all my flavourart flavors taste terrible? whats wrong?

[Buster Keaton]

I am fairly new to vaping and i just got a new setup. its an epower with lr cartos.

I have used a cigirex pv prior and the stock juice is pretty nice with a nice tobacco flavor.

I bought a bunch of flavors to experiment with and i am severely disappointed.

My mix is 25% pg and 75% vg at 12.5mg nic. homemade with nicotine from crystal clear vaping.

my flavors are from flavourart and i use about 5% flavor to mixer.

all the flavors either taste really gross or strange or have not much flavor at all.

I have white peach, camtel ultimate, latakia, perique black, green tea, ry4, white grape, blackcurrant, mango, passionfruit, and arctic menthol.

What am i doing wrong? why do they taste so strange and gross? thank you so much for your help.

 

[badkarmaiii]

My experience with FlavourArt and DIY e-juice is to follow the recommendations in the DIY e-juice thread and to give your results at least a week to "steep" or have the flavor permeate the juice.
The difference is amazing!

Thanks,
Lee

 

[Pamdane]

FA has to steep. Fruit can take a lot longer than a week. Blueberry takes 3 weeks at least, before I like it and the perfume goes away.

 

[tranced]

Steeping time depends entirely on length of time required to lose the recipe. As long as you know the formula you used, it won't taste right. As soon as your formula or recipe gets lost it'll be the best tasting juice you've ever made and you will be completely unable to recreate it. FA concord grape seems to take at least 2 weeks.

 

[Hoosier]

First, I thought I was one of the last people on the planet who likes Buster's work, so thanks for the handle and avatar.

Second, please join us at DIY E-Liquid

Third, the first question is what does your PG/VG mix taste like without nicotine and flavoring? (If you're getting funky flavor out of your base, nothing I can do to help you with the rest.)

Finally, I will pick just one flavor, White Peach. It is one of my favorites. It works for me at 13.5%, but I also add some sweetener or EM to take it from a green-ish white peach to a riper white peach. Finding a flavor level is usually a personal thing. I tend toward strong.

 

[Buster Keaton]

wow. are you watching me? i just did a white peach at about 11 % and ive vaped through two 1000mah batts of it. my base does have a bit of a funk to it but nowhere near the acrid flavors i am getting from my other flavors not much on the fruit end but definitely on the tobacco end. the only palatable tobacco is ry4 but it still is strange. vaping pure base is fine in flavor. what do you use to sweeten? anything i can get cheap at the grocery? thanks hoosier.

 

[Hoosier]

Sure, been there and done that. That is why I hang out in the DIY sub-forum, to see what else I may run into.

You've just discovered one of the weirdest things about flavoring. Too little is bad tasting and not only bad, but nothing like what you are going for.

Too much can be bad too, but in a different way. Too much gives a chemical or perfumey kind of flavor and going over this level usually leads to no flavor. (Yeah, too much flavoring can mean no taste at all. It took me by surprise when I confirmed this.)

I cannot help you on all your flavorings, but I can give you some broad guidelines. First, steeping with tobacco flavors is almost always needed. As an example, Perique Black, I mixed a batch at 12% and the first two days of tasting it resulted in a very slight odd spice taste without any of the tobacco notes coming out. On day 3 the dark aged tobacco leaf tastes started to emerge. It will take some time yet to get the full effect and the full effect of the flavoring is different for 2% is different for 4% and on and on until the point of "too much".

So, start small with lower percentages, allow time to steep before adding more, but bump up the flavoring a little at a time to get to what you are looking for.

To speed up steeping fill a cup with hot tap water and drop the mixed bottle in the hot water to warm up the juice. Shake and return to hot water a few times. Let water and juice reach room temp naturally.

 

[Princessdee]

Ethyl maltose is best for sweetening. It seems (to me) to taste best and is easier on atties and cartos. But I've notseen it in local stores, only on supplier websites.

But in a pinch you can use sucralose drops from the grocery store. (Not much. 1-2 drops in a 20 ml bottle. Start with one drop then work up)

Stevia also comes in drops at the grocery store but I haven't had much luck using it. I seem to have to use a lot of it to get any sweetening and that much gunks up coils really quickly, and, to me, it has a very funny aftertaste, tho I like it in my tea to drink. (Sorry for any spelling errors.)

Hope that helped.

 

[Cokeybill]

Hoosier, you info is always a great help when DIY is concerned. I like your descriptions on +/- flavors. Many DIYers don't seem to understand the steeping concept of mixxing. Maybe staff could make a sticky on steeping for fruit, tobacco, etc. I'm sure your wisdom will be much appreciated along with some of the more experienced DIYers.
Cheers.
I've got some of that nasty cherry steeping right now. Got 4 different mixes on the go, been steeping from 2 -4 weeks now. One is getting real smooth, while another is getting there. Hot water steeping has made it vapable at first, but after a few days it seems to slip back to the chemical/floral taste. Maybe shaking it every day would keep it vapable, but that taste seems to return and I found that my mix needs a few weeks even after a hot water steep. Do you steep after your hot water dips? Do you think that my flavor may too strong. I use 13% on the cherry. Cherry must be one of the toughest to get right. I have LA and TPA cherries.

 

[Hoosier]

Yes, steeping never stops for some mixes. There are mixes that only taste good in a very narrow range of time to me. I am not sure that it is actually the mix or my sense of taste or even a combination. MaxUT is takes a very wild stance on steeping as he has some mixes that he insists must sit for a month at the very least. I cannot wait that long, nor do I want to. If a hot water bath and a week do not do it for me, I move on to something different. Usually just the bath does the trick and that is the type of mix I usually stick with except for a small number of tobacco mixes.

Yes, cherry is a tricky one, as you have found. The only cherry recipe I consider a "working" recipe is for a cherry cola and that one has a fade-in-and-fade-out effect, but I think it is good on both ends of the fade.

It reads as if you have too much cherry flavoring in your mix. Have you done the usual spice route with it? (Drop the main component and try to bump the edges of the flavor with other flavorings that have the effects you want to bump. Like Koolada or menthol for brightness, almond or another nut for bitterness, FA's MTS VW to dull a bitey edge, strawberry or blueberry to bump the berry-flesh-like spot, actually the list can go on and on which is why I am so slow to develop recipes as I get bored bumping it around and start another project.) Sometimes the oddest thing can make the whole thing come together. Early on I was working with LA's watermelon trying to make a Jolly Rancher kind of watermelon and found that a good dose of LA's Rasperry made the thing taste right. How does that make any sense?

I have found TPA/TFA's Cherry Blossom to be another one of those odd spicing kind of flavors. OK on its own, but adds something to other mixes where it does not seem to belong.

My nose cannot process LA's cherry so I have no idea what to do with it.

 

[Shilo]

I am pretty sure Flavour Art is recommended to start at 1% to get a feel for the flavor. They are super concentrated and I never used more than 3% of any flavor yet. There's a couple I use half a percent but then I don't want overpowering smells or flavor. I didn't really know about the steeping either. I have to admit the way some of the tobacco concentrates smell in the bottle they come in was strange but again-- the product is concentrated. I used Caramel Candy and it was incredibly over the top for me at 2 % so there will be a learning curve as everyone's sense of taste is different.

 

[Hoosier]

Nope, Flavour Art does recommend very low percentages, but they don't work for me at that level. In fact the taste difference between 2% and 6% is much greater than just an increase in flavor level for most flavorings.

Take Buster's own White Peach attempts as an example. Near the recommended levels, it tasted funky bad to him. Now way above the recommended level he's draining batteries right and left vaping the goodness.

You have to go with what works for you. If 0.5% works, that's perfect, but one cannot be afraid of going beyond the recommended level.