I disagree with this posts’ title.

There are absolutely some terrible recipes on ELR.

Take a step back, put yourself into a brand new mixers’ shoes and then reevaluate that statement.

ATF is no different. There are some bad recipes there too.

I do not believe that you can differentiate between a bad recipe and a bad mixer.

After several train wreck mixes from both sites all I can say is thank god for the DIY_eJuice Discord server.

They saved me a lot of time and money by suggesting alternative, better flavors than a lot of the ones listed on both sites.

I agree, both sites have their good points. Also, that old recipe doesn't mean bad, and a person certainly may not enjoy a highly rated recipe. Taste is too subjective and devices vary so much.

I certainly won't take issue with title of this post. :) Especially since I probably fall into the "bad" grouping.

I've used both ELR and ATF to put up a recipe. Don't use either to reference for mixing up my batches, though the recipes are mostly for my sake for a future reference. I tend to look on ATF when thinking about flavor purchases to get an idea of how much people are using. And occasionally peruse the recipes with that flavor when trying to consider what combinations might work out well.

The closest recipe I'd ever tried by cutting percentages in half was a tobacco-VCT type flavoring.. a supposed clone of Space Jam. Never actually tried that commercial flavor, so have no way of knowing how accurate it was. But since it was a rather old recipe, was betting that they weren't using flavor-banger atomizers.

Almost never ever do I go by any recipe on any site. As you've made a wonderful point here:

>Flavor is subjective. Some people are strawberry blind. Some people taste vomit in DX/v2 flavors.

So I'd be more inclined to match my buds with another mixer before resorting to any specific recipes. Does that mean I don't trust other experienced mixers here? Not at all. As you'd pointed out, the Noted YouTube videos are awesome. It's shocking to see they only have a few thousand views each. I guess the DIY community is still relatively small, based on that fact. Or maybe the word hasn't gotten out yet.

Most of my inspiration comes from thinking about what might go good into my batches or when going through my SFTs while I'm vaping it.

I've been mixing since 2015. Back then, there was ELR, a French clone site, and a couple of other unmemorable sites. Then came ALF, which was "supposed" to have only quality recipes. I can tell you I've mixed absolutely unvapable juices following recipes from both ELR and ALF. Part of that is because I'm super picky, part of it is the difference between people's palates and the differences in vaping equipment. And sometimes, something just doesn't turn out like you hope or expect.

The only way to really be able to know if a recipe is likely to be "good" is to get familiar with the individual flavors (lots of single-flavor testing which is a pain), and how they work with other flavors. That comes with time and experience. And still, sometimes I mix something that I think, "this is gonna be weird, maybe even gross," and it turns out a favorite because of some unexpected chemical wizardry. See ID10-T's Pank Milk on ALF for an example. Should be vile, yet can't stop vaping it.

Pank Milk

There's one killer benefit ELR has over ATF; it's actually taken care of.

The best thing I can say about ATF now is that it has a distinct lack of copied recipes, due to the paid nature of it. ELR tends to have a number of copies of famous recipes due to people copying them to their account and not setting them to private. But even that is worth dealing with, knowing that the site is taken care of.

Of course, my ATF subscription expired about 8 months ago when, 4 months into an annual subscription, it randomly said it couldn't verify with Google and disabled my subscription. Google can't find an issue and I can't even get u/queuetue to answer me, so I started using ELR again.

Hi. When I first started out, I basically stuck to ATF, which was good for me at that time. I Admin not liking a lot of the stuff I mixed. For a while I‘ve been using both. ELR is fine if you have some basic understanding of flavors, % and reading recipes. A lot of great recipes can be found there, but you kind of really need to know what your doing, as you actually stated.
All too often, folks new to DIY choose recipes that are just crap, and then they get frustrated. If we’re lucky, they join Discord before returning to smoking. I understand where you’re coming from though.

First time I visited ATF the images were broken and then limitations on how many recipes you could make and I was like uuuh, dated and paid site? No thanks.

Ended up on ELR. Granted, I enjoy doing single flavour tests and then making my own recipes. So I never really bothered to visit ATF. But I see now that they have working images again so will maybe check it for inspiration. Mostly check single flavour inputs from other people for info on things I'm considering buying.

Will check out that Noted: on youtube as well

Thanks. I never thought there could be recipes that were never even tested. I do like to look at a number of recipes and get a general idea of what percent and flavors to pair with.

Have you tried Claim Your Throne (soap free!!) Mix on elr? Let it steep for a month, still tasted like soap.