Reading all the good advice in this thread I starting thinking about the way I mix juice myself. Here’s how I do it.
I wrote a spreadsheet, 5 recipes per page. I enter total amount and flavoring %’s, the spreadsheet converts that into mls.
Always start with 10mg nic base, so the final nic % and VG/PG ratio vary depending on how much flavoring I add. I make 10mls for a new recipe or one I’m playing with.
Then while I’m mixing I sometimes change the %’s on the fly, change an ingredient, or add a bit of something else, which I sometimes remember to record in the spreadsheet. When I make a new bottle of a recipe I grab the copy of the spreadsheet where I last made that recipe, so I don't have a record of previous versions.
I rarely make more than one version of a recipe at the same time, so I can’t compare them except by memory.
Never bother trying a juice right away to see if it needs steeping, unless it's something I'm excited about trying. Just leave it on the shelf until I have an empty tank to put it in. Don't keep a record of when I mixed it.
When I accidentally produce something I like I put the recipe in a file, maybe including whatever undocumented changes I made while I was mixing it, if I can remember.
So my method is basically a list of everything you can do to make the process of developing recipes as hit and miss as possible. It takes me a really long time to get one I like. I know what I could do to be an efficient recipe developer, but my method works for me. I don’t treat it like a scientific experiment. It’s how I cook too. There are plenty of other things in my life that I have to be precise and efficient about.
Just saying, everyone is different and there’s no right way to make juice. Be a scientist, or play around with it. Whatever you find you enjoy doing.
. A lot of people are partial to the LB-501 (what I use,) which Amazon sells for a little over $20.00. There are some other scales out there that look perfectly adequate that are half that though.
