Are You Getting Better at DIY or Do You Just Have a Bad Memory?

[Tracker II]

Been DIY'ing for a year now and haven't bought a single drop of eliquid from a vendor. It seems that my DIY efforts get better and better over time but now I'm starting to wonder if I just plain forgot how great commercial liquids are and am just being impressed by small gains in my DIY ability. Anyone here DIY for awhile and then go back to your favorite eliquid to see what it was like? Are you getting significantly better at DIY or have you just been fooling yourself?

 

[boomerdude]

I vape about 95% DIY. I like Tobacco flavors mostly and I know I'm not going to ever make a juice as good as some vendors. At least that's what I thought until NET's have just become available as concentrates. So who knows.

I've only made three ADV's for the longest time but just recently came up with three more. So I must be getting better. Unless of course I'm fooling myself. From what others tell me about my juices, I don't think so.

 

[moorefredc4]

Been doing DIY for about 4 months and selling to friends, many who said that we ought to put up a website and start selling to the public. We have been pondering this for a month or so, getting more serious everyday about the possibility. We'll see...

 

[Vash]

I have found both to be true.I make some great mixes that I vape all the time and save me a ton and some that I still by from vendors.

 

[BabyFeet]

I'm about 50/50 on DIY juice and what I buy from vendors.
Found some great DIY videos on You Tube and I think my DIY juice blends are very good. However, I'm still having a hard go at blending some of the exotic blends.
Trying to re-create a waffles and strawberries blend is driving me nuts.

 

[darkhood]

Both - I'm getting better but the vendor juices weren't all that amazing to begin with.

 

[BabyFeet]

I'm about 50/50 on DIY juice and what I buy from vendors.
Found some great DIY videos on You Tube and I think my DIY juice blends are very good. However, I'm still having a hard go at blending some of the exotic blends.
Trying to re-create a waffles and strawberries blend is driving me nuts.

 

[Levitas]

The only vendor juice I ever buy is Alien Visions' Boba's Bounty.

Ben is a mixing master, and I am but a novice. I like a lot of my recipes, but nothing I've made has amounted to Boba's, in my opinion, of course.

All of that being said, I definitely think I'm getting better. I'm working with complex recipes, but have good mind enough to enjoy more simple blends as well

 

[Faylool]

I vape what I make so I don't make much but it's better than all the venders or as good as that I tried except one Vendor. That vendor shouldn't be calling themselves a vendor though because takes for ever and forever and I do mean months at this point. I learned what to shoot for to make me happy in my DIY from 6 months experience with different vendors, mostly disappointing. I think there is a psychological aspect to vaping DIY but its a double edge sword. Some people are more forgiving when they made and others are overly hard on themselves.

 

[subversive]

In the last year, I have vaped vendor juice twice. The first was my old all-day-vape. I had really missed it, but I no longer order from the particular vendor out of principle. I found a few ml at the bottom of a drawer. It was like Christmas! So, this taste that I had missed and fantasized over......... was sickeningly sweet. I don't obsess over missing out on that flavor anymore!

The second was Hype from AVE. I really enjoyed it, but it reminded me why I don't vape VG. Every now and then I get curious about a new vendor or juice, but I never end up ordering. I don't think my DIY is all that great; I just think my tastes have changed, and I'm happy with simpler, almost unflavored juice.

 

[boomerdude]

Know what you mean about Strawberry. Haven't found a decent strawberry concentrate yet and I'm running out of vendors to try.

I'm about 50/50 on DIY juice and what I buy from vendors.
Found some great DIY videos on You Tube and I think my DIY juice blends are very good. However, I'm still having a hard go at blending some of the exotic blends.
Trying to re-create a waffles and strawberries blend is driving me nuts.

 

[Bosco]

I've only been off commercial juice for just under four 4 months - but I can definitely say I'm better at DIY now than when I first started, lol.

I still have some vendor juices laying around - One thing I notice between my juices and vendor juices they seem to be able to get deeper flavors than I can. If I just add more flavor to my juice, it ends up tasting wierd. If I'm mixing at 10% . .vendor juice has the flavor I would expect from 20% or more .. except without all the weird, perfumy, chemical tastes I get when mixing at that high a percentage.

 

[boomerdude]

It has been my experience when I get a soapy, perfumey, chemical taste, that I haven't let it steep enough. Or, I screwed-up and used too much flavor. Or, it was a mistake all around and I mixed skunk pi**.

 

[echofinder]

Know what you mean about Strawberry. Haven't found a decent strawberry concentrate yet and I'm running out of vendors to try.

NF strawberry.

I have been at DIY for a little over a year now; have made vast, vast improvements in that time. There are so many variables though! For one, being that I am not currently mixing for the purpose of sale, I mostly focus on things that I like - bakery & florals. My florals (if I may say) are better than those of any vendor I have tried. A couple of my sweet/bakery flavors will match many vendors. The largest improvement I have noticed in the past year is a marked improvement in initial guesswork; that is, I can predict at what strength a flavoring will be good, and which flavorings will work well together... to a reasonable degree. I can sit down with base and a collection of flavorings & in a short time produce a few flavors that will be vapable, perhaps even daily vape good, though it is unlikely that any will match vendor products.

I often sample vendor juices at the monthly vapemoot, often come home with freebies, samples, and winnings. Vendors vary, there is a niche structure as with anything - some specialize in tobaccos, or fruits, some make ridiculously good flavors of any kind and charge you accordingly... some make mediocre flavors and sell them cheap. I can DIY juice that is as good or better than perhaps 50% of vendor flavors. Some things I will never be able to DIY: highbrow RY4, TVR toasted tobacco, vapealicious goddess... maybe they use specialty ingredients, maybe they have tweaked over years with thousands of samples, idk. Vendors do this for a living. They test hundreds and hundreds of flavorings; they make and test thousands of samples to arrive at a single perfected vape. I EXPECT them to be better.

I vape 95% DIY. The vendor juices I load up come from vapemoots and cons. DIY is so much cheaper, and provides a hobby to boot. To be honest, being both poor and stingy if I did buy juice it would be from low-end vendors, whose juice is on par with my DIY mixes and still much more expensive than them in the long run.

 

[jayjules]

Practice makes perfect.

 

[Hoosier]

I vape my own and have been all DIY for at least 2 years, if not more. I still like to sample other stuff at meets and such, but haven't found anything that would make me want to buy premixed yet. Also at meets I have to make sure I have a bottle of my Cuban Cigar and my White Peach as there are folks who are very nice in asking for tastes of those and want to introduce them to a new, or old, vaping friend. (Last meet in Kokomo consumed 45ml of White Peach and 15ml of Cuban just giving out drops out of my bottles.)

I do encounter good stuff from vendors' samples. The ones that catch my interest seem to be from the smaller companies. By interesting I mean that it is what I call "close". It is at that point where I would call my version close to being a recipe, but not quite. Maybe I'm too picky? Don't know art, but I know what I like.

 

[drobbyb]

I still have some vendor juices laying around - One thing I notice between my juices and vendor juices they seem to be able to get deeper flavors than I can. If I just add more flavor to my juice, it ends up tasting wierd. If I'm mixing at 10% . .vendor juice has the flavor I would expect from 20% or more .. except without all the weird, perfumy, chemical tastes I get when mixing at that high a percentage.

It has been my experience when I get a soapy, perfumey, chemical taste, that I haven't let it steep enough. Or, I screwed-up and used too much flavor.

These comments make me wonder if it's possible to flavor the PG/VG and steep in advance before cutting the nic base resulting in a richer and deeper flavor.

 

[Levitas]

To be honest, being both poor and stingy if I did buy juice it would be from low-end vendors, whose juice is on par with my DIY mixes and still much more expensive than them in the long run.

lol, spoken as if it were from my own mind

 

[LucentShadow]

Heck, I guess that I've only ever bought about 4 premixed e-liquids. I didn't like any of them. I did also try some prefilled cartos, which I did like (blu classic tobacco,) but half of them were poorly performing cartos.

I've only thrown out 2 of my mixes, so I guess I've been doing O.K.

 

[boomerdude]

I'll spring for some recommended tobacco flavors occasionally, just to see how my own recipes stand up to them. I've got a long way to go. Tried W2V Blondie and other samples along with HHV's Huntsman. I'm not even in the ballpark. Going to try some NET concentrates next.