My First DIY Juice

[release the kraken]

Got 345ml 18mg 100% vg nic from healthcabin (as part of a larger order and before I found wizardlabs) and 500ml 18mg 100% pg from wizardlabs.us mixed them together to get 58% pg and 42% vg base (as I vape 60/40 at 18mg) all ready to just add flavor (I like a little less pg due to harshness). While I bought a total of 60 plus flavors, I could not help but have my first 3ml test juice be BUTTERED POPCORN. All I can say is that its fantastic. I used a 80/20 ratio on juice to flavor and I used 50/50 of butter and popcorn flavor. After its all totaled up I am paying .08 cents per ml of juice. I will be getting my first VV in a few weeks and looking forward to heating this popcorn up.

 

[Cerberus x]

What VV are you Looking for

 

[release the kraken]

I just bought this one yesterday $37.21 INNOKIN iTaste SVD Telescoping Variable Voltage Electronic Cigarette Battery Compartment at FastTech - Worldwide Free Shipping

after researching the lava tube (seriously $140), the provari (again seriously $180), the vamo v3 and the innokin svd, I went with the svd for $1 more than the vamo. I read reviews on different sites as well as ecf and also watched a bunch of youtube reviews. While it seems the provari is the king, no way I am paying that much. The lava tube seems to be close enough to the exact same things as the vamo but for $100 extra dollars. So most reviewers came down to recommending either vamo and svd as they both provide full features and abilities. The svd seemed to be the favorite, but many went with the vamo simply based on the lower price. But since I found them at the same price I went svd.

I may pick up and ego twist to carry as a spare, backup and easy travel vv.

 

[SawULook]

I have also thought about making my own juices, but I am still researching where to purchase the supplies and finding out more information on it. I will have to search this forum for more information.

WOW, buttered popcorn.....now your talking! I am just about to place an order for some caramel popcorn juice! I really want to find out more information on how to make my own juice, just because I want to learn!

 

[release the kraken]

Its actually really easy. On the DIY Juice subforum there is a downloadable spreadsheet you can use. Though I found that really too busy and too much crammed into a small space. Still good to have for reference and info. Instead I use a free program called ejuice me up by a guy that goes by breaktru. download it here eJuice Me Up - Best eJuice Calculator he also has his own forum but here is a link that is kind of the training manual eJuice Calculator - HOW TO

one place I made my mistake is that I thought since I use 18mg, that's what I have to buy. But you can see in the calc, in the first line you put the nic strength you bought and then the second line is to what strength you want to dilute to. The other mistake I made is that I bought 100% vg nic juice so that presented a problem with only having 18mg nic juice as I couldn't dilute it with regular pg to get to a 60/40 ratio as then that would dilute my nic. So I had to purchase some 100% pg nic juice.

If I knew then what I know now this is exactly what I would get
1. nic
a. buy it 50/50 from myfreedomsokes.com as they have a good price OR
b. buy 1 bottle 100%vg and 1 bottle 100%pg from wizardlabs.us and mix the two together to get 50/50
c. for the nic level you have two things to consider
1. if you are fine with vaping 50/50 then you can purchase your nic at the same level you vape (ie 18 mg) or you have to measure out your two different nic carriers at different levels to achieve the ratios you want
2. if you want the ability to change your pg and vg up and down then go up in the concentration of nic juice (ie 48, 60 or 100 mg) so you can dilute your nic juice down with desired levels of vg and or pg (the software does it all for you so don't worry)
2. pg and vg
a. again you can get from wizardlabs, myfreedomsmokes or even on amazon Amazon.com: Glycerin Vegetable Kosher USP - 1 Quart: Health & Personal Care and Amazon.com: Propylene Glycol - Food Grade USP - 1 Quart (32 Oz.): Health & Personal Care or from the first amazon link you can go to that places website and purchase their pg too, not sure why it isn't on amazon http://www.essentialdepot.com/servlet/the-Propylene-Glycol/Categories
b. FDA says this stuff ahs a two year shelf life when kept in a dark cool place. Keep that in mind when you decide what sizes to buy (same goes with the nic juice)
3. flavors
a. I have found the flavors apprentice and loranns to be the most popular, but there are others that make flavors as well. but as luck would have it wizardlabs.us also carries both in 8ml GLASS bottles (the glass is a huge bonus for storing and preserving) and only at $1.50 each
b. I would recommend getting a few bottles of ethyl maltos as well. Its basically a sweetener but its a sweetener in a sense that it acts like a buffer on flavors or flavor combos that have a sharp edge. another way to put it is that it rounds out the flavor rather than actually sweetening it. I suggest doing a little research on this wonder flavor/add
4. equipment
a. you don't need a lab to do this, get some gloves Nitrile Gloves - X-Large - Quantity Discounts
b. get some empty bottles in your desired sizes ( recommend 3 and 10 ml) 10ml LDPE Dropper Bottle with Child Resist Cap or many places have bottles with diff colored caps or a few with needle caps which can be nice depending on your hardware
c. getting a few glass bottles for long term storage is not a bad idea Results for Boston Round:Cobalt Blue Bottles or http://www.amazon.com/Boston-Round-...eywords=4oz+boston+glass+bottles&tag=e04ed-20
d. measuring is easy with syringes, I recommend getting a few of everything on this page (I didn't get the 20ml syringe) and that "might" come to $10 Syringes, Needles, and Pipettes getting the various sized syringes is key as the 1 ml syringe has the measurements when you have to do finite .1 increment measurements
e. I got labels for my bottles by going to vista prints and getting return address labels, 280 for $10 after shipping. I did custom ones so I made lines for flavor, pg/vg, nic, and date. Overnight prints has the same and depending on which one has sales is the one I would go with, or can just get these from amazon Amazon.com: Avery Rectangular Labels, 1 x 3 Inch, White, Removable, Pack of 72 (06728): Office Products

I looked at a lot of DIY kits and found I could get more of exactly what I wanted/needed and cheaper by getting my own stuff and I also found most places charged a HUGE MARKUP on the "kits". Some of this above may seem like a wizardlabs.us sales pitch, but they mix the nic to order and have a very good one stop shop to get almost every single thing you need at the very best prices (currently). Im sure someone will come along to undercut them pretty soon. This is all purely on my own research that I have compiled over the last two weeks. This may not be the best way, and others may know a few tips tricks and shortcuts, but this will get you your own DIY juice bar open for personal business IMHO with everything you need. (though some may state you need to get a nic test kit as well).

 

[goto10]

Excellent info, release the kraken! Thanks... I've quickly opened up my mind on the whole DIY juice thing since I've just been mixing a bunch of juices together as I try to find what I like anyway.

 

[Panga13]

kraken this is a great post. Its a pretty succinct summary of DIY setup. I found the DIY section of the forum had too much information.

I'm gathering stuff for my first DIY now.

I ordered a load of PA flavors & 100mg nic juice yesterday online. Most of the other bits I am finding I can pick up cheaply locally. VG is easy (any pharmacist). PG I should be able to find in the 'baking supply shop street'. Bottles, beakers & pipettes again from the pharmacy. I'm still searching on a graduated cylinder

The one frustration is syringes. They seem to be illegal to sell in Korea and pharmacists look at me like I'm a ...... addict or something. I'll probably get a buddy to drop some in the post.

And great shout on the labels, I hadn't considered that. I dont want to be doing the ejuice choosing lottery with 25 unlabelled bottles!

Agree also that 100mg nic is a better choice than e.g. 11mg. Its cheaper, its the strongest that is safe to handle and it gives the most flexibility in choosing the PG/VG mix of your DIY juice.

 

[release the kraken]

Actually after writing this all up I was curious what the exact startup cost would be for x amount of 10ml bottles and the cost per ml at wizardlabs.us since originally I bought stuff all over the place. My cart came to right at $207 for the following items (you obviously don't need to buy all 60 flavors right now, but I had to close to 500ml of flavoring to get the ratios lined up for this example)
1 48 mg 500 ml 100%vg nic
1 48 mg 500 ml 100%pg nic
1 500 ml 100%vg
1 500 ml 100%pg
60 bottles of flavor (480 ml of flavors)
2 each syringe and blunt needle tips
10 3ml, 10 10ml and 5 30ml bottles with childproof caps

Using 50/50 nic with diluting it down to 18 mg strength at 60/40 ratio I can get just around 266 bottles so with spillage and learning curve lets just say 250 bottles. Then with 20% flavoring per 10ml bottle, I can get 240 bottles with the amount of flavor, or round that down to 220 with spillage and learning curve (note you will still have plenty of nic, pg and vg to get another 30 10ml bottles if you get more flavors).

So the very worst case scenario if you spill and mess up a lot, you are looking at 220 10ml bottles (so 2200 ml) and you spent $210. Thus $210 divided by 2200ml rounds up to .095 cents per ml. You could also half my order to get around 110 bottles if you wanted.



I arrived at my estimated calculations for a 60/40 mixture using the following 10ml recipe
3.75 ml of the 50/50 juice (so 1000ml of nic juice divided by 3.75 equals 266.6666 bottles)
2.12 ml of pg (I got 500 ml of pg so divide 500 by 2.12 which equals 235 bottles so still below my 220 estimated total)
2.12 ml of vg (same exact calculation as above. though you maybe wondering why 50/50 again if I am going for 60/40 and that because the program takes into account the flavoring is in pg base)
2 ml of flavor (I got 480 ml of flavor so simply divide by 2 and that 240 servings)

Again all calculations are done through this program/calculator eJuice Me Up - Best eJuice Calculator and it tells you exactly how many ml of each ingredient you need. Just do so dry runs on it and play around with if you want 60/40 or 80/20, etc It takes less than an hour to master the program. My example above while rough and I did a lot of conservative rounding, the very worst case scenario you are still paying less than 10 cents per ml and that is a huge savings over "most" ejuice vendors. When I started I paid $12 for 15ml at a brick and mortar local store. I was then able to find some good online ones that got it down to 50 cents per ml, but that's still a 500% markup over DIY. And DIY is fun with options

 

[release the kraken]

@panga that's part of the fun is shopping around and finding the highest quality ingredients and the best tools at the cheapest prices . you could also easily use different graduated cylinders Graduated Cylinders, and Test Tubes. syringes are just just a little easier as they are self contained. However would be nice to do in grad cyl as you cn just add each ingredient all at once and not have to keep changing syringes.
@goto good, I hope this helps. I tried to be detailed enough but not too over detailed to get confusing.

there are tons of options on where you can get stuff now that you know what key words to search for and what exact items you need for ingredients. again im not a wizardlabs salesman... and I am getting no kickbacks... they were just easy for this example and I have used and recommend them.

 

[k-sider]

Do you guys think it is cost effective to DIY juices compared to say, $40 for a 120 ml bottle?

 

[release the kraken]

Well technically you are paying 33 cents per ml which is 3 to 4 times what you would pay for DIY juice. But with that said there are many other factors to consider to see if it is truly a savings.
1. Doing DIY does take some time to research learn and perfect. It's like a hobby. So since time is money DIY may not be more cost effective.
2. With DIY you have a lot more chances to make tons of small batch in various flavors rather than being locked into a single flavor or two for that long of a period.
3. If you are fine with only one or two flavors then the DIY would probably be cheap and easy.
4. One really big question is how many 120ml bottles do you buy per year. If its one then stick with what you are doing. If its 4 bottles then DIY would basically be like buying one bottle and getting three for free. If its two then its basically buy one get on free with the added cost of a night of your time for learning and mixing.

If you do DIY you don't have to have a lab and if you want to pm me and tell me what you want your outcome to be I will write you a shopping list and then walk you step by step through making your first batch.

 

[stan_lg]

Is there a place to get good diy recipes

 

[release the kraken]

I believe there is a sub forum for DIY here and one of the stickys is a recipe thread. Also if you download the software I reference above it comes with a few hundred. At the end of the day IMHO the recipe is in the eye of the beholder and that's the beauty of DIY that you can add a drop of this or that or decide you want your peanut butter cup to be two parts peanut butter and one part chocolate rather than half and half. Or you may decide you want vanilla coffee toffee and caramel mixed together one morning when you wake up and in 5 minutes you are good to go. There are also so many flavors that come complete. Like before you had to mix 5 things together to get cinnamon roll. Now you just buy cinnamon roll flavoring. Or you could mix butter and rum together but now you can just buy butter rum flavor. It's all about personal taste and preference.

 

[release the kraken]

Yep here is the link to the recipes E-Liquid Recipes. I haven't even looked in here yet as I prefer to have fun and make my own recipes and concoctions. Though I assume I will make it over there at some point to get new ideas.

 

[stan_lg]

Thanks for the info

 

[Bill's Magic Vapor]

Have you thought about a DIY calculator and nic juice of 18mg or even 24 mg/ml? Lot of information, but a lot of basics missing to me. Since I started at 36mg/ml, dropped to 24 mg/ml, then 18mg/ml, none of which you can make at any ratio, I'm just very curious at what nic percentage you vape at. I'm at 12 now and could get there with your setup, depending on my PG/VG ratio. Personally, I like higher nic content, dilute to any strength I target at any ratio I want, with any flavor percent I want. Your setup can't do that. I'm sorry about the rain on the parade thing, but I think a strength of 36 mg/ml is a much better nic starting point. I would also buy 100% VG and 100% PG. With that nic, one can make anything lower than 36 mg/ml. Just food for thought. Best to you! Until my taste buds returned, I used a flavoring at 46% PG. With that flavoring I would not be able to get a nic content much over 9 mg/ml. Again, just food for thought.

 

[stan_lg]

They say it is

 

[release the kraken]

@billbeckusa hello there. FYI, I think the lot of the basics you say are missing are because they are all step by step in the calculator/program ejuicemeup that I linked to. If you do step one and download the calculator I think it will make a ton of lightbulbs go off. This is not my application, just what I use and sharing it is available and the guy actually supports it through is own forum.

While I did start off with the mistakes I make about buying 100% vg 18 mg nic and having to back peddle and buy some 100% pg 18 mg nic at a higher ml ratio so I could create a 60/40 mix like I prefer... I then went on to start over by saying "if I knew then what I know now" and proceed to offer up a grocery list (including as you mentioned about getting 50/50 nic at a higher concentrate) coupled with the software download that explains how to mix the grocery list.

Oh and the calculator also takes into account if your flavoring is pg or vg based or even 0 based. Also if you add any water or alcohol to your mix. The software is on revision 13 so it has gone through lots/most possible scenarios and been corrected where lacking. Give it a shot, you will be glad you did. hope this helps and happy DIY

 

[really_now?]

So far i have about 62$ wrapped up into the stuff i bought and have been using and the stuff i have coming. I found out me and VG dont mix and would give me headaches so I strictly do PG.

I havent figured up cost per a ML but so far with 22$ worth of stuff I have done IIRC 80ml worth of juice. 30ML between 3 10ml bottles where trashed since I messed up the mix...


FWIW- I have black tea, and liquid sugar coming from ecigexpress in hope to make a ice sweet tea flavor. Im going to add alittle bit of menthol to it in hopes to get the ice affect.

 

[release the kraken]

haha, yeah there is always breakage/spillage/learning curve in the beginning but you will be realizing savings in the very near future. This calculator will also do 100% pg recipes as well. Keep at it, you will be a master in no time at all.

so far at $22 dollars and you have gotten 80 ml that means you spent .27 cents per ml. that's a saving of around 50% off what you can find it from a vape store online. Who doesn't want a 50% off sale? I know diy isn't for everyone, but its fun and like a hobby and if you want to do it its easy once you get the hang of it. Its very intimidating at first and that's why I made the detailed shopping list with the calc link to hopefully make it easier for folks to get into if they wanted to.