So I am new as I posted last night. I have like 2 recipes I like and have been playing with. I have a killer custard clone reciepe that has about 13% flavoring so decided to try some others and amped up some flavors and flavoring in total. To like 20 percent a sample would me
Van custard 5%.
French van. 3%
Cheesecake crust 1.5 %
Super sweet .5 %
Marzipan 1 %.
After reading a lot of clones and realizing the flavors were a lot higher percentages especially for the vanilla custard clones. I make the same let's day at 150 percent values
So
Van custard 7.5 French van 4.5 Cheesecake 2.5 Marzipan 2
And left as the same at 1.
I feel that I lost a lot of flavor after a couple days and actually was not as strong as my origional. Why is that?
Also i am trying higher percentages because most other clones like a Grant's are like 10 or 15% van custard. I am baffled by that.
Oh lord no don't go down the rabbit hole of thinking adding more % improves the longevity of a flavour! It doesn't!
Increasing the % of a flavour changes the profile of the flavour instead. Let me give a theoretical strawberry as an example:
Queef Strawberry at 2% would be a faint hint of strawberry. The way you would feel it in a fruit salad once it's let its juices and is runny.
At 3% it would be an authentic ripe flavour as if you've bitten it.
At 5% it would be a candy cane with strawberry flavor.
At 7% it would be bitter strawberry syrup.
At 10% it would be super bitter cotton candy strawberry flavor.
Basically don't touch recipe percentages if the recipe is after 2017 (weaker devices back then got different results for flavours).
You don't lose flavours/taste, the flavours are steeping and are getting emulsified by the sheer quantity. I don't do creams so best to ask someone specifically about which one of those is an emulsifier.
Super sweet upping will also mute flavours.
Find what's muting your flavours and cut it down a bit and you won't lose anything during steeping!
But don't increase flavour % in the hopes of increasing the flavour!
Best of luck and welcome to DIY
Well it's all a learning curve for me. I am more or less curious as to why. So if I see a reciepe with higher percentages is it safe to drop all by the same percent and keep the origional flavor? Thanks for the response
Not really no. If a recipe calls for 1% cactus it'd have one feeling and lowering it to 0.5% a completely different one.
Old recipes are for weaker devices so lowering the % there might work, but general rule of thumb is don't mess with the % or it's a brand new recipe
Edit: as for the why, think of it like with cooking, if you increase the overall amount of tomatoes in a recipe you'll get a more tomatoey flavour. The difference, however, is that here the flavour profile will merge with the PG and VG in a higher concentration therefore leading to a completely different profile. There are some ways to push a flavour in a recipe a bit more but it requires messing with other flavours which improve the original flavour rather than increasing the whole percentage
To expand on the analogy. If you're making a 1L of tomato soup, with 500mls of water and 500ml of tomatos, it'd have a different taste if you put 700ml water and 300g of tomatoes, right?
Now combine that with 1g of salt or 30g of salt and pepper. You get where I'm going
Because going higher ends up muting the flavor after a certain point. What's probably happening is since it's a custard is that after a few days the flavor is picking up and finally tipping the scales into the wrong direction. Also that Grant clone is older than Elvis and was designed for older/shittier equipment. Final note. Don't use super sweet with custards. Try TFA Marshmallow or use TFA Cotton Candy/Ethyl Maltol.
The first thing I look at if a recipe interests me is when was it made. If it was before 2017, chances are the flavor % will be higher because vaping gear wasn’t what it is today. Try choosing recipes from 2017 to present day. And be cautious of ELR recipes. With some experience you will learn to see if a recipe is off, but that’s hard for a beginner. I would advise you to look for recipes on ATF, they are newer and imho, the database is „cleaner“. Other than that, the sidebar has a lot of valuable information and if you want to meet fellow mixers, get help from a community, you could always join a discord. Happy holidays.
I appreciate all the info and feedback from all. I have found the elr forum also and cam search there for reciepes based on ingredient which is cool as I can search for all that have my flavors I seem to like so far. Glad I found you guys here also.. so much to learn. But all I got is time. Lol