SO. I have been doing diy for about 2 months now. And while I really like the affordability and the process of making recipes (I have a scale and have been building a small inventory on ATF and have made a pretty small handful of recipes thus far), I am perplexed by the difference in sweetness between commercial and diy juice--AND BEFORE YOU COMMENT please read this in it's entirety.
First and foremost I would like to ask you all: I've heard many say that initially, coming off of commercial juice sucked cause they could hardly taste their diy juices due to this fact. So, how long did it take you before you were accustomed to the DIY? After 2 months I would think I would have acclimated or whatever, however, in general juices still seen significantly less pronounced than commercial. Do you think DiY just isn't for some people?
And now my second question which is also preceded by a statement: all the resources say "too much sweetener can ruin flavors and make them more mute" and "you can only make a juice so sweet". What is weird about this to me is that it is completely counter intuitive to the other thing I hear everyone say: "commercial juices are sweeter because they are loaded with sweetener." ....okay. So if too much sweetener mutes flavor then how are commercial juices so sweet because they are loaded with sweetener? I guess my primary question is this: what REALLY is the main difference between commercial and diy? Could it be that commercial juices have just been steeping in their bottles forever prior to being sold? Does anyone know? Cause to me the answer seems unclear, and I am feeling somewhat discouraged as far as diy is concerned.
Any info, opinions, facts, tips etc. would be appreciated. The main thing I miss is that sugary taste I would get on my lips and on my tongue; almost like a coating. I taste some sweetness but it just isn't the same.
have you used capella super sweet before? I tried that with zero flavour in plain pg/vg and it absolutely coated my entire mouth in sweet. It was overpowering.
Not yet. Would it be tasty in smaller amounts? So far I have only tried TFA Sweetener
Super sweet should only be used in smaller amounts. Overdo it slightly and you can hear the difference; it’s a coil killer but nothing like an extremely dark Cinnabon commercial flavor will be.
Not all sweeteners are the same compound. TFA Sweetener is sucralose at 5% with Ethyl Maltol at 5%. Cap Super Sweet is sucralose at a 10% solution. FW Sweetener is just like TFA's. The EM will mute flavors.
Some sweeteners mute. Some are just hammers of sweet. Cap ss can just overpower with sweet. If you want to reset your buds vape flavorless for a week. I never make it more than a few days but if you can make a week or two, I’m sure it’ll help.
Any thoughts on TFA sweetener?
I think that’s one I didn’t try. If it’s sucralose, it’ll just be sweet with varying off notes depending on brand/additives. If I want kill you sweet, I use cap SS up to 0.5. If I want just enough sweet, I use fw up to 0.4. If I just want sweetness, I’ll add a sweeter flavor that doesn’t add much: Star fruit, honeysuckle, pear, milk&honey, caramel, etc
Also with the new data about how vaping sucralose is bad, I’m happy it’s never been a thing I use last 6-12 months. First year? I did have cravings once in a while and would crank up a mix on occasion.
Im actually doing this right now to see if it helps cus every 2-3 weeks something knocks my olfactory senses for a loop and I can't taste anything. Been 48 hours of vaping simple custard/fruit and I am craving the sweetness like a fiend. Gonna try to make it a week but we will see.
Most commercial juices use a lot of sweetener. You can find posts on this sub where people have released their commercial recipes, and I've seen sweetener used as high as for 4%.
What this does, is make it easier for the juice maker to create a recipe that isn't harsh very quickly. Rather than taking the time, and increasing their own cost, by finding other flavors to use to smooth things out and complement each other, they just pump it full of sweetener.
That's the feeling you're missing when you don't use it. It took me about 2 months to really start learning what some of the flavors should taste like, and the percentages of each one.
The two best parts of diy juice. Even when you make a colossal failure, you're still not spending anywhere close to what you're paying for premium, and you can tailor your mixes to be exactly what you want.
Gotcha. And yea I do understand the difference between nuances in flavors and a commercial juice that is just really sweet. I am starting to appreciate DIY more as I go and try new things; there have just been some days where I couldn't taste a thing and those days are frustrating.
I know that feeling really well. One thing that's helped me when it comes to tasteless mixes, has been adding INW eucalyptus and menthol to them. Adding other flavors to fix things rarely works, but this at least makes them tolerable.
The "problem" with sucralose: There is no real replacement. Vaping is 99% smelling (olfactory receptors in the nose), no actual tasting on the tongue involved, although we call it taste. Sucralose is a rare exception, it actually tastes sweet in your mouth, gives you that juicy and sweet mouthfeel, something you can't do with any other sweetener (correct me if I'm wrong). Same with coolant or menthol, it gives an actual feeling in the mouth and throat. The more senses involved, the stronger the overall experience.
This will become very obvious if you vape when you have a cold or simply take a vape and hold your nose at the same time. If there is no sucralose or coolant in your juice, you'll simply taste nothing.
>Vaping is 99% smelling (olfactory receptors in the nose), no actual tasting on the tongue involved, although we call it taste
I think its better to say the majority of flavor in vapor is smelled by olfactory receptors, but the tongue can still pick up tastes of basic sweetness, tartness and bitterness in the vapor if its dense enough and/or sticks. I believe the latter is what makes commercial eliquids more intense and is often achieved by used certain sweeteners.
Another thing to note is that the olfactory receptors mostly only pick up the changes in aroma. The receptors will send the information to the brain, but if the brain has no reference to what it's supposed to taste like it will merely make associations with existing information. As you try more flavors you gain experience, refining your palette as well as your ability to taste. Technically training your brain to be more sensitive as well.
Everyone has a different set, experience and function of olfactory receptors and things like this will also depend on lifestyle, age and diet.
A lot of people that go from commercial to DIY don't taste much at first because they are still just trying the most popular recipes on ELR, which use way too much flavorings. They were designed for less powerful and effective devices that were used a few years ago. On top of that, they can often contain certain strawberry flavorings that a lot of people just can't detect. You have to start somewhere though. Even if devices have gotten much better over the years, a lot of people still only use MTL types, which simply don't provide as much flavor as they don't offer as much surface area to heat liquid as DTL setups do. Some try to just double the amount of flavorings used, but this doesn't really work for most flavorings either. A bad habit that anyone should steer clear from. You can adjust for lower power devices, but recipes would need to be reworked from the ground up. I've made similar mistakes myself. I used to think that a recipe should contain 15-20% flavorings at minimum, because most one-shot concentrates use that amount. I just kept adding stuff I thought would fit, but it simply doesn't work that way. You hear things like "this company uses 15 different flavorings at a total of 40%". Now I know this is all complete horse shit of course. No doubt, a 6% flavoring recipe can be more flavorful than a 40% recipe.
Surely too much sweeteners can mess with your palette, but it shouldn't be much different than e.g eating sticky chocolate or strong aromatic food like garlic or even drinking a lot of cola. It shouldn't last for more than a few hours or a day if you drink enough water and brush your teeth. I've come across certain flavors that mess with my palette, much more than sweeteners have. Sweeteners can also lift up certain flavorings and make an average mix into a very vapable mix, but depending on the sweeteners used there's a fine line between very vapable and overly sweet.
In the end you are the one that has to vape your mixes so the best thing to do is to adjust according to your tastes. Lots of trial and error in small batches. Every mixer goes through ups and downs. Don't let anyone discourage you.
I've tried a bunch of sweeteners looking to answer a similar question myself while hopefully minimizing gunking and have yet to stumble across an effective sweetener that either doesn't mute (ie: tfa sweetener which contains maltol) or give a bitter back taste (ie: sucralose/cap ss/fw sweetener) like the sweet in sweeter commercial juices I've liked but found a little too sweet (ie: 12 monkeys, chill, naked 100.) I have yet to try standalone stevia, monk fruit and erythritol mostly being down to not knowing where to find such things at a sane price in Canada. I did try a couple "with stevia" concentrates but it's difficult to say for sure if stevia is the droids I think I'm looking for.
I've also seen a few things that suggest some commercial juices aren't even using concentrates from the vendors we use - they are using chemists and whatnot to assemble molecule by molecule exactly what they are after. These are the folks that die a little more even than us fumbling DIY-ers every time a politician or health person says "we don't even know what is in these liquids."
Huh very interesting. As a whole do you still enjoy diy? Has it "grown" on you from the time you started, so to speak? (From a flavor standpoint?)
I wouldn't say DIY has "grown" on me, more that my experience with the ingredients I'm using has grown and the resulting juice has gotten tastier for it. Personally I've got a sweet tooth, I gravitate toward vibrant flavor and sweetness like you'd get in a gummy candy or a soda and am pretty happy with that - but too much sweetener like cap ss (I rarely go above 0.25%) or the wrong build in my atty and that winds up being all I can taste. The first few months were a little rough, it does take some effort to find things that taste good to you as well as figure out how to use them - it can be as easy to mute a flavor by using too much of it instead of too little. There are also tons of additives (or more importantly flavors that act as additives when used in small doses) that can bend a recipe from something meh into something great.
It certainly doesn't help to narrow down things when you find out months later that, for example, this one flavor you didn't like wound up being a labelling error from your supplier which is why it didn't taste anything like what it was called, or that by the time you got around to using it this other concentrate magically turned into nail polish remover instead of the strawberry (not that I could taste it when it was still strawberry) it was supposed to be. Add in mods/atties/builds and things get really complicated, and I've always felt a little defeated when I find someone else's juice manages to taste great no matter what I put it in. I do know I came across a recipe a couple months in that reaffirmed committing to mixing would eventually be worth it, that it can be great (to me, not even sure anyone else would like it) rather than just a roll-your-own cost cutting measure that only gets me by.
tl:dr; it takes some effort, but the effort can be very personally rewarding.
I'm kind of surprised you had that reaction to FW Sweetener. It's the only thing I use now, after using EM and Cap SS for a while.
For me it was basically Cap SS, just without the added preservatives that manages to boost certain fruit flavors. I'm not saying the Cap/TPA/FW/Whatever sweeteners are bad, they are effective, I just find that if I want to push the sweetness up I have nothing to counteract the bitter/nastiness that comes with sucralose. To me the difference with commercialy sweet juice I've liked is literally the difference between putting a pinch of sugar on my tongue and a raw drop of liquid sucralose sweetener (not vape flavoring, the sweetener they sell in the grocer) instead, the sugar makes my mouth water and the liquid sweetener dries it out and leaves a bitterness.
I cringe when I hear someone say "it's so easy". No it's not. It's a science. We are working with aromas that have traits.
Why do we single flavor test new flavors? To know what that aroma tastes like on it's own, so we can understand how it behaves with other flavors and how it reacts to additives. Some flavors react well with sweeteners while others don't. And not all commercial juices use Capella Super Sweet. There is a myriad of flavors and additives out there to work with.
Some flavors have more natural ingredients in them and some have more artificial. Some have additives already included (look at how many TFA concentrates already include ethyl maltol).
I don't use any sucralose yet my recipes are sweet enough. Do yourself a favor and mix Capella Marshmallow at 2% in a 60VG/40PG mix and see what you think. (Hint: it adds volume and sweet)
There may be juice makers that have a lab to develop concentrates at the molecule level, but I suspect that many of the juice makers out there are using CAP and TFA products (I know one that uses these exclusively). Hell, how many juice makers have stolen recipes from ATF and ELR (a lot according to Wayne Walker).
Dash Vapes not only sells hardware and liquid, they also sell DIY supplies. On their website you can create a recipe based on the products they sell. If they like your recipe, they will MAKE it, SELL it and pay you a royalty for it. No lab for this company.
2% Super Sweet can boost some recipes and kill others. It depends on what you are working with.
Thanks for advice. And I agree it isn't "easy" by any means. I mean making a recipe isn't too difficult cause it tells you exactly how to make it, but developing your own is an entirely different story.
And I've heard people say to try the marshmallow and had planned to give it a shot. Thanks :]
Also that's rad about dash vapes.
I honestly don't understand this argument that diy juice taste "less than" commercial. I was making my own juice for a couple years for myself and brothers, and then I went back to only commercial for about a year, and just recently I got back into diy, taste amazing as always. Just wanted to throw my two cents out there...
shrugs couldn't tell you. Everyone's tastebuds are different. Obviously I'm not the only one who had posted about this issue. Maybe you have better tastebuds than some of us. Consider yourself lucky I guess?
I sure understand what you're talking about. It comes up whenever I want to approximate or clone a commercial juice. I think despite our attitude here that less is more, getting that kick you want may sometimes require using more flavoring. The DIY recipes I have that are most similar in flavor and strength to commercial juices are the ones that are 14%+ flavoring and/or the ones where a bunch of the flavors are sweet on their own (graham cracker, marshmallow, caramel) and it's like they just all stack. I don't find that just adding sweetener does much of anything to boost a flavor closer to a "commercial taste".
That said, there are a lot of delicious juices with lower percents, a lot of nuanced flavors you won't get in a super strong juice, the fact that concentrate strengths vary heavily between manufacturers... a lot of good reasons for our attitude that less is more. My own adv is like 10% with no added sweeteners. It's just that, if you're trying to copy the commercial juice you have to break whatever soft diy rules of thumb it broke.
I'd also be interested to hear some opinions from long-term DIYers on this.
I've been mixing my own for a couple of weeks now and one of the big differences I notice between my own creations and the commercial juices is the very strong sweetness of the commercials I have vs the ones I have mixed.
I sort of get the "sweetness hides the flavour" thing. My sensitivity to flavour changes a lot over time actually. Sometimes I can't taste very much at all, and sometimes I can get the nuances in the juice. On really bad days everything just tastes bitter.
On the middlingly bad days, my own juice seems tasteless. But I can still taste coolant and I can still taste sweetener. So the commercial fruity flavours give me taste even if the fruit is not really coming through.
On the good days I can taste the flavours in my own mixes and the commercial juices just seem to be overpowering sweetness and coolant with a strong hint of fruit behind it.
Of course after a couple of weeks, most of the juice I have made is still in a dark cupboard steeping (after being sampled as a shake and vape) so a long way to go yet.
It might be worth you bumping flavor percentages up a bit, if you can't taste much. My tongue tends to be pretty numb too, but I hate sweetener, so I usually tweak flavoring %s to taste.
Also, I've noticed that sweetener numbs my tongue for a while, so if I switch back and forth between the one sweetened flavor I use and my normal unsweetened flavors, it takes a while before I can taste the unsweetened again, when normally they're rather strong. Is it possible that's happening to you?
Very possible. Very possible indeed. My plan is to mix up a 50ml each of various recipes that look good to me and are well-rated and let them steep while I finish off my stash of commercial ejuices. None of the ones I have mixed so far have any sweetener in them, but I will probably try some as well with low percentages at first. A shipment with the CAP SS along with about 25 other concentrates should arrive tomorrow. Yay!
I am prepared for the likelihood that there will be a bit of a decline in my vaping satisfaction in the short term, but believe I will reap the rewards taste-wise and pocket-wise in the medium term.
As long as I am not motivated to return to the dreaded death darts, all is good.
To address the first part of your question, I think DIY is very much akin to cooking. Even given Gordon Ramsey’s recipe book, not everyone will be able to produce a delicious version of every recipe. Also like cooking, not everyone will like the same dishes. Taste is ultimately subjective. Your palate is going to be radically different from mine. In terms of DIY, people who single flavor test their concentrates will develop a much finer palate than those who simply throw things together. It makes development or tailoring of a recipe a far easier task, which I think would play a part in deciding if DIY is “for you.”
As to the second question: both are true. Many, many commercial juices use too much sweetener. Sweetener can both enhance flavors and mute them. Age is the biggest factor here, and unfortunately most commercial juice does not have any kind of “manufactured on” date that you can translate. Muting isn’t a black or white, it does or it doesn’t thing. Sweeteners can mute some notes of a flavor and amplify others.
It’s kind of a running joke in the DIY community that the difference between DIY and commercial juice is 10% sweetener. There is some truth to that. You have to keep in mind that commercial ejuice is made to appeal to the widest group of users across the widest selection of devices. How you vape effects the flavor in surprising ways.
Try a given juice on something like a Hadalay with Clapton coils and then try it in a TFV8v2. You will notice a difference.
Many DIY recipes taste fantastic on an RDA but suck in a tank or vice versa. There are MANY factors.
There are tens of thousands of concentrates and additives that can be used in ejuice. Combining just two can result in a dozen or more new molecules as the unbound molecules in the esthers homogenize. Add a dozen concentrates and you may now have hundreds of molecules that weren’t present when you started. Can you taste them? Maybe? 🤷🏻♂️ hard to say, but certainly at least some of them effect what you’re tasting.
Flavor concentrates are composed of molecules called esthers. Some flavors (like coffee) contain hundreds of esthers, some contain relatively few. Understanding how esthers combine can greatly change how you approach recipe creation or editing. Unfortunately that is a monumental task and not for everybody, and not truly necessary to make DIY that you enjoy 🤷🏻♂️
A ton of good discussion here. DIY is what you want out of it. I also like the Sweetness of sweeteners, and use CAP SS, Stevia, and even sucralose still sometimes. So even if you're using all the "bad" stuff in commercial juice, you'll still save lots of money over time, as well as adjust as you please. I was never big on custards, but I'm sure there's still folks using Diacetyl/AP flavors but keep quiet for fear of ostracization, same as a lot of sweetener users. At the end of the day, it's your juice and you gotta do you. Who cares if I think your recipe is too sweet, if you like it that's what matters. It seems you want to add more sweetener, but think it's "wrong" way to DIY. I see someone about to give up and go back to Hype Man or whatever, losing all the other benefits of DIY. Just add more sweetener to a small bottle of whatever you made, and see if you like it, then add more if you want! That's the real spirit of DIY.
I have only been doing DIY for a few months myself and I noticed the same thing about sweetness at first. Recipes with no sweetener seemed bland. Recipes with .5% super sweet weren't sweet enough. Once I allowed my recipes with .5% super sweet to steep a few weeks it made a difference.
I'm sure adding 1% would come closer to commercial flavors but didn't want that much sucralose in my mixes. I am guessing most commercial liquids use 1-2% sweetener. They also use expensive high shear mixers or homogenizers.
Also, tfa sweetener is 5% sucralose and 5% ethyl maltol. It can enhance some flavors in small amounts, but mute others in large amounts due to ethyl maltol. Cap super sweet is 10% sucralose and enhances sweetness to the whole recipe and gives that sugar lips feeling.
In conclusion, the key to successful DIY in my opinion is finding great recipes to mix, then you don't need massive sweetener to cover up the inconsistencies of the flavors. I have found numerous recipes that only use .5% super sweet and were delicious after a good steep. Don't give up. Stock up on the most used flavors and keep on mixing.
Commercial juices over flavor their juices.
Just use Sucralose if you want to use it. It's why DIY is fun. Do what you want to do.
Do you recommend one over another? I have only tried TFA so far and it helped a little I guess but I didn't notice much difference.
I don't bother anymore after around 6 months.
Besides that it destroys coils way to fast (in 1 day if I use 1% SuperSweet), you get used to it.
I get the sweetness from the aromas (Strawbeery, Mango, Red Apple, Raspberry, etc.)
Slightly related to OPs post regarding sweetener, but, does sweetener need to be involved in the steeping process? Or is it ok to put it in after?
I had the same question a few months ago, and was told it wasn't necessary to steep in the sweetener. Since then I've been mixing and tasting and adding sweetener afterwards if necessary.
Edit, added post: https://www.reddit.com/r/DIY_eJuice/comments/dckksz/does_cap_super_sweet_need_to_be_steeped_in
Sweet, this is what I was looking for. How long would you say until the sweetener is sufficiently mixed in?
For me, I just SnV after the sweetener is added to test it again. Sweetness is a bit pronounced at first but fades a touch and sits where it should be in a day or so. For the most part I'm only adding 1 drop per 10 ml, but I only use CAP super sweet. If youre using a maltol sweetener (cotton candy 'flavor') it may have to develop a bit more.
What do you think steeping is for? It's so that your flavors become homogeneous. How is something going to be homogeneous if you don't add it?
If you continue to vape commercial juice, alongside DIY, you'll be less likely to adapt. If you've recently quit smoking, you just aren't going to have the ability to taste effectively for a while. And then it's a matter of personal palate. For example, most drink mixes you'll buy in a store... If you prefer them made as directed, you probably want overly flavored and overly sweetened juices too. (Generally those single-serve tubes that suggest mixing with a 500ml bottle are far better moxed with a 24oz bottle, maybe even a 1l bottle.)
Imo. the difference between commercial and diy Liquids is not based solo on sweeteners!
There are more possibilities to create a Liquid which is liked by >75% of the Consumers!
I'm not really sure what you are saying in the second part of your post.
I didn't have any transition period when I started DIY, because I actively avoided super sweet juice before that. I hate that lingering mouthfeel that a lot of sweeteners give me, and I can only take a few puffs before I get sick of the flavors. Plus, they kill coils and I'm a cheapskate, so that too.
The sweetest I ever go is 4 drops of FW Sweetener in a 30mL bottle, which is something like 1%, and that's a flavor that I have to switch away from every once in a while because it's good, but too sweet.
If you're looking for that mouth coating, Cap SS is the way to go, but it's really a hammer. It can mute flavors, and it is not easy on coils. Try it just at 1%, and increase from there if it's not enough.
> So, how long did it take you before you were accustomed to the DIY?
I never got used to the excessive sweetness of most commercial juices. 9 out of 10 juices I tried being way too sweet for my taste is the primary reason I got interested in DIY flavors.
I’ve learned to use what I know. I’ll take a recipe that I’ve made that I think tastes really good and add enough super sweet to give it a boost. One thing I learned about Super Sweet is that you will need to think less not more. The rule I use is 1 drop per 10mls of liquid. If I’m making a 60 ml batch I only use 6 drops and even at that point it still feels like too much sometimes. The mentality I had to adapt when I started DIY is less is more. I spent a lot of time thinking more flavoring meant more flavor but that’s MOSTLY wrong. When I learned to use smaller percentages and layer different flavors to get the desired outcome it really does make it better. I’m at the point now where there’s only 2 flavors I vape that are a commercial juice.
That 2 drops per 10 ml is exactly what I used with my TFA haven't tried super sweet yet though.
And I haven't been overflavoring or anything. I tried my first recipe made with a scale finally after it was done steeping yesterday after I made this post. That one came out really good. So i am relieved for that one. The others were made via measuring and there were only a few and were liquid barn. Maybe their flavors just aren't for me / needa just keep trying new recipes and find what works for me.
What kind of vapes do you like? I know this sounds generic but diy or die on YouTube helped me out a lot! And there’s a sidebar on this sub that has a lot of flavor notes. That’s one of the things I use when mixing is reading up on other people’s notes as well as my own.
I like his content. I have watched a little so far cause there are SO many. Plan to watch a lot more
Generally I like bakeries. Tbph when I started not long ago I made several bottles all at once of Liquid Barn flavors and they are advertised as if they are meant to be vaped as one shots even though they aren't necessarily. I think that is in large part to blame for my initial hatred for my diy juices and their lack of flavor.
I finally tried a juice recipe that has been steeping for the last 10 days from ATF. It was "A Dinner Lady Lemon Tart Remix" and it was the first one I made by weight cause I got a scale. And i am relieved to say it tastes AMAZING and does not lack flavor at all. So, I am feeling a lot less discouraged today.
I have a couple other recipes still steeping and a few more flavors in the mail so at this point I am pretty stoked again about diy.
Next thing I wanna do is get some 5ml bottles to try single flavor testing and try modifying some recipes I like. Then, hopefully, eventually, will try my hand at making recipes from scratch.
The best sweetener I found is Sugar Daddy. The guy who made it said, "it is a mix of of all of them." It doesn't gunk coils as fast as SS. To me it tastes closer to sugar. Super Sweet (SS), is rated 400 to 600x sweeter than sugar. It can gunk coils real fast. I have used SS up to 1%. I have been doing DIY for almost 9 years. You have to find what works for your taste no matter what others say. You will learn what works and what doesn't for you.
I read on a certain DIY website that Sugar Daddy mutes flavors big time. I'm looking for a good sweetener because I'm not always happy with Super Sweet. What percentages do you use Sugar Daddy in and what, if any, kind of flavor muting do you get from it?
It can over long steep times. But I haven't had it do that for me. I use sugar daddy in many things where SS won't work. It has a completely different taste. I will use it instead of SS for pod systems to keep the coil from dying. I will mix a recipe, split it, add SS to one then sugar daddy to the other and test it to see which is better. I use sugar daddy at larger % because it is mostly in VG. Ranging from 1 to 3%>
Ever try PUR SS? I didn't watch the podcast on sweeteners, but from his notes it kinda sounded like he was saying that one was the best, but he could be getting some type of compensation for that endorsement as well so you have to take those things with a grain of salt. I just figured if you have 9 years experience with diy you've quite possibly been doing it for longer than he has and might be more knowledgeable on the topic.
Simeone else recommended this one to me on a fb group. Oddly enough was wondering if mixing the types of sweeteners would be effective at all.
And truth. Thanks for your input.
It depends on what items you put as a catagory of a sweetener. There are flavors in themselves that add sweetness. For example, marshmallow. I have mixed together as a stone many "sweet" tasting flavors to add to a recipe to avoid over use of SS. But I had to do a lot of single flavor tests to get that. It is to my taste, but I have had others try it and it isn't sweet enough or even too sweet for them.
You can try monkfruit extract: https://www.reddit.com/r/DIY_eJuice/comments/4scv9j/monk_fruit_nn_recipe/