Im looking for a good site to DIY my liquids, and also need advice with mixing

[Mikenet]

Worst case scenario is that I extracted from the bottle of VG twice. That's a huge error I'm thinking I didn't make, but it would explain why my liquid taste like it has more VG than it's supposed to, and it would also explain the weak flavor.

That would make this mix 100 VG, with 10% flavor, and 26mg nicotine.

If this is the case, then wow what a goof up that was lol. I think I'll mix another 6ml batch like this just to be sure, if anyone has any ideas or advice on what I might have done wrong, or could try please let me know.

Thanks for the help so far

Mike

 

[Paislia]

Hi Mikenet,

I would just like to say that when I began DIY 4 months ago and entered the world of "attys", I found a thread here talking about the burnt taste. The consensus was it is common for new attys to taste bad for several hits (several days in some peoples experience) and that it is probably whatever lubricant is placed in them at the factory during manufacturing. The common solution seems to be to mix a batch of "plain" juice with either just vg/dw or vg/nic/pg depending on your preference. With any new atty you would then vape a few hits of "plain" through it to remove whatever factory swill is present before adding your flavored juice. I would also recommend vaping a drop or two of plain in between flavors if you have a day when you are testing a bunch of different juices.

Secondly, I suspect from personal experience that all the shaking and warming in the world (ok maybe that's extreme) is not enough to effectively distribute flavor in one day in a 40+ % vg juice. Set that one aside for a week and try it again. Meanwhile you can move on to your other theories.

Thirdly - I implore you, beg you and bow low to say pretty pleeeease - Mix some smaller batches of nic at lower levels before putting it into your recipe. I use batches plural because you were not sure how much vg you wanted in the end product and there is anecdotal consensus that it "holds up better" in the pg base. Please at least make a 20 ml bottle of 50% vg and 50% your nic. You are not opposed to doing math to find your perfect juice - that is clear from this thread It's just that the stuff is so dangerous at that 10% level and it is soooo easy to just make a tiny mistake as you are already finding. Please at least cut your risk in half with the nic. Once you find your perfect blend you can cut more at a more useful ratio if there is one. I "heart" all my fellow vapers and I advise out of respect and care, nothing else.

You appear to be well on your way - enjoy and vape happy!

 

[Mikenet]

Hi Mikenet,

I would just like to say that when I began DIY 4 months ago and entered the world of "attys", I found a thread here talking about the burnt taste. The consensus was it is common for new attys to taste bad for several hits (several days in some peoples experience) and that it is probably whatever lubricant is placed in them at the factory during manufacturing. The common solution seems to be to mix a batch of "plain" juice with either just vg/dw or vg/nic/pg depending on your preference. With any new atty you would then vape a few hits of "plain" through it to remove whatever factory swill is present before adding your flavored juice. I would also recommend vaping a drop or two of plain in between flavors if you have a day when you are testing a bunch of different juices.

Secondly, I suspect from personal experience that all the shaking and warming in the world (ok maybe that's extreme) is not enough to effectively distribute flavor in one day in a 40+ % vg juice. Set that one aside for a week and try it again. Meanwhile you can move on to your other theories.

Thirdly - I implore you, beg you and bow low to say pretty pleeeease - Mix some smaller batches of nic at lower levels before putting it into your recipe. I use batches plural because you were not sure how much vg you wanted in the end product and there is anecdotal consensus that it "holds up better" in the pg base. Please at least make a 20 ml bottle of 50% vg and 50% your nic. You are not opposed to doing math to find your perfect juice - that is clear from this thread It's just that the stuff is so dangerous at that 10% level and it is soooo easy to just make a tiny mistake as you are already finding. Please at least cut your risk in half with the nic. Once you find your perfect blend you can cut more at a more useful ratio if there is one. I "heart" all my fellow vapers and I advise out of respect and care, nothing else.

You appear to be well on your way - enjoy and vape happy!

Thanks for the tips, Ive done a couple things now to confirm my mixing procedure was done correctly. There was some good news and bad.

The good news is that I did a nicotine test on the first 11ml batch that had a target of 26mg per ml of nicotine. It tested as 24.5 MG per ML. Considering the nicotine test has a 10% margin for error, I'm very happy with this result.

The bad news is that the second 6ml batch tasted just like the first one, so I didn't error after all but I'm still not sure why the flavor is so weak.

Since both these batches were identical, I combined them into one bottle. So now I have over 10ml of weak tasting liquid. After this I decided to up the flavor by 4%, bringing It up to 14% of the total volume. I also added the recommended 1 drop of MTS Vape Wizard in an attempt to boost the flavor.

Again I went through the whole routine of heating, and shaking, then repeating. I waited for a few hours and vaped it after shaking it again. It almost taste like I did nothing, it's still very weak.

So that's the bad news because I really don't like waiting. Ive been reading up on steeping a little bit and I'm really taken back that I might have to wait a week like your saying, I'll do it if it's necessary though.

About the nicotine base, I really hear what your saying about making a lower nic base to work with from the 100mg nic I have. It makes perfect sense for safety purposes, but I decided not to primarily because I have no idea what pg/vg ratio Im going to be set on, and unfortunately I didn't buy enough bottles for several batches. I did fill one dropper bottle with PG for atty dripping in between flavors though. Still have to give that one a try

Another reason i didn't make diluted bases is because there is now a wild card with the nicotine level I may end up liking too. I thought all the premixed I was buying was either 18 or 24 mg but I tested 3 bottles of premixed and they all tested below 8mg. It might be that some of the premixed has ingredients that are skewing the test results, but my premixed tested accurately as did the nicotine base.

There is one last reason I decided not to make a diluted nic base. In my mind it increases the amount of times I'll have to measure, and since syringes and pipettes aren't 100% accurate, the more I measure the less accurate my final mix will be.
I was thinking measuring once from every bottle would give me mixes that are somewhat closer to their target ratios.

However, I would like to know if their is any disadvantage to directly extracting the 100mg base, other than the safety concern. I am wearing gloves and being very careful. Would it take the mix longer to steep if I add the 100mg directly? Or affect the flavor in any way?

Thanks

 

[wizard10000]

The bad news is that the second 6ml batch tasted just like the first one, so I didn't error after all but I'm still not sure why the flavor is so weak...

...About the nicotine base, I really hear what your saying about making a lower nic base to work with from the 100mg nic I have. It makes perfect sense for safety purposes, but I decided not to primarily because I have no idea what pg/vg ratio Im going to be set on, and unfortunately I didn't buy enough bottles for several batches. I did fill one dropper bottle with PG for atty dripping in between flavors though. Still have to give that one a try

Another reason i didn't make diluted bases is because there is now a wild card with the nicotine level I may end up liking too. I thought all the premixed I was buying was either 18 or 24 mg but I tested 3 bottles of premixed and they all tested below 8mg. It might be that some of the premixed has ingredients that are skewing the test results, but my premixed tested accurately as did the nicotine base.

There is one last reason I decided not to make a diluted nic base. In my mind it increases the amount of times I'll have to measure, and since syringes and pipettes aren't 100% accurate, the more I measure the less accurate my final mix will be.
I was thinking measuring once from every bottle would give me mixes that are somewhat closer to their target ratios.

However, I would like to know if their is any disadvantage to directly extracting the 100mg base, other than the safety concern. I am wearing gloves and being very careful. Would it take the mix longer to steep if I add the 100mg directly? Or affect the flavor in any way?

Two comments -

First, chocolate is fairly difficult to work with. I haven't tried to use it as a primary flavor, only to augment other flavors. There are some mixes I do that have pretty close to 30% flavoring. You may find that a bit of sweetener helps the flavor come out.

On mixing down your 100mg - I work in VG only so I don't have to worry about PG/VG ratios but the weaker your nic base is the smaller your margin for error will be. At 100 mg/ml a 0.1ml measuring error is 10mg of nicotine, where if you just cut the stuff in half it's only a 5mg error - also, the larger the batch you mix the smaller effect that 0.1ml measuring error will have.

 

[Mikenet]

Two comments -

First, chocolate is fairly difficult to work with. I haven't tried to use it as a primary flavor, only to augment other flavors. There are some mixes I do that have pretty close to 30% flavoring. You may find that a bit of sweetener helps the flavor come out.

On mixing down your 100mg - I work in VG only so I don't have to worry about PG/VG ratios but the weaker your nic base is the smaller your margin for error will be. At 100 mg/ml a 0.1ml measuring error is 10mg of nicotine, where if you just cut the stuff in half it's only a 5mg error - also, the larger the batch you mix the smaller effect that 0.1ml measuring error will have.

Hrm, I wonder if anything I have would mix with the chocolate if a few days of steeping doesn't help. On hand I have...

Tobacco Flavor
Tobacco Blend
Root Beer
Dew Drops
Menthol Liquid
Coffee
Cinnamon Redhots
Cappuccino

All from Flavor Apprentice, menthol might give me a chocolate mint flavor perhaps. I might just wait to get some sweetener but that will be a couple weeks

 

[wizard10000]

You might try the coffee or the cappuccino

On sweetener - I've got some stevia here but don't really care for it. What does work for me is Lorann's cotton candy, which is just ethyl maltol in PG. A little bottle goes a long way, as I've never used more than about 2% sweetener in anything.

If someone in your area sells candy flavoring a one-dram bottle of cotton candy costs about two bucks and unless you've got a real sweet tooth it's enough to sweeten better than 150ml of your mix.

 

[Paislia]

~what wizard said about the margin for error. It is actually less the weaker your mix is when you start a recipe. Also the storage time. I am more concerned about the number of times I open a bottle of 100mg and how many times I've cleaned a pipette or relied on disposables. It just seems the more times you place a foreign object into that mix, the more chance there is for something to go wrong with it - and that would be expensive if you lost 80ml of 100mg d/t contamination of some kind (also you mentioned gloves and I hope you are also using some sort of eye protection - splashes of that would be nasty)

~I would intuitively say yes, the stronger the components of a mix are when they go together, the more time they will need to "marry" (to use a cooking term). This seems to be true for me if I use a pre-made juice from a vendor that I just want to tweak, vs. mixing my own juice with flavorings and nic (even though I start my recipes with nic at around 33 - 36mg). The pre-made juice recipes take less time to steep.

~I know I love chocolate with cinnamon in it, so for me personally, I would prob try a few drops of the cinnamon hot (it might increase the TH a bit too). I have not tried that myself but it sounds good

~I have heard good things about that cotton candy, or the marshmallow, for sweetening, but I don't use sweetener myself so that's strictly hearsay.

Ok, none of this post was very helpful, just my

 

[Mikenet]

~what wizard said about the margin for error. It is actually less the weaker your mix is when you start a recipe. Also the storage time. I am more concerned about the number of times I open a bottle of 100mg and how many times I've cleaned a pipette or relied on disposables. It just seems the more times you place a foreign object into that mix, the more chance there is for something to go wrong with it - and that would be expensive if you lost 80ml of 100mg d/t contamination of some kind (also you mentioned gloves and I hope you are also using some sort of eye protection - splashes of that would be nasty)

~I would intuitively say yes, the stronger the components of a mix are when they go together, the more time they will need to "marry" (to use a cooking term). This seems to be true for me if I use a pre-made juice from a vendor that I just want to tweak, vs. mixing my own juice with flavorings and nic (even though I start my recipes with nic at around 33 - 36mg). The pre-made juice recipes take less time to steep.

~I know I love chocolate with cinnamon in it, so for me personally, I would prob try a few drops of the cinnamon hot (it might increase the TH a bit too). I have not tried that myself but it sounds good

~I have heard good things about that cotton candy, or the marshmallow, for sweetening, but I don't use sweetener myself so that's strictly hearsay.

Ok, none of this post was very helpful, just my

I never considered contamination, you should see the way I clean those pipettes and syringes though, it takes longer for me to do that than to actually mix lol.

I don't think the accuracy issue with high Nic Vs. low nic bases would apply here though. Simply because if I make my own diluted nic base then I'm still making that extraction from the 100mg bottle, in order to make a base that is say 50mg or so.

Then I would have to extract again from the diluted base to make vapable liquids in the final stage. So in this scenario I'm combining the margin for error from both the diluted nic base, and the 100mg base I used to make it.

However if I already had a 40 or 50 MG nic base then I think this would be something to consider. That's just my thoughts on it but I could be overlooking something.

The marriage time being possibly higher on higher nic bases is something that concerns me.

You guys did give me an idea when talking about diluted nic bases. Since my first mix with the chocolate doesn't taste right yet, I'm thinking it could also be something else contributing.

I vaped the PG and VG I got from RTS straight in separate cartomizers, and they taste as Id expect them to. So What Im thinking is to vape the nicotine base in a carto to see what it taste like. Well, after diluting it with pg and vg down to a safe level of course.

This will confirm for me if the nicotine is interfering with the flavor, and I'll also be able to see if the taste of the nicotine changes over time too. I think I'll make a 6ML batch of this tomorrow.

 

[Mikenet]

You might try the coffee or the cappuccino

On sweetener - I've got some stevia here but don't really care for it. What does work for me is Lorann's cotton candy, which is just ethyl maltol in PG. A little bottle goes a long way, as I've never used more than about 2% sweetener in anything.

If someone in your area sells candy flavoring a one-dram bottle of cotton candy costs about two bucks and unless you've got a real sweet tooth it's enough to sweeten better than 150ml of your mix.

Hrm, is that intended to be a sweetener or a cotton candy flavoring? I do want sweeter, but I don't necessarily want a chocolate that taste like cotton candy. Any sweater that is known to be good at sweating without altering the flavor is something I'll grab in my next purchase.

 

[wizard10000]

Hrm, is that intended to be a sweetener or a cotton candy flavoring? I do want sweeter, but I don't necessarily want a chocolate that taste like cotton candy. Any sweater that is known to be good at sweating without altering the flavor is something I'll grab in my next purchase.

I can't speak to the other brands but Lorann's cotton candy is just ethyl maltol dissolved in PG. Much easier to use than ethyl maltol crystals and IME doesn't alter the flavor.

 

[Paislia]

I never considered contamination, you should see the way I clean those pipettes and syringes though, it takes longer for me to do that than to actually mix lol.

I don't think the accuracy issue with high Nic Vs. low nic bases would apply here though. Simply because if I make my own diluted nic base then I'm still making that extraction from the 100mg bottle, in order to make a base that is say 50mg or so.

Then I would have to extract again from the diluted base to make vapable liquids in the final stage. So in this scenario I'm combining the margin for error from both the diluted nic base, and the 100mg base I used to make it.

However if I already had a 40 or 50 MG nic base then I think this would be something to consider. That's just my thoughts on it but I could be overlooking something.

The marriage time being possibly higher on higher nic bases is something that concerns me.

You guys did give me an idea when talking about diluted nic bases. Since my first mix with the chocolate doesn't taste right yet, I'm thinking it could also be something else contributing.

I vaped the PG and VG I got from RTS straight in separate cartomizers, and they taste as Id expect them to. So What Im thinking is to vape the nicotine base in a carto to see what it taste like. Well, after diluting it with pg and vg down to a safe level of course.

This will confirm for me if the nicotine is interfering with the flavor, and I'll also be able to see if the taste of the nicotine changes over time too. I think I'll make a 6ML batch of this tomorrow.

~I wasn't implying that your cleaning procedure is lacking, just that a bottle that has been opened 10 times and had a foreign object introduced has "more" potential for problems than a bottle that has been opened once.

~the "margin for error" I was referring to would be the actual percentage or mg of nic in the final recipe. So that, if you were going to make a "2 drops" error: from 100 to 50 mg in a 20ml bottle you have done x "damage". Then from the 20ml bottle to, say, adding 5ml to a 10ml recipe, you have actually done 1/4x "damage" since you only used 5ml of the 20ml mix in the final recipe. If you add the 100mg nic directly to a 10ml recipe with the same issue, you have now caused 4x "damage", as the recipe is half the size, and the nic is twice as strong. Ok, not sure if that last one should be 2x or 4x (need more coffee) but you see where I was going with it anyway.

~That is the "plain" mix I suggested in an earlier post - the one you are suggesting making for yourself. But even there, you will want to give it probably 24 hrs for the pg and vg and nic to blend if you want an accurate test.

~Those few random posts I have seen where vapers did not care for the cotton candy flavoring, they were happy with the marshmallow. Maybe see if you can find a small quantity of both in a diy swaps or PIF thread (or the classifieds threads for that matter) and find out for yourself what you prefer.

 

[Mikenet]

~I wasn't implying that your cleaning procedure is lacking, just that a bottle that has been opened 10 times and had a foreign object introduced has "more" potential for problems than a bottle that has been opened once.

~the "margin for error" I was referring to would be the actual percentage or mg of nic in the final recipe. So that, if you were going to make a "2 drops" error: from 100 to 50 mg in a 20ml bottle you have done x "damage". Then from the 20ml bottle to, say, adding 5ml to a 10ml recipe, you have actually done 1/4x "damage" since you only used 5ml of the 20ml mix in the final recipe. If you add the 100mg nic directly to a 10ml recipe with the same issue, you have now caused 4x "damage", as the recipe is half the size, and the nic is twice as strong. Ok, not sure if that last one should be 2x or 4x (need more coffee) but you see where I was going with it anyway.

~That is the "plain" mix I suggested in an earlier post - the one you are suggesting making for yourself. But even there, you will want to give it probably 24 hrs for the pg and vg and nic to blend if you want an accurate test.

~Those few random posts I have seen where vapers did not care for the cotton candy flavoring, they were happy with the marshmallow. Maybe see if you can find a small quantity of both in a diy swaps or PIF thread (or the classifieds threads for that matter) and find out for yourself what you prefer.

No, you didn't imply anything about my cleaning procedure, I just mentioned it takes me a while to clean them because that probably reduces the contamination concern. I also don't leave the bottle open after the extraction very long at all, so I'm thinking at worse Im getting trace amounts of dust in the bottle just by having it open. I might just be an optimist, but I do understand the concern on this one.

I'll probably give the cotton candy a try, it sounds like what I need for a sweetener. I think Id rather deal with liquid sweeteners anyway.

Regarding my chocolate mix It's had a few days to steep now, periodically I shake it and take the cap off for a few hours.
I'm thinking in two days I'll give it another try. I may go and send a help request to One Stop Diy to see if they can tell me what the recommended flavor percentage is. I wish every individual flavor apprentice flavor had a recommended percentage listed. Even if taste is subjective it would give people a number to start with, and they could adjust it from their.

 

[Paislia]

Here is a thread with some recommendations on flavor percentages. A LOT of good info in there : http://www.e-cigarette-forum.com/forum/diy-e-liquid/74109-guide-diy-flavoring.html

 

[Mikenet]

Here is a thread with some recommendations on flavor percentages. A LOT of good info in there : http://www.e-cigarette-forum.com/forum/diy-e-liquid/74109-guide-diy-flavoring.html

Thanks for the link, I didn't see any percentages on the particular flavors I'm using from Flavor Apprentice but I did hear one poster say they use 20 - 25 % with FA flavors in general. I made a post in that forum to find out specifics on the flavors I'm using, plus I now have a forum under the onestopdiy section of this site in the hopes that I someone has tried the same flavors I have...

http://www.e-cigarette-forum.com/fo...need-help-flavor-percentages.html#post4654667

 

[Mikenet]

I've come up with another question

Im going to test my chocolate tommorow after having let it steep for a few days, but Im thinking it will probably still need more flavor. I did bring my mix up from 10% flavor to 14% a few days ago but I never really asked if there is an easy way to do this with the E Juice Calculator while maintaining my pg/vg ratio and nic level.

I don't want to keep adding flavor to the point where my mix ends up being 70pg / 30vg with 22mg nic, instead of being 60 PG / 40 VG with 26mg where I started.

The last time I just used the E juice calcualtor to subract the difference between my oringinal mix, and my desired mix. Im thinking this was right but im not sure.

What I did was bring up my original mix in the calculator which was 10% flavor, I subtracted the amount I thought Id used from that and came up with (13.8 ML)

13.8 ML of my mix has..

3.66 pg nic
3.24 pg
5.52 vg
1.38 pg flavor

Then I changed the flavor percentage of this mix on the calculator to 14% and subtracted the differences to come up with the amount I needed to add. The new 14% flavor mix would require 1.93 ML of flavor so I subtracted the original 1.38 from 1.93 to come up with .55ML of flavor to add to my mix to bring it up to 14%.

I suppose I can do this with all the ingrediets to keep the ratios the same right? One thing I think I missed is that adding ingredients increases the volume of the liquid, so maybe I missed a step?

Thought Id direct that question here since people here seem to know about the math behind mixing a little better I do.

 

[Mikenet]

Any ideas on my last post? Im only somewhat good at math, which means im also somewhat bad at it, and between good and bad Id rather my procedure by good, while staying away from the bad. lol

 

[Paislia]

Hi Mike - Yes, I would always enter into the calculator what the final volume will be rather than what you've got that needs tweaking. So if you had 13.8 - I would just put 14.5 or 15ml in the calculator, see what it comes up with, and THEN back out what you have already done. You should be left with what needs to be added. Sounds like you are well on your way - happy vaping!

 

[MistAid]

Void Mist produces Unflavored PG with Nicotine, Unflavored VG with Nicotine and Unflavored PG/VG Mix with Nicotine. Addition of Alcohol is OPTIONAL (No Alcohol, 1%, 2%, 3%, 4% and 5%). If a customer does not want Alcohol, he just needs to choose No Alcohol in the option Alcohol Concentration and I will never put Alcohol in his PG or VG. Alcohol cost money and it is additional work for me, so what reason to put if customer does not want to?

Best Regards,

Mist Aid

 

[MistAid]

If you are not sure Salemgold, it is easy to check before to type on ECF, just one click on my website Void Mist, go to DIY category and you will find all of my products PG, VG and PG/VG Mixes with Nicotine and without Nicotine with OPTIONAL Alcohol addition. Here are those options: No Alcohol, 1% 190 proof, 1% 200 proof .... and up to 5% 190 and 200 proof.
Any way, Thank you very much for your post: this is good Advertisement for me.

Best Regards,

MistAid

 

[MistAid]

Small amount of Alcohol does not tend cough. Cheap is not always the best, sounds funny, but I am absolutely agree with you Salemgold, even there are no rules without exceptions.

Best Regards,

Mist Aid