Not really a traditional tutorial tuesday entry, but I figured it to be useful and couldn't come up with anywhere more appropriate. #On Inspiration What is inspiration for a recipe? What makes prolific mixers come up with dozens of recipes while others have a few at best? Many mixers speak of inspiration for recipes as mysterious, mystical, or something in between. But the truth is there are a few basic clusters of types of inspirations.  

##1. Mimic

The mimic is actually two specific types, so why not break it down a bit...

##1.1 Attack of the Clones

Pretty straightforward here, the inspiration is a vape juice you've tried, or at least heard a description of, and want to make either a copy, or something similar, or at least something that fits the same description, even if it tastes really different. ##1.2 Plagarism is the sincerest form of flattery Ok, so it isn't really plagarism, but I wasn't feeling super creative... Basically, the idea here is taking something that exists IRL (German's Chocolate Cake, a Zombie, a Long Island Iced Tea, Kombucha, whatever) and trying to replicate that in a juice. Sometimes it's simple, sometimes it's as difficult as cloning a commercial juice (other than VapeWild stuff that's typically 15% FW [single flavor]+4% CAP SS) and sometimes it just isn't meant to be. But that's true of any recipe idea.

 

#2. Eureka

Never underestimate serendipity. Maybe you grabbed the wrong bottle when you were mixing, and thought "hmm, maybe that would work?" Or maybe you grabbed the wrong bottle of juice (and/or dripped on the wrong RDA) and tasted a blend of two juices and noticed that the main notes (although a bizarre pairing) just worked. Or maybe you were in the middle of mixing and realized you were out of some ingredient, and had to quickly come up with a substitution you could use at the same rate. Whatever the cause, chances are random chance has helped supply everyone with ideas at some point. Even if that point is in the future.

 

##3. Tinker (but not necessarily tailor, soldier, or spy)

In the land of remixes, the tinkerer is king. Hey, don't despair, you're in good company. Steve Jobs wasn't much of a original thought kinda guy, he just took other people's ideas and products and tweaked them a bit (and marketed the fuck out of them). So who cares if you didn't come up with some astoundingly creative juice? If you just look at (say) Leche de Coco and think "Y'know, if I sub in this cream, and these other coconuts, and add a touch of Malibu flavoring this could be perfect" and you try it and, wouldn't you know, it's better than the original... Well that's a different style of creativity. Sure, it's derivative as hell, but then so is most music these days.

 

##4. Perspiration

This is sort of a oddball, and is really just a variation on the old writing advice from a professional - the only way to be a successful writer is to write. To actually sit down and force yourself to write, even when you aren't inspired. It's like that in mixing sometimes. You won't always have a brilliant idea. So just force it. Pick a random flavor. Select every flavor that works well with it. Pick one of those. Select from the pile those that work with it. Set the original aside, pick one of the others, and see which are left that work with it. Once you're down to two or three total (including the original) there's a recipe concept to build from... Just pick supporting elements, your 'additive' flavors, etc. For those who like a challenge, try to build a 1-2-3 recipe... Divide your flavors up into ones that work at 1,2, and 3% (and ones that don't work there, obviously, and can be excluded) and pick one of the one percenters at random, then find which of the 2% ones can pair with it, and then look for 3% flavors that can work with one of those combinations. For extreme challenge, pick some existing recipe with four or more flavors. Try and pick different flavors from the same manufacturer as in the original recipe and that can be used at the same percentages and that will all work together. This is trickier than you may think, but it can be done. Sometimes. If you have enough flavors. But yeah, point is, if you don't have inspiration, maybe you don't need any...just mix something. One day, a bunch of those flavor combinations you considered but didn't go with will bubble up from your subconscious as the base of a recipe.

 

##5.. Mutt (not Lang)

The truth is, most inspiration isn't just one thing. Maybe you had some food or drink IRL a few weeks back, and the had one of those happy accidents, and the taste of two oddball flavors combining triggers a memory, and you - without being aware of how it happened - are suddenly struck by an idea of something to mix, because your handy subconscious took several sources of inspiration, processed them in parallel, and then threw a interrupt once all the processing threads had finished and had combined to give the result of your 'sudden' inspiration.

 

 

So there you have it. Next time you're wanting to come up with inspiration for a new recipe, try those out (a few can be forced, but not all) and see.

Eventually, you'll reach a point where you have more ideas for mixes to create than time to try them all. And at that point, you can always be some new mixer's muse, and hand off a few of those ideas for them to develop.