I’ve been trying some of the top reviewed highest rated recipes and they taste garbage off the shake and really not much of a difference after a two week steep. The idea I had before I started diy was that we can make juice that is at the level or better then store bought juices none of what I have tried even has like a solid flavor to it. A few for example was a pear mix (Cantrips) I taste no pear just a weird blend of flavors. Another( sweet strawberry cream by cheebaSteeva) strawberry cream flavor I barely can taste strawberry’s.
All the recipes I have tried have crazy reviews and people telling what they taste my mixes don’t even come close to what is described as in a perfect blend being able to taste all the different flavors. My shit doesn’t taste like any specific flavors at all I can’t even describe what I taste it’s not like any flavor I’ve really ever tasted before.
I use a scale to measure not sure what else information is important I will answer any questions that might help you see what I am doing wrong.
I have made one flavor that ended up decent. So I figure I’m not doing anything wrong or have bad products unless some how I am messing up the added percents of flavor but like I said I’m using a scale I test and calibrate it every time before I start mixing. And use steam engine calc to calculate my pg VG and nic while I do the flavor math myself multiplying the mL suggested by steam engine and multiplying it by the specific gravity. Even if the SG I find is off when making a 30 or 60 mL bottle it barely changes it so I figure that also is not where I am going wrong.
The flavor I made and think is some what decent so far going by the same Juicy Forrest fruit.
Forrest fruit FA 5% Juicy peach TFA 3 % Super sweet TFA .4% Dragon fruit TFA .4%
Obviously still working on it but so far the only juice I have been able to enjoy vaping is one I made out of fuck at least 8 different recipes I have copied. One I did enjoy was best damn pink lemonade. That is the only recipe I have copied and thought was decent.
Detox off sweetener. Then you'll taste things.
You're used to commercial juice, which has insane amounts of sucralose in it. So you are noticing that being gone. (A little bit of sucralose can boost the potency of flavors, but it also kills coils in anything near commercial juice levels.)
Go for a couple weeks without vaping commercial juice. Maybe mix up some unflavored, or maybe straight 4% menthol so you get some taste....but just get used to not vaping massive amounts of sucralose. You'll notice that juices you make have more flavor than you think now, once you adapt.
I had the same issue when I first started mixing DIY recipes as opposed to vaping commercial e liquid. I couldn’t work out why for a while until I realised I had vapers tongue, which is apparently common when people first start mixing.
Like someone else has said maybe it’s because you’re used to so much sweetener from the commercial stuff that your tongue needs to get used to a different type of vaping? Persevere with it. It got so much better for me.
People were saying that they could pick out notes in recipes and I just wasn’t getting them. I think mixing has allowed me to massively refine my palette and really think about what I’m tasting.
Concrete River wrote a great article on here ‘SFT How To Part 1’ And there’s a Part 2 as well, where he talks about single flavour testing, how to break a flavour down and process what your tasting etc.
He talks about testing flavours side by side with other equivalent flavours from other manufacturers. This is what has really helped me to be able to understand a flavour more and to pick the notes out. Just as an example, testing CAP Sweet Strawberry on its own was kinda hard right at the beginning as I had no point of reference. I could say it tastes like strawberry and it’s sweet. But when I tested it along side TFA Strawberry Ripe, INW Shisha Strawberry etc. It was so much easier to pick out the notes it has by comparing it to other strawberries- I could say it’s more artificial/ candy, it’s syrupy, it’s sweeter than most others etc.
Sorry I’ve written a whole essay. I just totally related to what you said and wanted to say keep going with DIY. There’s a lot of recipes people have made on ATF that have rave reviews and I try them and don’t like them at all. I think most of the recipes I’ve tried on ATF are a bit ‘meh’ if I’m honest. Some are really great. That seems to be a pretty common experience for a lot of people. Taste is really subjective. It’s spurred me into mixing stuff for my own personal tastes though and I’m really enjoying the journey of learning and creating.
Thank your for the essay man what I needed to hear and I guess fuck pre made recipes I just gotta work on making my own. I really figured top rated recipes would be bomb I vape just about any flavor I don’t stick to just fruits or dessert flavors.
really started this to get away from the sweetener and having to re wicking every damn day or few hours gets to be a little annoying. And got tired of vaping the same things so few companies make sweetener free juice. That and saving some cash.
I really felt like I was messing up not just because it tasted bad but seriously tasted nothing like the reviews.
No worries. I felt the same way when I started. A couple of things I just thought of- maybe check when the recipe was made. Older ones were designed for different devices and they didn’t have the choice of flavours we have now. And did you steep them for however long the creator of the recipe said to? Some flavours are not great without a steep.
I tell everyone this but watch/ listen to Noted if you don’t already. It’s available as a podcast and on the DIYORDIE youtube channel. They do a different profile each week, strawberry, custards, cheesecakes etc. They go through a ton of flavours describe them and talk about which are good, which are bad, what you could use them for etc. Plus they make it pretty entertaining. I found it really great for getting me to think more like a mixer if that doesn’t sound massively pretentious!
There’s also Mixin’ Vixens and Developed where experienced mixers make recipes and talk about what flavours they used, why they used them etc. And you can see how they put recipes together.
Developed did a couple of episodes on their YouTube channel a coupe of months ago specifically for people just starting to mix where they answered loads of questions people might have and they made a list of their recommendations first flavours to buy.
Plus there’s the DIYORDIE channel on YouTube. He has loads of videos on all sorts of subjects related to vaping and mixing.
All of those things have helped me immensely. I would have been so lost without them, especially at the beginning. I also probably would have wasted a lot of time and money on buying crappy flavours and trying to get them to work in recipes, then thinking it was me and getting disheartened.
Why are you using recipes from ATF but using steam engine and doing math yourself? You don't need to do that. Mix the recipe using ATF. Is it giving you the same values you are using?
Well I didn’t know I could lol on the site right now and see if you hit mix it will provide the same type of calculator. But yes it gives me just about the same values. Same values for flavors ever so slightly different pg/VG and nic levels.
I'm also relatively new to diy. Every recipe I tried from here or atf I haven't really enjoyed, but I've made a couple juices I really like by just looking at individual flavor reviews on this subreddit and slowly piecing together a recipe with a few different flavors. Something to watch out for: sometimes recipes are old and use a previous version of a flavor. Happened to me with INW lemon concentrate when I first started. Supposedly it used to be really good but now it tastes like lemon pledge since they reformulated.
Something else I didn’t even think of is looking at the date of the recipe. Or flavors changing.
Yeah I found out the hard way. Also if you like pink lemonade I've really been enjoying LB pink lemonade with INW lemon mix and FA lemon Sicily to give more lemon flavor. Message me if you're curious about percentages
I have a problem with strawberry flavors in that I can sense a hint of it is somewhere in the same country as I am but it sure does not taste like a strawberry. I also have About fifteen different peach flavors and all of them taste like the smell of a first rain on a concrete parking lot on a hot summer day with a candy peach ring covered with ants in a garbage can somewhere within a gunshot sound distance away. I bought a honeydew flavor and mixed it at the recommended percentage and could taste it but I really didn’t care for it as I vaped about 9ml of the 10 that I made to test of. I had a 30ml bottle of flavorless 50mg salt juice with a unmeasured amount of menthol add to it spring a leak so I dumped it into the almost empty honeydew bottle and Wow!! That is pretty tasty, I hated menthol cigarettes when I smoked so I believed that I would not enjoy vape with it either but I had a nasty cold and it was pleasantly soothing. My accident of mixing the honeydew traces and an unknown measurement of the menthol juice will surly haunt me forever trying to replicate it. I never thought that I would like any RY4 type of vapes but they seem to be my go to flavors so far. I think that my taster is broken and I have not smoked in over 10 years and stopped dipping last January so I don’t know why it is the way that it is. This is an awesome group to learn from and keep trying some different recipes until ya find the best ones for you. I love ELR and All th Flavors but have a hell of a time navigating through the sites. Try upping the percentages of the flavors and in a separate bottle add more VG/pg to dilute it and see if you can sense the difference. I have also had some nasty nicotine that made everything taste like I was vaping right after eating a smoked salmon, that was fun. Keep experimenting and have fun.
>I also have About fifteen different peach flavors and all of them taste like the smell of a first rain on a concrete parking lot on a hot summer day with a candy peach ring covered with ants in a garbage can somewhere within a gunshot sound distance away.
Great description haha! Mate have you tried HS Juicy Peach? Best peach I've come across. If you have tried it, what % did you mix it at?
I have not but I will, I love peach and I can taste them in vodka or ice tea but not in a vape for some reason. Thank you for the tip the only Hansen that I have is the RY4 and I didn’t care for it much, I got a wet hay note that just flipped me on my ass because it was really nice other than that.
Ive been doing diy for about three months and ive probably made at least 20 of the top rated recipes that I didn't like. So don't get discouraged. But I have learned a few things. After a two week steep I can't taste any strawberry in a mix with creams or custards. It was recommended that I mix together the cream base and let that steep. After steeping then add the fruit flavors. That made a difference. I think on ELR it requires a lot of work to find a good recipe. Start searching through this subreddit for your recipes. And a good place to start is with using the "trinities". The Daveberry trio (aka Strawberry Trinity), Blueberry Trinity, Ice Cream Trinity, and Cheesecake Trinity are all very good.
Clean and rewick your RDA. Then vape straight PG. Clean and rewick your RDA. Then vape straight VG.
I suggest this because I found out after a similar experience that I have a sensitivity to PG and get a strange chemically taste (that taste is buffered by sweetener and additives). Now I can mix and taste my flavors.
I've mixed 33 bottles since November 15, 2 for someone else and 31 for myself. Out of the 31 I have 6 recipes which are as good as but aren't better than commercial juice imo. Of the 25 remaining mixes all but one was decent. The one I didn't like I added a little sweetener and a hint of another flavor and finished it without issue. I was also expecting a better experience from the first. I'm learning though. Everytime I mix I discover more of what I like and what I don't. I anticipate mixing a bottle this weekend that should be excellent based on what I've picked up so far.
When nothing tastes good it's usually equipment failure. If just DIY isn't tasting as good or as much as commercial juice, it's usually not enough sweetener.
SG makes a nominal difference, at best.
What equipment could be faulty? My scale is not off.
It is not that it isn’t tasting as good as I regularly vape TBD liquid with no added sweetener.
I was talking about the device you vape with.
I use multiple and still have juice I have bought which tastes fine also been vaping 5+ years I build coils and wick myself. I don’t think it’s my devices.
Also I said in my post I have made a juice which taste decent to me. Just having trouble using recipes I find.