Frustrated by DIY

[Sassyonemeis]

If this is true, then I will definitely stay away from DIY, I dont like cooking LOL

Plus, I have only met 2 premixed juices that I wont vape, so I'm good

DIY is kinda like cooking. Some people are better at it than others.

 

[icemanx3]

I can whip up some macncheese somethin' fierce. So I think I'm going to try DIY

ice

 

[mary_d]

LOL I HATE cooking but I love DIY it is so much fun!

 

[monsterkitty]

i had tried making some english toffee with loranns flavorings, but it tasted awful. i tried to correct it and it got worse! i also made a small amount of butterscotch with loranns and i didn't like that either. i then tried to make some vanilla tahity, and made up some butterscotch (both from flavourart), and these two came out pretty darn good! i have some pre-made butterscotch and a couple different vanillas from various companies that i will probably never use due to complete lack of taste. i did let my diy juice sit for 4 days before i tried it. i think if it sits longer it will get even better.

 

[Stifle]

i had tried making some english toffee with loranns flavorings, but it tasted awful. i tried to correct it and it got worse! i also made a small amount of butterscotch with loranns and i didn't like that either. i then tried to make some vanilla tahity, and made up some butterscotch (both from flavourart), and these two came out pretty darn good! i have some pre-made butterscotch and a couple different vanillas from various companies that i will probably never use due to complete lack of taste. i did let my diy juice sit for 4 days before i tried it. i think if it sits longer it will get even better.

Thanks for all the input and advice guys. I've given up my DIY days for the moment as I don't seem to have to patience to really do well and I like a few of the pre-mixed vapes I've found a lot.

In regards to the previous post I had a similar experience. I found I am much more inclined towards the FA flavorings and that letting them sit for a few days was really helpful to getting a pure flavor.

 

[Kimerpuff]

I have some suggestions

1.) As Maltose66 mentioned, always try your flavor with pg/vg first! Its cheaper and you can add flavoring or vg to find your sweet spot. I highly suggest finding your sweet spot for each flavor you have. Make a test bottle, starting at a low percentage such as 5% to 10% flavoring in PG/VG and test, add flavor or PG/VG as needed and test again. Repeat this until you find the perfect amount for you. (document every drop or measurement you add!) I know, this can sound like a bit of work, but trust me it pays off in the end!

2.) Start with single flavors. Pick flavors that you enjoy to vape as is. My all day vape is vanilla bean ice cream with a touch of EM. Jumping into multiple flavored recipes right off the bat can be so frustrating when you start, they are more difficult to get right and many give up before they have even begun do to this.

3.) Pre-steeping is a new method many are promoting (you mix your pg and flavor then put the bottle in a baggie, dunk in a cup of hot water and let it sit for a bit to get the flavor to meld into the base.. add nic later, not before this!)

4.) Remember you are working with highly concentrated flavorings! If it tastes horrible you have to MUCH! Add more pg/vg and test. When its to weak you will be able to tell.

Cotton Candy or Ethyl Maltol is an awesome item for any DIY kit, it will smooth out your mix and adds for me that Yum factor
MTS Vape Wizard is also a great additive, it softens the flavor out and adds depth to your mix
Sweetner is also great to have on hand! There are alot of different products out there. Some people just like to add Marshmallow to sweeten as well.
DIYers cannot document enough! Most of us have made that heavenly juice and due to forgetting something never been able to reproduce it!
There is no perfect flavoring company, each one has something to offer. They are like car companies, you will always find fans and non-fans hehe!

The most important thing of all. Taste is subjective and its about you, so while advice is awesome.. trust your taste buds!

I don’t wait to try my mixes, I know many do. If you use the pre-steeping method above, yes your e-juice will get better in time, but the time is lessened. 

I do clean my palate in between test batches.. water, crusty bread, saltines or sherbet/sorbet are great for this! Think of it like fine wine tasting

 

[lelly]

Nice to read this thread and know that I am not alone! I always read juice reviews where people go on and on about how amazing this juice is. I have tried many premade juices and I own more than 40 DIY flavors and sI have yet to be impressed. One thing I have found though is that even though I like the fruit flavors, they are better when mixed 50/50 with tobacco, to me it takes out that perfumey or syrupy taste that some fruit flavors have. My faves so far are Watermelon, Peach and Green Apple, all TPA. Depending on which fruit flavor and tobacco flavor you are using, and how much of the tobacco flavor you want to come through, you may have to adjust the 50/50 ratio. I also have an oak wood flavor that I add to some of them to make like a applewood tobacco. One day I will have to try a premade version of this to see how mine compares. Now if only I could figure out how to make some good coffee and chocolate flavors!

DIY is so much like cooking. Some people just have the natural skill for it, knowing what something needs, what flavors go well together, tasting something and being able to pick out all of the ingredients and replicate it. Others, like me, follow a recipe exactly and it still turns out aweful!

 

[base234]

Try your flavor mix with no nic PG/VG then when you get something that works add it to your expensive ejuice.

Thank you! I've ordered some nic juice to try to rescue some of the many samples I've ordered. All good flavors like RY4, Winter Peach and Vanilla Almond Tobacco, but the flavors are OVERPOWERING. Maybe I can calm them down some. I'll try it first with some no nic VG I have.

 

[base234]

If it tastes horrible you have to MUCH!

I think that's exactly what's wrong with some of these premixed samples I have.

 

[babyblueut]

I have some suggestions



3.) Pre-steeping is a new method many are promoting (you mix your pg and flavor then put the bottle in a baggie, dunk in a cup of hot water and let it sit for a bit to get the flavor to meld into the base.. add nic later, not before this!)

uh oh! I have been doing this after adding the nic, what does it do to it? if it kills it then I have been vaping 0 nic without knowing it.

 

[zoiDman]

... My faves so far are Watermelon, Peach and Green Apple, all TPA. ...

If you like TPA Watermelon, you have to try Flavourart Watermelon. It is Fantastic.

 

[undertheradar]

How much ethyl maltol should I mix in with fruit flavors?

 

[WomanOfHeart]

How much ethyl maltol should I mix in with fruit flavors?

I use Sweetener and what works best for me is one drop for every 3 or 4ml of juice. I have a Peach flavoring that I really thought I hated when I first got it. I just couldn't get it to taste like the Peach from VaporBomb, which I love! I read about using sweeteners, tried it on the Peach and now it tastes like the flavor I love!

 

[Zurd]

Nice thread, I'm in the same boat too, owns about 30 different flavors, only 1 is vapable and is my daily vape, lorann's tropical punch, I recently added some flavourart black pepper to add a spicy throat hit when I drink so that I can feel it, works great.

By the way, you don't have to steep when DIY, if it already taste bad, it won't taste wonderful after steeping, it's not that magic.

 

[crackbag]

my experience in cooking is my awesome skill at the jack in the box drive though. i get my order in though that speaker in a matter of seconds! if there's no one in front of me im in and out of that line in under 2 mins! That take some real skill!

and i absolutely love mixing my own juices and i feel im half way decent at it as i enjoy a majority of the flavors i make. only time i seam to screw it up is when i take something that's pretty good and add the sweetener to it. but if it taste just "ok" let that mix sit for a day or more and try it again i bet it will be 50x better, do not keep screwing with it trying to make it better cause you WILL make it worse =( i know that from experience lol hope my rant helps

 

[sheff]

This is all great information! I am having a problem though, all of my juices taste really sweet. I think the pg is too sweet to start with. I add flavors, sometimes doubling the amount recommended, and still seem to taste mostly the PG base. All my stuff is from good sources: gourmetvapor, mfs, etc. Anyone else find the base to be sweet and a way to get over this? I've ordered some different PG to try but already diluted 250 ml of nic juice with the PG I have.

For my next batch of nic juice, I think I will dilute as I go along instead of making a base nic level. Thanks for the suggestions and I'm looking forward to some kind of solution to this sweetness thing. I'm also using FA and PA flavorings.

 

[zoiDman]

This is all great information! I am having a problem though, all of my juices taste really sweet.
...

Perhaps you could post a recipe with the percentages of the ingredients used.

I'm curious to see what you use because most of my mixes start out bitter.

 

[sheff]

I'm using 36 mg PG nic juice from Gourmet Vapor, cut with PG from MyFreedomSmokes.com to 18 mg. Then 20% VG from another e cig vendor (I couldn't find were I bought it from but it was a reputable vendor). I've been mixing up 5ml caramel (original) from Perfumer's Apprentice at 15%. It's not bad, but I can really taste the PG. I vaped PG only to see if it may have been the VG, but the VG doesn't seem to change the taste much - and VG is supposed to be sweeter if I understand it all correctly.

The caramel mix smells awesome, but the flavor is still kind of masked by the PG sweetness. Should PG taste sweet? I know the VG should, and I've mixed some with straight PG and some with PG/VG mix. I'm letting it seep for awhile. Maybe I'll mix more with more flavoring. The flavor smells great in the bottle but I can't get it to overcome the PG.

Did I just get a sweet batch of PG or something? Any help would be appreciated.

 

[zoiDman]

Perhaps it's the PG. I am surprised that you mixes are so sweet to your seing that you are adding no outside sweetener. How long to let a mixture sit before you try it?

 

[QuikWgn]

Here is my take on it as a relatively new vaper, but so far pretty sucessful at DIYing. I have donated a lot of my DIY juice by contest over @ elixirtv.com and I have yet to have someone think it was bad. Maybe not exactly what they like (as a coffee flavor lover may not like a 'fruity' juice) but 'bad' juice is easily recognizable.

When I first get a flavor I make a 3ml batch of zero nic 50pg/50vg blend and add 30% flavor by volume. For me its all about the flavor. I then test vape this to determine the base flavors inherent character. Even from the same vendor the taste and sweetness of flavors vary widely. I keep a notebook and an excel file with all my data in it. This way I know when I go to blend a flavor of say strawberry/banana, that if the strawberry is weak but sweet, at 50% of each flavor the strawberry might not be as strong as i would like. So for example I might use 60% strawberry to 40% banana and only half as much sweetner as I would normally use. It may seem like a lot of work, but its better than making junk and it only takes less than 1ml of flavoring. It won't be that time consuming with say 10 or 15 common flavors you like. For me, it took about 7 or 8 nights to catalog the 100+ flavors I have and about $30 for 100 3ml bottles.

On the subject of sweetner, I do not like sucralose. That's just my opinion. I use stevia extract in PGA(pure grain alcohol) that i got @ GNC. For me I find about 1 drop per each ml of finished juice is a about right for most flavors, as it is very strong. I also have some flavored stevia that is mixed with VG instead of PGA that I bought at a local health food store. It is not strong enough to make much use of in DIY in my opinion. It would take probably 10-20% of the finished volume to make an impact on flavor. I know some people have tried Agave nectar in DIY and the one sample I tried that was given to me caked up the coil relatively quickly. YMMV, as what I use currently works for me, and i have not tried experimenting with it yet.

Lastly I will chime in on Ethyl Maltol. It is not a sweetner. It is sold commercially as a flavoring not a sweetner. It does impart a sweetish carmel/cooked generic fruit note, but not nearly as sweet as other sweetners. Mostly it is used to blend or smooth out flavors when dis-similar flavors are used in the same juice. I use about 1/32 of a teaspoon per 15 to 30ml batch depending on how many flavors I am using. When i bought it a tiny measuring spoon came with it. It does have a sweet taste, but in the quantities necessary, would be hard to dissolve in a pg/vg base. You would need to dissolve it in a PGA or distilled water etc.

Hope this helps some of you!