Newbie to mixing, please be kind. (Plus I'm old so respect your elders. LOL) I quit smoking 7 years ago using "tutti frutti" vape from a local vape shop. Both local stores are out of business so I order it out of CA. I'm trying to find and mix a recipe close to what it is. (It's a 70 30 blend and 1.5 nicotine.)The flavor is bubblegum and fruit stripe gum and something else I can't quite figure out. (There is no tropical fruit in the current juice I vape and the juice is a fairly bright pink.) I tried using FA Fruity Stick Gum at 10% and different brands of bubble gum at 2% to 3% in different batches along with 1 ml of Capella sucralose (mixed 1 drop to 30 mls of pg.) They all kind of taste washed out and not very sweet. I also have Ethyl Maltol but I'm not sure if you can use it in a candy flavor for sweetness.
Ethyl Maltol mutes, it doesn't add sweetness. I think you mean TPA Fruity Stick Gum (some vendors use a logo for the "Flavor Apprentice" that looks like "FA" but is not actually FlavourArt). It sounds like you might be using so much of that that it's muting the flavor. Can you explain a bit more about the "1ml of Capella sucralose (mixed 1 drop to 30 mls of pg)" part? Are you talking about adding Cap Super Sweet directly to your liquid, or making some kind of pre-diluted DIY sweetener?
Yes it is Flavor Apprentice, I used the wrong abbreviation. :-( I mixed a pre-diluted sweetener. It was recommended elsewhere to dilute the suralose as it was so sweet and would overwhelm the recipe. I used one drop of the Cap super sweet to 30 mls of pg and using 1 ml of that in my recipe.
Missing some important info there - 1ml of that dilution in how much total liquid mixed?
EDIT: Usually you just dilute very potent flavors by a 10:1 factor, then 0.2% becomes 2% in your recipe. That seems a lot more straightforward, and without knowing how big the bottle you mixed was 1ml sounds like a lot even with that very very high dilution ratio of 1 drop : 30 mls. Your dilution is 1500:1 which seems like an almost meaningless amount of Cap SS - I'm not normally an advocate of using a lot of it, but 1ml of your dilution is only 0.00067 grams of Cap SS, which is probably not an amount humans can detect.
The flavor you have is TFA, some vendors mislabel it as FA Flavor Apprentice. Flavour Art is FA and they have a Tutti Fruity flavor that supposedly tastes like Juicy Fruit gum. Some house juices just use single flavors, it could just be as simple as that.
Definitely run some 10ml test batches. 4% and up.
Test sweetener at 1drop increments
Can put a drop of juice on your knuckle to test too
Likely will need a second flavor to back up/fill out the profile
Purilum Dragonfruit perhaps
Undiluted sweetener? I had diluted it 1 drop to 30 mls of pg and then used 1 ml in a 30 ml batch.
I wondered about the Dragonfruit and how that would vape. I'm not adverse to trying some fruity flavor recipes too.
I thought wow this is going to be super easy. Find a flavor and mix it up. WRONG. More complex than I thought. Kudos to all of you mixologists!!!!
That must be some potent sweetener!
LOL. Apparently I misunderstood what they were talking about in the other site I was in. They weren't terribly clear about things and they made me feel kind of stupid. It was like I should have known a lot more even though I was a beginner. They talked about how sweet it was and that you should really use as little as possible.
I'm not sure where you read that you need to dilute the sweetener. I really don't think that's necessary. I've used CAP Super Sweet anywhere from 0.2% to 1.0%, depending on the recipe, and it's absolutely fine. In fact, many of the sweet commercial juices you buy will often have an even higher percentage than that.
A lot of people don't like sweetener in their juices, but if you're somebody that does, I'd suggest 0.5% CAP SS or 1.0% TFA Sweetener. Undiluted, of course.
I read it on a different site. I'm glad I found you guys, you've been really helpful.
I'm vaping the Fruity Stick Gum without the sweetener and it's not working out. So I nixed up another small batch and added the Cap SS at a lower level to start.
I really really appreciate everyone's input. All of the bits of info are helping take the frustration away from not being able to get it right. At least now I know what I'm potentially doing wrong.
Sounds good
Hi. Your flavors probably taste „washed out“ as you describe it because they are muted. This is often seen when flavors are used at too high %. The only Fruity Stick gum I found is from TFA (The Flavor Apprentice) and is used at 4% on average in a mix (you used it at 10%). FA is FlavourArt, they do not have that gum. CAP Super Sweet at 1-2% should taste almost sickening sweet. You most likely don‘t want to recreate the pink flavor as it may be food coloring, which has no place in an ejuice. Ethyl maltol can be used in a mix, but only at low percentages as it will mute your flavor even more.
Do you taste single fruits or is it more a juicy fruit flavor? Is there some kind of menthol and/or coolant in the original? Having never tasted what you are trying to get close to recreating, we need a detailed as possible description to be able to offer help.
My fault, I used the wrong abbreviation. It is Flavor Apprentice. (Next time I'll review the abbreviations again before posting to make sure I use the correct one) I also diluted the Cap Super Sweet down to one drop per 30 ml in pg and used 1 ml of that.
I taste a mix of bubble gum and something similar to a fruit stripe gum/juicy fruit and maybe a bit of cotton candy. There are no single fruit flavors coming through just candy flavors.
It's a very sweet candy taste with no menthol or coolant.
The tutti fruitti flavors I've tried so far have been more of a tropical fruit flavor.
Hey if you’re looking for resources to learn more about mixing here’s a few aimed at people just starting out. I would have been absolutely lost if I hadn’t found some of these so just spreading the good word!
Noted may help you find the right flavours you’re looking for? They’ve done episodes on bubblegum etc. I’ve put a link to the playlist below. Also, if you look up the bubblegum FOTW thread I posted some notes on everything they discussed on the show (search by newest comment first’). I’ve been putting episode notes up on the respective FOTW threads since the start of this year if they’re useful to you.
Noted discuss individual flavours. Useful if you wanna find out about which flavours are good and which are not worth bothering with. There’s a lot of bad flavours out there. Plus you’ll pick up loads of other information about mixing generally.
Link to Noted playlist- https://www.youtube.com/playlist?list=PLGdgfUai-XB3w0TYCzkjkwUKxYIQBgsPJ
Link to Noted Bubblegum episode- https://youtu.be/71_vciarU9s
Developed did a few videos for beginners. There’s a link to a list of flavours in the description that they suggest buying first as they’re easier to work with, versatile, commonly used in recipes etc. They did another video on beginner recipes you can find on their channel. They usually mix recipes together on their show. I found it useful to see how people with a lot of experience create recipes, how they choose flavours, structure it etc.
https://youtu.be/DEhbko4w-aA
DIYorDIE has done loads of videos for beginners, as well as loads of other things. They are shorter and about more specific subjects.
Here’s his mixing for beginners playlist- https://www.youtube.com/playlist?list=PLRP3MfkHmZ19gUVsM8xAnYUZLmsU5iSt-
I hope all or some of that helps you out in some way. Developed and Noted are also available as podcasts under ‘In The Mix’.