I'm relatively new to DIY, been stalking this sub reddit for a good while to further educate myself.
I have tried a handful of the well recommended recipes of here such as the blueberry trinity and various others and I am struggling to get good flavour from these recipes. I have been using a GeekVape Wenax K1 recently, using the 1.2 ohm pods. I also have some 0.8 ohm pods. I have noticed the flavour is substantially better on the 0.8 ohm but I like the mouth to lung feel on the 1.2 ohm, the 0.8 ohm vapour production can feel a bit over the top to me. I also vape nic salts as opposed to freebase nicotine.
So my question is, do I need to look into a different setup for these DIY recipes? I like the convenience of the smaller pod style devices and not sure if a powerful box mod style device is right for me.
Or would modifying the recipes I am looking at to have higher flavour concentrate percentages work well? I have read from some members on here that pushing the concentrate percentages too high leads to muting of the flavours, but I can't think of any other way round this.
Please let me know your thoughts and ideas, thanks.
Hi. Definitely don‘t go double or triple flavor percentages. It‘ll either mute or have awful off notes (plastic, hair spray, burnt rubber, perfume, just to mention a few possibilities). Do it 10% at a time, like u/isuamadog suggested.
Are you using any sweetener? If you are used to commercial eliquid, you‘ll need a bit of sweetener to taste anything. Commercial is oversweetened and your tastebuds need to adjust to DIY. Capella Super Sweet at 0.25-0.5% should help (commercial is > 2%). Be aware though, it reduces the lifespan of your coils.
Thanks for the comment, I am going to try 10% additions at a time as suggested, I do have some Capella Super Sweet but have yet to try it, I will also try that at 0.5%, I also have some koolada 23 as I do enjoy the cooling effect, I have seen posts suggesting this at 0.5% to 1% so might see if this improves the recipe for me too.
As you have suggested, I think I am comparing these DIY recipes to commercial liquids which is what I am used to, I was vaping Yeti grape for quite a while and it does have a lot of sweetness which is suggesting a high amount of sweetener as you have pointed out.
Make sure you are doing 10% increments of those flavors and not adding an actual 10% more
Thanks, this is what I am going to try out, I am thinking I might try a 50% increase to start with as I'm using a 1.2ohm coil and work down if required, so use TFA blueberry extra at 4.5% and FW blueberry at 3%, but keep FA bilberry at 0.5% as that stuff really smells potent and see if I notice that improves it for me. I'm also going to use some sweetener as advised by others as I think this is one of the main components I'm missing switching over from commercial juices.
Koolada, or WS-3, not only mutes mixes, but some people get a nasty plasticky/ chemical off-note from it. WS-23 is usually the better coolant option as it's just flavorless cooling for most, however it can also mute so be wary of that fact when upping the coolants.
i've done most of my testing on an asmodus c4 single coil RDA for a good long while now. However, my preferred method of vaping is MTL and I find some recipes translate better to low watts/MTL than others. So now i have started to mix and test exclusively the way that I vape. I truly dislike inhaling cubic meters of vapor in order to taste things and find a restricted air flow single coil to be the upper level of what I can tolerate. That said, you can search ATF for MTL recipes and see if there's some that look decent. The selection is limited ime but you can maybe use that experience to find something that you can adapt to work for you and maybe start branching into making mixes that suit your preferred vaping style.
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or you could try mixing a recipe at various percentage increases and see if it hits better flavor saturation for you. for example, BB trinity / BB trin + 10% / BB trin + 20% / etc. That's probably what I would do just to see if a flavor boost actually helps. Try it. Then make a post on your findings. Take one for the team, bud. ;)
Thanks for the input, I'm thinking of trying the blueberry trinity at double or triple the percentages. Might just boost the FW blueberry and TFA blueberry extra and leave the FA Bilberry at 0.5% as it smells so potent to me from the bottle. I will give that a shot and report my findings on here.
I used to use Mtl Rta but I switched to DTL or RDTL cause the grub screws are usually only big enough to hold a single wire coil which I find I needed to change or rewick once a week now I use Mesh rta or single coil rta but at 50-60w no giant clouds.(.2ohm or .3ohm triple core spools) When I used Mtl i tried kanthal,SS,N80 i just couldnt get much flavor from my 4 mtl tanks so now I turn the airflow 3/4 shut on my DTL single coil tank n mesh tanks.I test my Diy mixes on the RBA section on my aegis boost at 25-28w but fill the finished product in my DTL Rtas but I also use 10mg Salt so I can't really vape at 80-100w and it keeps me honest from chain vaping..I generally mix it at 70/30 60/40 n been much happier with my recipies but i get it..its debatable..personally I'm done vaping at 12-18watts its a lil too hard to draw n noticably less flavor unless I'm a lil more heavy handed with the concentrates but also not a high watt dual coil coil either.. I'm def not a cloud chucker.I don't get any better flavor with high watts n dual coils just massive clouds n waste of juice.Right now I'm using the ofrf Gear Rta with a .3ohm and mtl drip tip.Pretty happy now where I'd say I'm between DTL and and a restricted direct to lung 👍👌
Get a MTL RDA for testing
Thanks for your input, I am going to look into getting one of these, rebuilding my own coils is something I also need to look into as I haven't tried this before but it definitely sounds like the way to go with DIY, thanks.
VapeFly Galaxies
Wotofo STNG
VapeFly Holic
GeekVape Ammit
DamnVape Intense
VandyVape Berserker
Digiflavor ETNA
AmbitionMods SPIRAL
Cthulhu 1928
PhevandaMods A2
Arctic Dolphin REXX
As I currently don’t have the time for building coils / wicking because I’m out of town for 4 weeks I’m using a VOOPOO Drag X Pro Kit with TPP-X Coils, 0.15 Ohm and wattage range between 80-100W. Pretty happy with the flavor, and no leaking in the past 2 weeks. At home I’m building a Vandy Vape Widowmaker. Flavor is a bit better, but the Drag X is honestly doing a great job. I’m a 100% DL guy tho.
Thanks for your comment, I guess what I need to figure out is do I stick with the devices and ohm range I am familiar with and try my best to adapt recipes to this, or do I try out these higher power devices and use the recipes as stated.
It seems to me now after my trial and error with this that a lot of the popular well known recipes are designed to be used on powerful cloud chaser style devices.
I am currently looking through some recipes on ATF which say they are designed for MTL and pod style devices, and the first thing I do notice is the percentages are much higher for these recipes, some go as high as 20% overall for flavour concentrates and additives such as sweetener which is way above the sub 10% I am seeing for most recipes.
Every one can give their opinions on what percentages to use concerntrates but it's down to your taste buds that's why everyone should single test every flavour to find out where they like that particular flavour sits best for them and it's the same with rdas, tanks and mods,
Thanks for the input. Think I might single test FW blueberry and see what percentage seems to work well to me on the device I'm currently using, maybe then I can introduce other blueberry concentrates such as the TFA blueberry extra to give a more complex blueberry flavour and work up from there.
You'll need to bump the % of flavours up a bit if you want to get good flavor from a pod and use some sweetener and i would stick to simple recipes as the complex ones don't do good in pods, something like 2 or max 3 flavors.
I use an RDA to test recipies then fill my Rtas ,subohms,pod mods but when I use eciggs n refillable pod eciggs i noticed they need a bit more flavoring due to their lower watts.That's why disposables have a lot of flavor cause they need a,lot of flavor since their only 7 watts and only 1,straight flavor n mostly filled with all flavoring sweetner n tons of salt nic..doesn't mean I'm a fan of them as they blow hardly no vapor n remind of a,toy after using a good vape system
Ideally the recipe needs to work for whatever device you're comfortable using. I prefer to use a sub ohm tank with nic salts. Just make small batches of a recipe that fits the profile you like (10ml at a time) Then bump it up 10% at a time. As others have mentioned there is a function to do this for you. I know for sure on ELR I have done that I don't know about ATF yet but I'm sure it's there. If you're in a pod device simple recipes work better. Add a smidge of extra sweetener. I like ws23 myself and tons of menthol so it can be done.
Try this one but bump up like 20% on the Forest Fruit and add 0.75 Super Sweet. I think I left the rest the same for a pod. That's about as simple as it gets. Forest Fruit works really well in a pod.
I think I brought down the marshmallow a little bit here.
All of this one needs is some sweetener for a pod. It also takes ws23 no problem.
I add .75 ws23 to this and .75 menthol to it all the time. This is one of the recipes I have vaped the most. It also takes really well to adding a single fruit at a time.
Mango Dragonfruit Refresher w/ Blackberry Inclusion -Starbucks Drink
Thanks for your comment and the recipe recommendations, those look really good. Going to give some of those a try, do need to look into buying some more concentrates too.
Take your time and make your list of flavors so that you're not placing multiple orders. There's just so many good recipes out there that it can get a bit much. But try to just focus on the profiles you already like. Like I like menthol berries and fruit. I like ice cream kinda flavors because they're cold. It took me a while to narrow it down to what I like and now I just stick with that for the most part. There's a discord for the sub that you can join. I highly suggest before you order flavors to post a list of what you're considering ordering. They have saved me so many times from getting a bad flavor and they're awesome about suggesting replacements.
Imo. the average Pods are not that good for the majority of the DiY Recipes, I think a real Atomizer with at least 50 Watt is needed for the non-sweet Liquids.
Yeah, the more I try these recipes and the more research I do on here it's becoming apparent that the setup I am using is not going to be the best for getting a substantial amount of flavour. I'm going to tinker with the recipes as people have suggested on here to see if I notice any improvement, I'm not overly optimistic however.
Maybe older recipes when devices were less powerful and MTL was more popular might be a good idea?
All kinds..The idea is to save money so I like RTAs both mesh and wire.If u can install n wick a coil your already off to a good start.I do like single 21700 mods as opposed to box mods as I generally vape around 50-60w 10mg Salt nic Diy 70/30..I use it in all my atomizers Rda Rta Subohms pod mods..if I used dual coil attys and was into cloud chucking I'd use my dual 21700 vandy vape guar but as a carry around I like the cylinder mod single 21700 100w mods with a decent mesh Rta straight glass