A noobs analytical approach to determining E-liquid strength

[Carless]

This is my first post and I've already told you more than I know about e-cigs, because my new Ego is still charging up for the first time. I have zero experience...... just tons of research.
I've read hundreds of pages of posts and viewed 20 or so videos trying to figure out what flavors/strengths to order and am very interested in DIY. I formulate and manufacture skin care products for a living, so mixing my own juices is not outside my comfort zone. The math is simple enough.

But here's my decision and I wanted to share it both to assist other noobs and to solicit feedback.

The analogs I've been smoking are Camel menthol Lights (Silver) and they are said to weigh in at 0.7mg per cig=14mg per pack in nicotine. I normally smoke 15 cigarettes per day, which = 10.5 mg nicotine I get in a day.

If most vapers vape around 3 ml per day, then I can assume I will as well. To get the same amount of nicotine per day as I'm used to, I would figure 10.5/3 = 3.5 so I should vape an e-liquid at around 3.5 mg/ml, right?
I've read that we probably only get half the amount of the stated nicotine by vaping as smoking, so I could need as much as 7 mg/ml, even.

So this is what makes sense to me:

I order 4 mg nicotine per ml juice in the flavors I have chosen, plus a bottle of unflavored 36 mg/ml nicotine liquid.
If I feel I need more nicotine strength, I can always add drops of the 36 mg nic-liq to my bottles at approximately 1.8 mg nicotine per drop (1 ml = 20 drops, right?). For instance if I added 2 drops @ 1.8 mg/ml nicotine per drop to 18 drops flavored e-liquid, my 4 mg/ml of juice would now be 7.2 mg/ml strength and my flavor has only been diluted by 10%.

This makes a lot more sense to me than ordering a juice too strong and then having to dilute it with VG or PG. It seems a faster way to find my comfort zone and less wasteful.
What do those of you with more experience think? Am I overlooking anything?

 

[Jmitchelliv]

That's a pretty convoluted way of going about it imho. What I would suggest doing is getting a stronger batch of liquid (say 24mg) and pick yourself up a bottle of Humco brand Glycerin at Walmart (It's in the first aid aisle by the rubbing alcohol and peroxide). That stuff will run you about $3 for a 177ml bottle.

If you find that the nic strength is too strong, drop some of the glycerine in it until you hit your desired strength. There are several calculators on the forum that will help you mix out to an exact strength.

Your way would work, but I believe it would be far cheaper to do it the way I just told you.

Happy vaping.

 

[dormouse]

I only use about 1.5 ml of juice per day and I am vaping about as much as I smoked (about 1.5 pack a day's worth)

I think the amount of juice you use per day depends on how many drags you take per day and how much juice your PV uses for your drag size.

I would recommend picking up some 12mg and some 16-18mg and only get 24mg if you need stronger.

 

[Vidi]

Unfortunately, there's just no way to know what nic level your going to need without experientation. Some 3 pack a day smokers cant handle more than 12mg juice and some casual smokers cant stand anything below 36mg juice.

My theory is that because vaping doesnt deliver nicotime as well was smoking, many people underestimate how much theyll really need, while others underestimate how much of the cigarette they really smoked. For example, I was a two and a half pack a day smoker when I could smoke at work, but at least a pack a day just burned in the ashtray.

When I first started vaping 24mg just wouldnt do it for me. I did 36mg for the first several months. I then moved to 30mg ( cutting it down myself with 0 nic flavored juices ) and now Im down to 24mg on most juices. There a particular juice I got from a freind that he mixed up himself at 12mg that was just so tasty I made do with the lack of nicotine until it was all gone.

 

[Carless]

That's a pretty convoluted way of going about it imho. What I would suggest doing is getting a stronger batch of liquid (say 24mg) and pick yourself up a bottle of Humco brand Glycerin at Walmart (It's in the first aid aisle by the rubbing alcohol and peroxide). That stuff will run you about $3 for a 177ml bottle.

If you find that the nic strength is too strong, drop some of the glycerine in it until you hit your desired strength. There are several calculators on the forum that will help you mix out to an exact strength.

Your way would work, but I believe it would be far cheaper to do it the way I just told you.

Happy vaping.

But if I were to find that the 24 mg/ml juice is too strong, I would risk having to dilute the flavor by a greater amount than if I did it the way I suggested.
Every other suggestion I've seen is to dilute when necessary. I'm just thinking that it makes more sense to add strong nicotine than it does to add vg and diluting flavor to fix it. The nic-liq will be used anyway when I start doing DIY mixes, so no waste.....

Edited to say: Man. This is an active forum! I love this place!

 

[Jmitchelliv]

Adding unflavored nic juice is going to dilute your flavor anyway. Might as well go about it the cheaper way. If that's the case, you might order some lower strength juice and then cutting from there.

 

[Dob_Bobolina]

Adding unflavored nic juice is going to dilute your flavor anyway. Might as well go about it the cheaper way. If that's the case, you might order some lower strength juice and then cutting from there.

I do that often, and it works well. Sometimes I actually end up having some great mixes too!

 

[Jmitchelliv]

Then I say get down with your bad self!

This is one of the great things about PVs though. When you smoked analogs, your options were regular or menthol.

 

[Carless]

I suppose it might be best to go ahead and order a few different strengths of flavored e-liquids. Since I will be doing DIY soon anyway, I can always repair whatever doesn't suit me later.
This forum is a wealth of knowledge from experienced users. I appreciate the feedback.
Although in real life it might not work out as well as planned, I would really like to get an idea of the strength that suits me ASAP so I can go nuts and order all the great sounding flavors I've been reading about. (Us really analytical types tend to be frugal, you know).
I already have the VG, if I had the Nicotine I could at least get an idea of my range preference before ordering flavors. I'm aware,though, that there is also the issue of determining the ratio of VG/PG that best suits my taste..... so experimentation seems to be the best idea.

 

[Jmitchelliv]

Correctumundo. You'll end up with a full chemistry set yet.

Trial and error. That's how we learn what works best for us. Alot of the feedback here serves as nothing more than a starting point. Season to taste.

 

[Hrtbrkr1965]

The mg and how much you smoked is not really the same when vaping! Some heavy smokers can start out with 12 mg and some light smokers may need 24-36 mg! What mattered to me is/was throat hit!
I smoked probably 50-60 smokes a day for 30 years and started at 24 mg but after a month am sliding it down to 18 fairly easily! I bought some 100% PG tobacco juice at 24mg from liberty flights that had reckless throat hit so it made it easier to back it down slightly with vg to about 18 and still get a good throat hit with decent flavor! It's an experiment for the 1st week or so then you will find your sweet spot!
Good Luck to You and Welcome to the ECF!

 

[WomanOfHeart]

Here's my suggestion:

I started with 18mg and I still had cravings so I bumped it to 24mg. I ended up vaping both levels for almost 2 months. I'd use the 24mg whenever I had a craving or when I was away from home and couldn't vape freely. All other times I used the 18mg. That's just a suggestion.

You could also get some 24mg juice and order the same flavors with 0 nic to mix it down if it's too strong. TastyVapor offers what they call "Doublers" which is just 0 nic juice so you can do this without losing any of the flavor.

 

[Mister]

Carless, your approach seems logical to me. There may be a better one with the same cost and zero flavor loss. You could buy 36mg juice and 0mg juice in the same flavor. Then you could mix them to any strength from 0 to 36 with no flavor loss. Cost should be the same as in your proposed approach. Result possibly a bit less useful because you'll end up with all purchased liquid in a flavor which might not be the best for you, vs. ending up with some useable 36mg unflavored. But if you can make a good initial guess at flavor the result seems better.

Regarding strength, some things to note:

1) The .7 on your cigarettes is the estimated amount absorbed by your body. The unsmoked cigarette actually contains roughly ten times that much but most of that is lost during combustion.

2) OTOH juice is rated by the nicotine it contains pre-vaping. We don't have good data on absorption yet. But a couple of chemists on this forum have done some useful initial experiments in attempts to determine the amount of nicotine retained in the vapor delivered to the body, vs. the amount in the liquid pre-vaporization. My best guess at this point is that roughly 50% of the nictotine in the juice is absorbed by the body.

3) You are smoking "light" cigarettes. Lights are notorious for measuring wrong in the standardized machine testing which is used to determine the amount of nicotine shown on the package. Lights were designed to fool the machines and present lower numbers than people actually get out of them. The required adjustment varies by brand and style of smoking but adding 25% to the label number is not an unreasonable assumption.

4) As Vidi said earlier on this thread, individual experience varies quite widely. Your analytic approach, modified to allow for the factors I've mentioned above, will land fairly close to the average juice requirement for a vaper converting from a given amount of smoking. But the standard deviation from the average appears to be rather high and we don't know why. So the average can only be used as a starting point.

5) 2ml per day of juice is a better starting guess than 3. The survey at https://www.surveymonkey.com/sr.aspx?sm=HrpzL8PN5cP366RWhWvCTjggiZM_2b8yQJHfwE9UXRNhE_3d shows 2ml/day to be average for the 2,168 survey respondents. Also note that 2ml/day will represent more puffs (many more with most e-cig models) per day than you are likely to get from 15 cigarettes. More puffs per day are a likely outcome when switching to vaping. I don't know of a survey result to support that statement but I've gained a strong sense that this is the case over the 1.5 years I've been reading these forums. Of course some people find that a smaller number of puffs of a higher strength works for them. Again, a lot of variance.

A final comment: It can be difficult for some people to determine whether their nicotine level is too low or too high when converting to vaping. Symptoms can be confusing for some people and factors unrelated to nicotine (learning to drag differently etc.) may increase the confusion. I wonder if the potential for confusion is greater for analytic people like you (I'm making a high probability guess there) and me. It took me months to work out what was going on during my switch. Because of that experience and the frequent forum questions about vaping symptoms I wrote an article which you might find helpful in working out your nicotine level. You can read it at Understanding Your Symptoms While Adjusting To Vaping : General E-Cig Discussion - International Vapers Club.

 

[markfm]

Pretty typical for a full strength smoker would be 24 mg liquid, with some bumping up to 30/36, others dropping to 18. 12 does happen, but less often.

Pretty typical for a lights smoker is 16-18, with some bumping to 24, others down at 12. Using 6 right off the bat is less often.

I was "typical", full pack a day full strength smoker (Marl reds). 16 - 18 didn't cut it, I needed 24 to stop, and like having some higher strength.

If you chain-vape, like on a pass-through, you may find it necessary/good to drop two full levels. For instance I run a 24 or 30 in a battery, but typically 10 - 15 mg in a passthrough at work near my computer. A lights smoker doing chain vaping might want to drop to 6 mg for that.

Everyone varies, the above, however, seems fairly normal.

(If you buy a couple bottles of juice, same flavor but at 6 and 24 mg strengths, get a couple empty small bottles, you can mix and try different levels. Two parts 24 to one part 6 is 18 mg strength. One part of 6 and one of 24 is 15 mg. Two parts 6 and one part 24 is 12. Just buying at different strengths is simplest, but it isn't hard to eyeball "pretty close" if you use a 3 or 6 ml bottle for your mixing bottle.)

Good luck!

 

[Carless]

You have all given me great information and a better sense of how to approach this transition from analogs to vaping. I really like the idea of getting two strengths of the juice flavors I like, as that will allow me to adjust nic levels easily. After reading all the responses, I realize that having more than one strength on hand is the best strategy.
Thank you everyone and Mister, the article on symptoms was amazing. I'm grateful that great information is not fattening.

 

[the ob]

mister,
thanks for the article. I think I have been chasing the rush, which I did not realize does not happen with vaping. this was enlightening.

 

[Ralikar]

Like markfm said it's all about how much you vape! I was 3packs/of Marl ULs day and 16 was too much because I was vaping all the time. E-cigs don't work the same way as reg cigs.... You don't say ok I'll have two smokes with my morning coffee and go to work... 1 on my smoke break... It's all about draw/hits and frequency... A 5min break at work may be fine for 1 cig or so but you can really vape alot or a little in 5min as you wish... So the cigs work differently--and you can just take 1 or 2 hits which you can't really do with a cigarette... So you can't be that precise on your needs without some trial and error.

 

[sam.8]

I think when you're starting out it's wise to get a few different strengths and different flavors. I found some of mine too strong and ended up ordering menthol at zero mg. That way I can cut anything to whatever and menthol doesn't really change the flavor, just adds a bit of a twist. Gives you a lot to work with for customizing. I still use stronger stuff in the morning and it goes down throughout the day. Best of luck!!

 

[Stosh]

One factor to keep in mind starting out, as you gain experience with your PV, the amount of vapor you produce will increase. Used for inhalation or blowing vapor rings, your choice. I've dropped the strength and quantity of juice vaped simply from increased efficiency.

 

[CraigHB]

It seems like noobs almost invariably want to equate how much and what they were smoking to a nicotine strength of the liquid. I was guilty of that myself. It's not something you can actually do with any degree of accuracy. I've seen people post lots of theories, but none of it really means anything. There are just too many differences between vaping and smoking. For one, cigarette smoke delivers nicotine much differently than vapors. Then the way nicotine is measured in cigarettes does not relate at all to how it's measured in juice.

I'm afraid there's just no other way than trial and error to find the strength of liquid that suits you best. I've seen light smokers use high nic and heavy smokers use low nic (like myself). Nic preference is something that varies from person to person often regardless of smoking habits. My advice is to start strong and work your way down. When trying to substitute vaping for smoking, you don't want to battle nicotine cravings.