I'm about to dip my toe into the DIY juice world. I quit smoking for good just over a year ago but I've been vaping for a couple years now. I'm a "find something I like and stick with it" kind of person when it comes to juice. I've been buying from the same vendor for a couple years but they are located in Washington State and due to recent regulation change there they have been forced to close up shop.
Instead of finding a new vendor I've decided to save some money and give DIY a shot. I read the sidebar and some posts and I'm thinking about building a kit from Nicotine River (or maybe Heartland?) just to get started.
One thing I find very important is to find a recipe/mix that's not a coil gunker. The commercial juice I've been buying is a honey/blueberry mix (from Cloud Alchemist) that I can vape for around 3 weeks or so before changing out coils. I recently tried a "Cornbread Puddin'" type dessert flavor and it was great but turned the coil to a burned mess in about 4-5 DAYS. My coils run about $5 a pop so no thanks (and I tried the DIY coil option for a while and it was just way too much work for me).
When building one of these kits are there any flavors I should steer clear from that have high sugary/sweet levels that will burn through my coils? I'm thinking of starting with flavors like apple, apple pie, blueberry, honey, etc. If I don't choose obviously sweet dessert flavors should I be good?
Thanks for all the great info!
Though some flavors can gunk coils, the coil gunking properties of commercial juice are due to added sweetener. Don't use sweetener, and you won't have a large issue with it
Totally agree, I can also tell you that the nic river starter sets are really nice, they even come in a really nice bucket that acts as a great initial container for everything. Its nicely put together and has everything you need to get started. If you have any other problems or questions I hope you feel free to ask, and wish you the best of luck, Happy Vaping :D
I'd avoid kits altogether. Too much junk in there you don't need. You'll get better value buying everything separately. Get 500ml PG and 2000ml VG, 250ml Nic in PG, some LDPE bottles for juice, two cylinder bottles for PG/VG, some amber glass bottles with dropper caps for NIC, a funnel for PG/VG if you have bad aim, a scale and about 20 flavors to make recipes that appeal to you. Also, you're going to need a way to label your mixes
Thanks for the list! I'll have to look around for some reputable vendors that sell most of this and see what the price difference is over the kits.
I buy all my flavors from Nicotine River (now called River Supply Co.) I bought the majority of my bottles there also. I bought my supplies from them as well. I recently bought some 10ml plastic bottles from Amazon and the Amazon Basics mailing labels too.
When vaping commercial juice, my coils lasted for a few days, a week tops. After starting to mix myself, my coils last for weeks. As others have pointed out, this is due to the added sweetener in commercial juice.
You might notice some less sweetness when going DIY (depending on the recipe), however you'll get used to it quickly, at least I did. It actually makes the juice taste more in my opinion.
Fruit flavors are your friend on this issue. I mixed up some dessert flavors that I really like but even with my own coils on an RDA, rewicking 2x a day and burning off the old juice between wickings, I had to rebuild a fresh coil today after two weeks.
Coil life is nearly infinite if I'm on my normal ADV which is a simple Forest Fruit + Blueberry + Lemon mix.
Any chance you'd share the recipe?
Super basic and low flavor % but it works great. Can also add 1-2% of your favorite cream to add a creamy note and another .5% of biscuit to give it a little pie crust texture. Just some stuff I've played with but I have 2 120ml bottles of this and it seems like a clear go-to for me as a light/fruit vape person.
2.5% FA forest fruit
1% TFA blueberry
1% FE lemon
I vape one flavor in particular (recently DIY now), but the recipe is Sucker Punch from Suicide Bunny which I originally bought for years and it doesn't gunk up my coils at all. I've had the same coil in for two months. Ik it sounds ridiculous, but it's true. Sometimes I think I ought to change it, but there nothing wrong with the coil at all. It's a fruit flavor (predominantly dragonfruit). I find it to be delicious and a light, refreshing adv. Another favorite of mine was a dessert flavor and it gunked up my coils much, much faster. Same coils. Same brand. Same tanks. Same mods (I have several of the same tanks/mods so I'm not buying a bunch of different coils to fit different tanks.).
If your into saving money by an rta . I make my own coil gunk juice and re wick near daily and it’s still cheaper than buying stock coils. The flavour is far superior and you’ll be able to reduce you nic intake. Also go for single shake and vape flavours first when you get that right go for the more in-depth recipes
Find something and stick to it, that speaks to me. My process is simple and often successful.
Firstly I limit myself to 3 flavors to a recipe maximum, far too often people do more where less does the same thing. I build a recipe so one flavor takes the lead and directs the profile while the other two complement the direction its going. There are one shot extracts, essentially pre made recipes and they can be costly, but some companies put out a flavor that is a blend and these are typically great on their own or with little help. Capella harvest berry for example, it has several berries and takes out all the guesswork.
__ Harvest Berry
CAP Harvest Berry 5% or more
INW Cactus 0.5%
__ Mango Unchained
CAP Sweet Mango 5%
TFA Citrus Punch 1%
INW Cactus 0.66%
__ Pineapple Sizzurp
CAP Sweet Guava 4%
CAP Sweet Pineapple 3%
__ Boys Berry
INW Boysenberry 3.3%
TFA Bavarian Cream 2%
CAP NY Cheesecake 2%
General rule of thumb to save coils is to stay below 10% total flavor. Most of mine are around 5-8 because I'm not a fan of sugarlips. Often I just add alot of sucralose sweetner to accomodate people used to store bought sweetness.
TFA Citrus Punch is on the no vape list for VITAMIN E USP LIQ
There's a no vape list? Apparently I should research this a bit more.
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Welcome to DIY world. I started a month ago and it's really, really easy. No flavors have gunked my coils, but chai tea overstayed her welcome and refused to leave so I chunked the coil out. I don't use sweeteners (I have cap super sweet but haven't needed to crack the seal open yet) so maybe that will kill them out, not sure.
Stick to easy recipes the first few bottles you make. Everyone told me don't venture out to soon and create your own recipes too soon but I'm now overstocked on my own flavors and like 90% those bottles are amazing (I still have nightmares of being forced to vape the god forsaken lavender/rose/Bavarian cream combo I mixed up thinking I was being innovative and was mixing the next greatest floral out there. Spoiler alert: it wasn't.) Play around, dabble with fruit mixes, mix up some tried and true recipes. It's your journey, enjoy it.
$5 a go for coils??? Christ! Here's me pushing the boat out and paying £20 for 3 meters of wire! If you're getting into DIY ejuice, you may as well go DIY coils too as they're so much cheaper, easy to make, and last much longer than the manufactured stuff. Get a good RTA and you'll notice the difference.
I did the whole build my own coils thing a few years ago. I still have all the old supplies in a drawer somewhere (an entire spool of kanthal, Japanese cotton, an ohm meter for coil testing, etc). It was time consuming (for me) creating the coils by hand. Heat the wire, coil it around something, leave the ends to connect, letting it cool, testing the ohms, cutting and pushing the cotton through the tiny coil, etc.
I think the final straw for me was a really leaky Geekvape RTA. No matter how I placed the cotton ends and fiddled with it I would still end up with juice leaking out all over my tank and mod. I got fed up with it and shelved the stuff and got a Smok TFV12 Prince. The coils are expensive but I've never had any leaking issues.
It's been a long time since I had an RTA so maybe I'll start researching and see if there's a nice solid one (that doesn't leak like crazy). Maybe I can even get some prebuilt coils or something so I don't have to mess with that part of the process.
Thanks!
I find the coil building pretty simple, I use the wotofo dual core fused wire, wrap it 6 times around a 3.5mm screw (one you'd usually find in a socket or light switch in the uk), then install, pulse to heat it, blow to cool and shove some cotton in. Currently using the dead rabbit RTA and I've had no leaking with it and overall it's a pretty good tank, but thinking of moving to the qp rta which I've heard good things about, it's just bloody expensive...
3.5 mm is 4.6666666666666666e-07 poronkusema
^^^WHY
Stay away from CAP Super Sweet.
>(and I tried the DIY coil option for a while and it was just way too much work for me).
Was the reason I edited. I saw that immediately after posting.
To each their own though. Frugal is as frugal does.