#DIY_eJuice 2019 Highlights

> The best of last year's posts. There are more than I can mention in one post but if you'd like to see them all I made a spreadsheet with a colorful index to make it easier to find recipes, reviews, tutorials, and stuff. Check it out!

###50k Milestone

/u/EdibleMalfunction announced the milestone and showed the history of the subreddit’s subscriber count over time.

The boost in subscribers that pushed us over the 50k mark was in no small part due to...

###The Flavor Bans

Not exactly what anyone would call a highlight but it certainly ended up being a big theme last year. If you’re here chances are you’ve heard about one or all of them. First we welcomed the Michigan Refugees with open arms and not long after that New York Governor Cuomo liked the idea so much he decided to do the same, followed by (in no particular order) California, Washington, Rhode Island, and Massachusetts.

It’s certainly nice to have a bunch of new DIY’ers as a result but the the net result of these bans is obviously not beneficial to vaping and, at the end of the day, that hurts DIY too.

>Other ban related or inspired posts...

• /u/flavorah's Call to Action
• /u/Foxer604 suggested Stepping up and helping out whenever possible
• Real Flavors shuts down
• Mass Bans Everything
• Flavor bans and DIY
• PSA: Ways to Learn and Help: Call to Action Post Flavor Bans
• We made the news

 

###Flavor Safety Project

• /u/TeslaDelMar wrote a piece of software to scan through almost 2,000 Safety Data Sheets (SDS) in order to find flavors that could be classified as either “caution” or “avoid” you can read more about the process in his post: Flavor Safety or check out the results in the Google Sheet Flavors to Avoid / Flavors of Caution

• /u/Baade posted “My journey seeking transparency with flavor manufacturers”

Big props to /u/Baade and /u/TeslaDelMar for putting in considerable time and effort on behalf of the community to identify and inform us of potential hazards in the flavors we’re using. It's an ongoing project so bookmark those posts if you're interested in updates.

>some other safety related posts that made the highlights:

• Sucralose-enhanced degradation of electronic cigarette liquids during vaping (STUDY)
• Molinberry list of flavors containing DAAP/Sucralose
• Is TFA Slim mint cookie not safe to vape?
• Plastic Cracking Flavors In PET Bottles

 

###Kindground Benefit

/u/Foment_life posted A Humble Request

While the circumstances were obviously not highlight worthy - the outpouring of community support and effort on behalf of Kindground was inspiring. Practically everyone from every DIY community, every DIY podcaster, and many others from the vaping community at large gathered to support one of our own.

• Daytime Frank and Kopel were vital in rounding up prizes from so many vendors.
• Both ATF and ELR posted banners for Kindgrounds GoFundMe in place of ads.
• There was a Mixing Marathon hosted on DIY or DIE's channel that included a segment from nearly every prominent DIY podcast.

> From Kindground himself: > "My family and I are very blessed to have the continued support of the DIY community. Emotionally its overwhelming for me to be in this position and experience the outpouring. It's been pretty unbelievable. I appreciate the love and community coming together most of all. It's really good for everyone involved and helps us as a community and individuals continue to grow.

> Again, thank you to everyone for everything."

• /u/kindground also happened to have the most upvoted Flavor Review of 2019 with Blueberry Round Up

 

###The Year of Giveaways > The vendors are pretty cool for stepping up to give away flavors and gift cards but obviously that's not only generous but mutually beneficial. What I think was more awesome were all the individuals in the community who wanted to give back to the entire community for all the help, support, and encouragement they received in their DIY journey.

• Flavorah Flavor Giveaway was not only fun but generated a lot of recipe reviews.

• Single Flavor Giveaways Started as 14 daily giveaways and ended about 10 days later than expected, due to more and more people stepping in to give something away.

• Dico’s Christmas Contest!

• New Year - New Gear! Mod kit giveaways!

• And lot's more on the Discord in the #giveaway channel

 

###Trinities “These divine threesomes were all intelligently designed to work as layers in different recipes. They all use three ingredients to try to make improved versions of each of the flavor profiles. There are plenty of other stones and bases out there like these, but the powers that be have given each of these their blessings...”

• /u/ID10-T from Flavor of the Week Trinities

> The one that started it all:

Blueberry Trinity

Co. | Flavor | %
---|---|----
FW | Blueberry | 2
TFA | Blueberry Extra | 3
FA | Bilberry | 0.5

> and the ones that really got the people going last year:

• The Trinity Vanilla Ice Cream
• Possible Mango Trinity
• The Blessed Trinities

 

###Noted 100th Episode The flavor review podcast hosted by 3 of our very own regular contributors, along with a rotating cast of guests that are often from this subreddit, celebrated their 100th episode with a highlight reel put together by yet another regular contributor /u/AlfredPudding.

 

###Recipes!

• The most prolific front page recipe poster of 2019 was /u/Arpeggiator8472 with 10 recipes followed closely by /u/matthewkocanda & /u/heimsins_konungr with 7 each.

• /u/Denske203 had the most upvoted front page recipe of 2019 Awesome Apple Filling

The rest of the top 10:

Rank | User | Recipe ---|---|--- #2 | /u/eyemakepizza | It's Trinity Time - The Perfect Vanilla Ice Cream #3 | /u/HocusKrokus | Currant Affairs #4 | /u/sirfletchalot | Super strawberry lemonade #5 | /u/matthewkocanda | AMORPHOUS - a four-part conceptual piece #6 | /u/heimsins_konungr | Desert Dew, a clone of Pachamama: The Mint Leaf #7 | /u/xGRANITEx | Graham Cracker Custard #8 | /u/akatash23 | Coconut Cream Pie #9 | /u/Arpeggiator8472 | DAT PÜD

And those are just the front page recipes. You can check out all the Monthly Recipe Threads in one place or if you're only interested in the BEST you can look at Top Monthly Recipes of 2019: A Monthly Thread Roundup

 

###Tutorial Tuesday Is the brainchild of /u/isuamadog but it's a collaborative project. In 2019 a total of 30 different tutorials were posted by 15 different users. They range from brief, discussion based topics like what inspires recipes or finding your new favorite profile to guides on making a soda recipe or diluting flavors.

The format and approach to learning that /u/isuamadog inspires (he's a teacher IRL) has made the whole series one of my favorite things about the subreddit. 30 more sounds like a win for everyone!

Tutorial Tuesday Wiki

> and shoutout to our other recurring thread makers...

• /u/RancerDS changes the name of the Single Flavors Tried thread every week but it's generated a lot good notes and discussions on a lot of flavors (over 700 and counting). You can check out the wiki for all the threads or links to all the individual notes for each flavor.

• /u/c5b4c91772c729fc7d0a and his long running "What are you vaping?" thread.

• All the people who participated in Hot Seat Sunday

• /u/AutoModerator because bots need a little gratitude too.

• And /u/ID10-T for all this stuff

 

###DIY Discord

While I didn’t start our discord server in 2019, last year was the year it blew up. We had maybe a few hundred people by the end of 2018. More than a thousand people have decided to join since then and, well, it's pretty awesome. Check it out.

 

>I'm sure I forgot a thing or twelve, broke a link or two, and misspelled or otherwise butchered something the way people tend to do when they rush a post that's technically over a week late. Call me out.

 

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And one final shout-out to my boy /u/EdibleMalfunction who is a couple weeks away from his 1 year anniversary as a mod and probably the only reason I haven't gone insane and quit. Thanks, bud.