It's been my ADV for almost 3 years now. Every now and then I will find some new recipes to mix, use them for a couple of weeks (or a day), but always come back to this. I make 16oz of it at a time.

Ay feels. Spent a fair chunck of cash on concentrates and haven't made anything outstanding or even something i love yet although once i see how expensive premium liquid is.... I ride it out😂 one day ill find a recipe i love.

When I'm having trouble with a recipe, I mix each flavor in the original percentage in their own battle, like 10-15 mls. I get an empty bottle and mark hash marks with a ruler or something. Then I mix the juices in the empty bottle until i get the taste i want. It's not 100% accurate, but it'll give you an idea which flavor needs more or less %. Plus you can taste each flavor individually and judge them that way as well. I've come up with several good recipes in one session trying to get a single recipe before. You can use a bottle of pure VG to put on your cotton to kind of wipe out the flavor between tests.

Another thing to try is adjusting the VG/PG ratios. VG mutes flavor, so you could try a higher PG ration. A lot of older recipes were 50/50, which is likely to taste a little different than a 85/15 max VG.

Hope that helps, I've only adapted recipes, I have yet to mix someone else's exact recipe.

DIY definitely takes some getting used to. Even after 3 years+ I can say I'm an average mixer at best. Here are the things that had the most impact on improving my recipes in order:

1. Mixing by weight. I would never ever go back to mixing by volume. Unless you are making huge 300mL + batches it is just too inaccurate. Mixing by weight means you can make 10mL batches and try things. For your watermelon conundrun you could easilty make 4 samples of even 6-8mL with say 2%, 2.5%, 3% and 3.5% of a flavor and see how it affects the recipe.

2. Stirring. My stirring technique actually showed me how hard it is to mix VG and PG. After making my mixes, I take a wooden BBQ skewer and cut it in 3 pieces and then clamp it in the chuck of my hand drill. I put the tip in my bottles and stir at maximum speed and acually push the stirrer up and down in the bottle as I mix. You can actually see the PG creating spirals and getting "pushed" down into the mix. Because of a large difference in viscocity (and density) it seems the PG just wants to sit on the top and the VG stay in the bottom. It takes me a good 60-90 seconds at full speed on my drill to get the juices to mix properly. I used to shake the hell out of my mixes and tried breathing them and all that stuff and I still would get some parts that tasted like nothing and then parts overloaded with flavor that tasted chemical because of a too high concentration. I will never vape another hand shaked mix ever again. Now my mixes are perfectly blended and taste as good as commercial juices right after the mix.

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My last advice is about experimentation. I find TFA and Cappela flavors are hard to deal with. Changing percentages actually changes the flavor profile so I have a hard time deviating from recipes. When I started out in DIY I used Flavour Art flavourings. If you use a flavour art orange flavor... it tastes like orange. Put a bit more and it tastes more like orange, not different. I find flavor art are easier to experiment with and their flavor profile changes less with concentration compared to other companies.

Stick with it! It’ll all be worth it.

Hey man I was the same way and I tried so many watermelon recipes and hated them all even the big name one's like Water Malone and Watermelon Crack they were fake watermelon flavors to me...I love DiyorDie Wayne's recipes except hated water malone...I have a recipe that is a pretty great sweet flavor but it's a menthol so you can take out the Koolada,Polar blast and ws23....figured I'd post it in case ya wanted to try it out...good luck dude don't give up there is great recipes in this community..What I do is supplement with ejuices every once in a while but mainly diy

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https://alltheflavors.com/recipes/107249#summer_lovin_by_xxbulldogirishxx

I didn't read your post. But, I gave up, no biggie.

Just give up if ya wanna.

I did.