Well. Here I am. The last bastion of vaping wonderland, the DIY. Just wanted to say hi. I'll be quiet now as I begin the search for all the knowledge to do this myself. I'm already on the sites, and making a list of must haves. Thanks in advance for all the info I'm about to be bombarded with!
Prepare to read through many reviews. If like me you don't feel like doing your own single flavour tests at different strengths to get to know the flavour, mix it in with a combo you know and love! Flavour reviews often have the person's preferred % of flavour and can be adjusted from there to your preference!
Most importantly have fun! Second most importantly get a scale. I started with syringes and it's not only much slower but sooooo frustrating to deal with and then clean up... With a scale I can do my ADV recipe from memory and in about 3 minutes. Third most important, enjoy the insane money saving!
Edit: and pay attention to when the recipe was released. Older recipes are based on older inferior tech (well maybe not inferior, but definitely not as developed as vapes, this market changes so quickly!). Old recipes have massively increased % which might be overkill for you. Be reasonable and read the recipe's ingredients' reviews. If a recipe says 10% apple but reviewer mentions that above 4% it turns into a supersweet candy, reduce to what the reviewer mentioned as a good spot and try like that.
Oh and here's a tip from me, add flavours first and THEN nicotine. Otherwise if you mess up the flavours even by 0.5% in the case of cooling agents you might get screwed over, whereas flavours are dirt cheap and can be discarded
I'm already there with the scale! So I'm looking for the best starter kit and weighing pros and cons of them as people are saying it's better to buy individual components and go from there. Still, the kit is appealing even though I am 100% sure I will graduate quickly to mixing by weight myself eventually. I'm a one or two flavor vaper and very picky, so doing my own preferred mixes are gonna be great for me. I absolutely hate spending money on flavors I can't stomach. After a year it's time for me to step it up.
'starter kits' are a waste of money. Buy pG base nic, flavors, and VG. Maybe a small bottle of PDO/PEG(or, worst case, PG) if you need less than max VG) but really you use a lot more VG than anything else. You certainly don't need as much PG as you get of VG, since your nic and flavors provide PG, and unless mixing for a pod, you don't ever need 50+% PG (it would leak in modern gear which is designed assuming max VG or at least high VG will be used.)
If you can find recipes you expect to like, get the exact flavors they call for. Note the bramd, as FLV Sweet Cream and TFA Sweet Cream are very different. FA pineapple and INW Pineapple are very different LA Cherry and GL cherry are different. INW Cherry and INW Cherries are different. (Be very careful with INW, they often have multiple flavors with similar names.)
I moved to DIY about 2 months after starting vaping, couldn't handle how sweet and overpowering UK juices were.
Scales are for mixing by weight and it's super easy with a recipe calculator such as e-liquid-recipe's. Starter kits probably depends, but all the stuff you can purchase separately cheaper! Plus starter kits are mostly syringe based if I remember correctly? My kit is fairly straightforward:
5x 100 ml blue hued glass bottles with pipettes
5x 50ml clear glass bottles with pipettes for experimentation
5x 30ml plastic (or whatever material's used for em) bottles with a unicorn tip for storage of some juices with broken caps
Lots and lots of baby wipes, fantastic for clearing juice
Plenty of VG (I mostly vape max VG if flavours above 10%, if adding PG keep to 85% vg) and a bit of PG Scale
Rest is literally just common sense. Don't lick your fingers if you spill some nicotine on them, keep cleaning your hands as if you work in a kitchen and a health and safety inspector's present, common sense really.
nicotine river has a decent starter kit, but there are a few drawbacks. on the one hand you get pretty much everything you could need to make a liter+ for $60 so you can get started and try things out, but it is geared toward mixing by volume so you won't need much of the included hardware if you get a scale, it's still nice to have around though and pretty cheap for the deal and also the starter nic is 48mg so if you want to do strong juice you are SOL, but it let's you get all VG for the base and still come in around 70/30 on your mixes.
the LB-501 is the recommended scale most of the time, around $20 on amazon, with just that you get rid of the need for almost all the other mixing gear and can just mix it all directly into the bottle. people like to use condiment bottles from the dollar store to put their VG and PG base in for ease of use. transfer your nic into some old amber glass bottles with an eye dropper for easy storage and distribution. Nicotine river, liquid barn and bull city are some of the most used sites for ordering.
don't get too hung up on worrying about wasting money on something, because you will probably still be saving money compared to buying juice and even more than vs buying cigarettes. but make sure to learn from your mistakes so you don't keep screwing up.
Money saving being a relative term, mind you... Flavors is what will cost you. Not a lot, but there is always another mango/cookie/cheesecake/grape/watermelon/tobacco/etc one to try. It all adds up. But yeah, once you have a few recipes you like, the savings start adding up.
Well yeah once the initial flavour testing boom passes (if ever it passes) it's savings time. With a 100ml bottle of juice at 2mg costing 2ish GBP it's great
another vote against the kit. I have way too many flavors i realized I dont enjoy as much as my preferred profile but they are always there for a change of pace. I dont mind it at all. plus then I get to try other people's stuff and have a break. With a little research nd a few questions for recommendations and you'll be set to start out. Do you have a preferred profile?
I'm into very weird calm flavors (easy to drip on top of). I like the earl grey teas, some sticky rice ones as long as they're not too sweet. I need a good menthol (iced), and I find myself gravitating now toward some 'milk or custard' ones as long as they aren't sweet either. I'm kinda all over the place but the common theme is NON sweet. I've also started going back to adding in a plain tobacco flavor (like Naked's eurogold) to keep me off going back to cigs.
Black teas: Fa black tea, flv black tea, black tea sc, Fa bergamot.
Earl grey recipe: london haze
Rice: mango sticky rice recipe ,
Plain tobaccos: flv Kentucky, flv cured, hs ry1, flv Virginia, hs Usa red mix.
A bit of a start?
I'm seeing food grade pg/vg on Amazon pretty cheap? Do you guys have a preferred place?
You want pharma grade, not food grade. Remember you plan on inhaling this shit. 99.7% pure vs 96% pure kinda makes a difference. But if a couple cents per bottle of juice is worth the increased risk to you, don't worry too much, I guess.
Omg. I didn't even realize. Well.. That's what the research is for! Thanks for heads up.
I didn't mean to be so snark...er.. Well, I meant to be snarky, but didn't notice the username. Point stands tho, and you got the message and probably won't ever forget it, but... I may have gone a tiny bit overboard in the approach. But alls well that ends well, so..
NicRiv. They got everything in one place for beginners and first buys. Start collecting simple recipes you may like then buy those flavors. Get an account on ATF for recipes and ELR for the calculator.
Hello and welcome!
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Wanted to share two things:
- This list of "cheaper alternatives" to certain flavours. From what I gather, some vendors buy a 100 litre bottle of a certain flavour and then rebrand it to a generic name. The result is cheaper flavours!
- This recipe, its pretty simple and cheap but so damn good.
Rebranding is just different names for the same flavor by vendor
Yes but it is cheaper.
Here's a partial list of the stuff I keep in my kit, I'm not a pro by any means, but I hope it helps you a bit
3 mm disposable pipettes are great for transferring flavors, nic base, all kinds of stuff when you need some precision.
A scale will save you a lot of headaches, mixing by weight is easy & accurate, I started with the often recommended here LB-501, from American Weigh Scales, they are under $30 at Amazon
120 ML brown glass Boston round type bottles for storing smaller quantities of nic base, the brown keeps out the light. I also use squeeze pour bottles which you can often find in 500ML sizes for VG & PG as well as mixing large batches, also 50 ML LDPE bottles with child proof caps. I always like my bottles a little bigger than my mix for mixing well.
Not required, but I'm also a big fan of vortex mixers, no more manual juice shaking, and considering they were invented as scientific equipment to help lab techs mix stuff, they tend to work really well at, you guessed it, mixing stuff. Also, a label maker, like the Brother P-Touch, giggle, and a 5 pack of generic tapes for it will keep your experiments organized. Also, instead of nail polish racks, I keep all my stuff in large ammo crates. they are lightproof, and tall enough to get 500 ML bottles in vertically. I also use a scrap piece of foamcore to make a layer between smaller bottles so I can stack infrequently used stuff in there.
I'd also mention that instead of trying to invent something new your first go, I'd recommend looking through recipe threads here, or at All The Flavors, or at e-liquid-recipes for something that catches your eye, 3-4 flavor mixes are great to start with, not too complicated or expensive. There are also some solid single and 2 flavor recipes out there.
Anyways, welcome, best of luck to you and happy mixing!
I’m sure it’s been said. (I’m a lazy bastard and didn’t read through.
But, when I started, I went on ELR and looked through some recipes. I joined forums and FB pages (my favorite being this and “DIY E-Liquid Mixing At Home”on FB). The knowledge I gained from there and the recipes I chose gave me a list of the flavors $25ish I’d need. I did/don’t use Nicotine (but I mix for friends that do) $13ish and luckily we in the states can get 100mg. So that makes it much easier. And I just got my VG (1 gallon), PG (500ml), and bottles from Amazon, around $55 or so. And then Pipettes and beakers from Walmart/HobbyLobby $8 or less? Though you’re mixing by weight you won’t really need Pipettes.
Now, that being said it looks like a lot at first. But, for real, that lasted me around a year or so. (I don’t vape like most as I just LOVE to mix)
Hope I helped even a bit.
I was considering buying a pg/vg/nic mix just to start. I see them and then adding in the flavor shots as I get used to all of this craziness. I feel like this is really going to be a cool thing!
I have just started mixing myself. I bought the pg/vg/nic mix to start with. 6nic. But after studying up on it and peoples advise here, when you add your flavors it alters the pg/vg/nic ratios. However, I am using it now and it seems fine to me. I bought a 1 liter bottle of the mix and 10 flavors and a scale. I already had a bunch of empty bottles of all sizes to store my mixes in. It cost me around $50 for all that and I think I can make about 9-10 120ml bottles. I would not get a "kit". It looks like it's just a bunch of syringes and gloves and stuff you really don't need if you mix by weight. You scale needs to weigh to 0.00grams at least. I messed up and got the wrong scale at first then I got the right one and it works good. Scale was $10 off eBay.
Every advice you're receiving is good and all, but I just want to say this: head over to https://e-liquid-recipes.com/ , put it in your bookmarks, register so you can see percentages and whatnot, and have fun!