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You have not Single Flavor Tested: Getting familiar with your flavor concentrates is the single biggest step you can take towards being able to quickly develop successful and appealing recipes. Like any other craft, you most become familiar with what you are working with. Your entire DIYing experience is going to be much more successful if you understand and appreciate the concentrates you are going to be using.
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Accurate Measurements ~ Equals Consistency Whether by Weight, which requires using a precision set of digital scales that can measure down to .01 grams. This choice requires little effort, just start dripping your desired flavor concentrate into a bottle until you have reached your desired percentage in grams.
Or by Volume: Which will require blunt nose syringes on hand. Using separate syringes for each flavor is of great benefit when filling up the bottles. You will be using milliliters as your percentage of measurement.
Dumping or measuring flavor concentrates by drops is a mixture for disaster. You want to have a consistent quality product. One that provides a quality E-liquid now and in the future. Eyeballing, Guessing and Drops can not provide the same level of quality. You want a reliable and accurate way of measuring your ingredients.
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You are trying to Clone Commercial E-Juice: Everyone wants to recreate some of their favorite e-liquids from various vendors and merchants. You would think, these are the best e-liquid recipes to follow if you are looking to Clone one of your favorite e-liquids. In truth, most clone recipes fall way short of the mark. What I have found is most commercial juice is over-flavored and over-sweetened. This is one of the reasons I started mixing my own e-liquids, I couldn’t find E-liquids I wanted to vape that didn’t taste off, weird, or just too sweet. I also didn’t enjoy my coils being so gunked up (back in those days of 510 bridged atomizers that were $20 a 5 pack) making me change my coil every day, sometimes twice a day, it got expensive fast. But even with today’s equipment, if I’m using premade coils or making my own coils, I am not having to rewick cotton once a day. In fact, many times I go as long as a month before rewicking by builds. I stopped trying to replicate other Mixers recipes. And started to mix to suite my own palate. I mix using cleaner flavors that are stronger and aren’t presweetened with sugars or other things. I truly believe when you start trying to create your own E-liquids, versus trying to recreate another Mixer/Companies E-liquids. That is when you begin to really enjoy the hobby and the overall experience of DIYing.
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Ingredient Substitutions Going off-recipe is a fun and creative part of the DIYing process, for sure. But it also requires a little more due diligence on our part to understand how the additional or substitute ingredient will affect the recipe. Remember cutting out one flavor concentrate then substituting it with another will give you a very different result than the recipe author intended. Not a bad thing. No, as long as you have a good working knowledge of how the substitute ingredient will affect the mix. Refer to Number 1# above.
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Using Too Much Flavoring Kills Your Recipe So how does over-flavoring kill your recipes? If you enjoy complex style recipes you will end up with a muddled mess if you’ve over-flavored. It may be muted. It may be harsh. Even simple recipes that are over-flavored can suffer from these problems. Over-flavoring is one of the most common reasons for harshness, next to bad batches of peppery harsh nicotine. The other unpleasant side effect of over-flavoring is that it can cause you to go flavor blind (not able to taste a flavor anymore) far faster than if you had not exposed yourself to massive amounts of that flavoring aroma. Always start at a lower percentage in mix, check recommendations on percentages from the manufacturer and other experienced mixers & become familiar with how your flavor concentrates work together. Many times, less is more.
*copied from Mark Turner not written by me.
What's amazing to me is I've never had a commercial e-Liquid that didn't start gunking my coils up before 400 puffs. With the juice I've made, I'm at 4500 puffs and the cotton is as white as it was when I put it in there. I even use cap super sweet, I just never go over 0.5%, except in a few juices.
I've been mixing since I've started vaping. I've tried many, many juices since then, and nothing comes close to my own stuff. Not only do the coils last longer, and I do not not cough as much, but also the overly sweet, and often one-dimensional flavor of the stock juices does not stand a chance against my own diy liquids.
There are exceptions when it comes flavor, but, so far, no exceptions when it comes to coil gunk and coughing.
laughs in graduated cylinder
I'm new to this, so I figured I'd try to vape single flavors and one shots only in order to have good eliquid.
Adding WS23 and CAP Super Sweet shouldn't be a problem either.
I hope it works.
TEN TIPS FOR BEGINNING MIXERS (What I wish I had known when I started DIY by Melody Andrews) (1) Watch some you tube videos on juice mixing so you familiarize yourself with vaping terms and equipment needed (2) Go to E-liquid-recipes or DIY or die (any recipe & calculator site) and look through a lot of recipes deciding ahead of time what you are going to want to make. Then when you do buy your ingredients and raw materials, you will know exactly what you need and you won't waste money on things you don't need, and you'll have everything you do need to get started and you won't be disappointed. (3) Record everything. I'm old school and I record everything down in a notebook that became a juice cookbook. But do what's right for you, whether it's on your smartphone, tablet, laptop or even like me, pen and paper. There are many reasons for this. If you make something you like, you'll want to make it again. If you make something you hate, you'll not want to make it again. Don't count on remembering your recipe. You won't. You also write pertinent information, like recipes you want to try, what flavors you think work well together, how something tastes at different percentages, what watts you vaped it at. I change watts for pretty much every juice. (4) Learn how to make test batches. I make a 5 ml test batch for every new flavor I buy so I can see how each one performs. Is it good at 2%? 5%? You'll record that. You have to get to know your flavors before you start incorporating them in recipes. Also, those standalone test batches are your first juice. If you make small test batches and hate it, you didn't lose too much. It sucks to make 120 ml batch you think looks great in a recipe and then you hate it. (5) Don't try to make really complex juice at first. One to five flavors is plenty. You have to learn to crawl before you walk, and walk before you can run! (6) Ask others and research where you're going to buy your supplies from to get the best deal and find a reputable business. Myself and hundreds of others all had our money taken by an online Vape business that took everyone's money and didn't send any merchandise. Don't let that be you! (7) When you start mixing, research MANY recipes of the profile you're wanting to create. Many recipes that are posted are terrific, but there are awful ones also. (8) Decide how you're going to steep your juice once it's made. There are hundreds of different methods people use. The best method is TIME. (9) Make sure you pick flavors that can go together well and create many flavor profiles, and don't forget some sweetener if you want to use it (sometimes you need a few drops to complete your recipe) and I always like having whipped cream and various creams on hand. (10) HAVE FUN!! This is not rocket science! Nine times out of 10 you can fix anything you might have messed up. There are great people on these sites that will offer help if you get stuck. Don't be afraid to ask for help! Wishing you great tasting juice and happy vaping.
Yeah I pretty much agree with your post.
I plan to test the single flavors first, and have bought a handful that have been rated good in the weekly single flavor threads. Pic related
I do write stuff down and plan to test percentages, albeit the threads recommend some already, but regardless I have to try to figure out the percentage that's right for me.
As for oneshots, I don't know whether to make big batches or do small first.
I feel like I should do big batches and follow manufacturer's percentage and steep time, and that it shouldn't be a problem.
Only for single flavors, and new combinations will I do small batches until I like a ratio, in which case big batches will follow.
ALWAYS do small batches first!! like 5-20ml maximum! you never know if you're going to like or hate something until YOU try it; a lot of vapers have sensitives to certain compounds in some flavors (i can't vape anything cinnamon, some people can't stand butyric acid which is in many flavors), some people can't taste certain flavors (strawberry mute seems to be fairly common), and some people even taste black pepper in certain flavors (like TPA Vanilla Bean Ice Cream).
most of my testers are 10ml. it sucks to waste materials on juice you hate (esp now that nicotine is hard to get for those in the US). it's literally like dumping $ down the drain, so always always always start small :)
All logical advice. Question about the first bit. What is, or is there an efficient way to single flavor test? I ask because I probably have in excess of 100 concentrates. I’ve made a handful of decent recipes for myself but I’m always looking to improve
Make 10 ml bottles of each flavor to test. You can make them with or without nic. A beginner is usually told this and these testers are their first juices. I have 1013 flavors and I have tested every single one. I can look at a combo and tell if it will be good or bad without mixing it. But I have been doing it for 10+ years.
Interesting. I see a great deal of wick changes in my near future. Over a thousand concentrates is impressive. I can see myself being there after that amount of time. I’ve only recently got into diy and wished I had done it so much sooner.
You will get there. Plus take your time, that's the fun part for me. Learning how one flavor changes another. Like how adding super sweet to TFA absinthe, makes it look like it boils. There is a combo of raspberry and lemonade that interact to cause a powder taste. I even found Klingon ale (not a good taste). Discovered an orginal tic tac. I tell you this to say, you are more likely to find what you don't like at the beginning, but that's a good thing because after that you will know.