Making the flavor stronger

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jiminsandiego

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Just started DIY, using about 15%, mostly fruit flavors from Capella and Flavor art. I'm sometimes adding 2% lemon juice, chocolate and marshmallow to get more flavor. Steeping in crock pot and waiting a day. My flavors taste good, however I would like to get a "stronger" flavor. (I'm using KFL and dripper). So…aside from adding more flavoring (which eventually leads to less flavor) what are some ways to get more intense flavor. Thanks for any input folks,
Jim
 

we2rcool

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First thing would be to leave out anything that is known to diminish/kill flavor...lemon juice dimishes flavor (as does sucralose, EM & vinegar).

from here, Post #413: http://www.e-cigarette-forum.com/forum/diy-e-liquid/268760-diy-master-techniques-flavor-add-ons-em-vw-bw-mts-acv-ect-11.html

As far as I can recall, I was the one who tested lemon juice and the effects it had on fruit flavors. At the time I was also using sucralose (ezsweets) in fruit/bakery flavors. I also tested distilled vinegar (not acv, I dont use it) on tobaccos.

What I found with fruit and bakery vapes is they were great initally with the additives, for about two days. Then on day 3 like clockwork the sharpness/crispness of the flavor was just... plain... gone. It never rebounded either. It just continued decline. So I started testing the same juices with lemon juice and sucralose separately. Trying to find the culprit. The result in my tests was that they BOTH decrease flavor output of ejuice. While they help initally boost and sweeten flavor, within a few days, they both cause ejuice to simply go flat. While its a more dramatic example, I feel the same way about ejuice with lemon or sucralose as I do about flat soda pop. Its just lackluster.

This occured in both high VG bases at 80% and high PG bases at 80%. I tested both because I didnt want people calling me out saying VG mutes flavor, which to this day I refute as utter nonsense.

I no longer use either in any of my mixing. I have found that using fruit flavors with alcohol bases provide more than enuff sweetening o. their own if they are steeped for 48-72 hours, and it helps that I use 80%VG in my juice.

As far as tobaccos go I also agree vinegar that after a few days it can flatten flavors over time. However!!! As I vape mostly tobacco ejuices I still add 1 drop/5ml of distilled white vinegar to my vapes. To counter the flattening I adjust by adding slightly more flavoring. About .5% to 1% more flavoring in a final mix. In my experience this counters the effect of flavor flattening with DV and allows mostly all tobacco vapes to round out immediately. (note: i also heat steep my juices at a constant 150° in a water bath in a crock pot for four hours after mixing and have found it it adds about 2 weeks to the aging process of ejuice). At the 2 weeks mark (in my case then this is 4 hours after mixing), all of your tobacco flavors will have a spike in flavor and will stay there, but only round more given time. Giving you a spiked up flavor but still rounded body to your vape. I found apple cider vinegar made bad and good juuces worse with no spike at all, but to be fair I barely ever tested acv.

All of my vapes... yes read that as ALL... are primed and full bodied in four hours. Period. Ultrasonic isnt the answer either. Hand shaking is enuff for juice. Heat allows flavor dissipation and release FAR FAR better.

Alot of what I do flys in the face of common and well "documented" processes others use like ultrasonic steeping tho. (if it works for ya, great. I know what I know and heat is the key, not vibration. And yeah, I tested that too about three months ago so I stand behind it).

People just pretty much ignored my testing. I took painstaking measures to control the samples and.prove to myself the results. Today when people say they use lemon juice, or sucralose and RAVE about the results.... I know they are NOT vaping stellar juice. They are absolutely, positively, better off without both. Unless they are going to vape what they make in under two days.

Note: I did not bother testing the effects of citric acid powder in juice, but I assume it has the same effect as lemon juice and mutes flavors.
 

horton

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Just started DIY, using about 15%, mostly fruit flavors from Capella and Flavor art. I'm sometimes adding 2% lemon juice, chocolate and marshmallow to get more flavor. Steeping in crock pot and waiting a day. My flavors taste good, however I would like to get a "stronger" flavor. (I'm using KFL and dripper). So…aside from adding more flavoring (which eventually leads to less flavor) what are some ways to get more intense flavor. Thanks for any input folks,
Jim
I know this is coming from the hardware side and not sure if that is what you were looking for...... but,
I've seen peeps with sub ohm set ups claim to get more flavor that way. You should know the ins and outs of battery safety to do it safely. (apologies if you do, but just a caveat) Mention has been made of great heightening of the flavor but I don't do sub ohm so can't say for certain. I know with my Russians and clones fiddling around with the coils, especially micro coils, can help flavor as well as using cotton wicks.
 

HeadInClouds

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Just started DIY, using about 15%, mostly fruit flavors from Capella and Flavor art. I'm sometimes adding 2% lemon juice, chocolate and marshmallow to get more flavor. Steeping in crock pot and waiting a day. My flavors taste good, however I would like to get a "stronger" flavor. (I'm using KFL and dripper). So…aside from adding more flavoring (which eventually leads to less flavor) what are some ways to get more intense flavor.

You're exactly right regarding too much flavoring leading to flavor fade. If you are using FlavourArt at 15%, you have probably overshot that mark. Here's a good place to check for FA suggested percentages: https://spreadsheets.google.com/spr..._hQ6Fu8HdEwwR2dLRUJlVjlabEN1NG1ucktuUVE&gid=0
the yellow column is the average, and columns beyond are recommendations from different people. The grey column on the left is FA's suggested starting point, when they have one.
 

HeadInClouds

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Hey Jim, there's really no need to steep that. You can set the closed bottle it in a cup of hot tap water to warm and thin it, then shake it really well. But It's still 12% FA flavorings, which is really high for this brand. Banana is not one of FA's stronger flavors, but raspberry is plenty strong at half of what you used.

Why not transfer a little to another bottle and cut it to half that strength with extra nic base. So it'll be 6% total. Nothing to lose by trying, right?
 

we2rcool

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I heard adding saline solution works "wonders" but when I tried it on two of my mixes that were already pretty flavory, they went almost flat in no time. One was cherry the other malt. Maybe the chocolate will work, going to try later.

How much/what percentage did you use? Two factors: adding anything to a mix dilutes it and lessens taste; the effect of too much salt is the same on e-liquids (basically) as on any food. A little bit enhances flavor; too much tends to lessen/overwhelm other flavors (even if it's not tasted); way too much tastes 'salty'.

We recently changed wicking material (from standard silica to Nextel and whoa-bang-craziness happened! :( We'd used 9% saline solution in our VG Base (VG, dw, saline, pga) for almost a year. With the Nextel we could taste the salt for the first time (in some mixes), and others (particularly the sweeter ones), seemed to lose intensity (which is the effect of the salt even though we couldn't taste the salt).

Thr Nextel seriously enhances flavors (by eliminating the taste of the typical silicas, while wicking enormous amounts of fluid). It fact, it wicks so much that it overwhelmed our coils to the point of feeling like we were sucking pudding through a straw - plus there was a very substantial lessening of vapor production (the coils just couldn't heat up enough to vaporize properly). So back to the drawing board we went...

Our standard base is still VG diluted by 20%...but now it's 80% VG; 4.5% saline solution (instead of 9%); 13.5% distilled water (instead of 9%) and the same 2% pure grain alcohol. And we added 1-2 wraps to our coils. PERFECT! (for us and our equipment).

'Hope that gave you enough info to be able to enhance your mixes successfully! (assuming you're going to try to work with saline again).
 

tyjames

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How much/what percentage did you use? Two factors: adding anything to a mix dilutes it and lessens taste; the effect of too much salt is the same on e-liquids (basically) as on any food. A little bit enhances flavor; too much tends to lessen/overwhelm other flavors (even if it's not tasted); way too much tastes 'salty'.

We recently changed wicking material (from standard silica to Nextel and whoa-bang-craziness happened! :( We'd used 9% saline solution in our VG Base (VG, dw, saline, pga) for almost a year. With the Nextel we could taste the salt for the first time (in some mixes), and others (particularly the sweeter ones), seemed to lose intensity (which is the effect of the salt even though we couldn't taste the salt).

Thr Nextel seriously enhances flavors (by eliminating the taste of the typical silicas, while wicking enormous amounts of fluid). It fact, it wicks so much that it overwhelmed our coils to the point of feeling like we were sucking pudding through a straw - plus there was a very substantial lessening of vapor production (the coils just couldn't heat up enough to vaporize properly). So back to the drawing board we went...

Our standard base is still VG diluted by 20%...but now it's 80% VG; 4.5% saline solution (instead of 9%); 13.5% distilled water (instead of 9%) and the same 2% pure grain alcohol. And we added 1-2 wraps to our coils. PERFECT! (for us and our equipment).

'Hope that gave you enough info to be able to enhance your mixes successfully! (assuming you're going to try to work with saline again).

I think I had 5 or 10ml of my mix and added 1-2 drops only. So I dont know whats up with that. Totally killed all flavor. Maybe it works best on certain flavors and not others.
 

we2rcool

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I think I had 5 or 10ml of my mix and added 1-2 drops only. So I dont know whats up with that. Totally killed all flavor. Maybe it works best on certain flavors and not others.

Wow, only a couple of drops? Wow, I wish I had some words of wisdom or logic that might explain that, but I've never heard of that happening...with anything, actually. Even the major flavor-killers won't totally kill all flavor with a couple of drops in 5-10 ml.

Sheesh, if I were you, I have to 'repeat' that lil' experiment (making sure are possible variables were 'as they should be) to see if I could get it to happen again - so I could figger out what the heck happened and why. It drives us both crazy when we can't make sense of something like this. We'd likely go so far as to buy another bottle of saline solution from a different maker (and be sure we didn't eat anything that causes 'flavor loss' - pickles, vinegar and high salt foods like sauerkraut will knock out our taste buddies for hours sometimes).

:::sigh::: DIYing. Who ever thought it'd be so tricky! :blink:
 

michaelsil1

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Wow, only a couple of drops? Wow, I wish I had some words of wisdom or logic that might explain that, but I've never heard of that happening...with anything, actually. Even the major flavor-killers won't totally kill all flavor with a couple of drops in 5-10 ml.

Sheesh, if I were you, I have to 'repeat' that lil' experiment (making sure are possible variables were 'as they should be) to see if I could get it to happen again - so I could figger out what the heck happened and why. It drives us both crazy when we can't make sense of something like this. We'd likely go so far as to buy another bottle of saline solution from a different maker (and be sure we didn't eat anything that causes 'flavor loss' - pickles, vinegar and high salt foods like sauerkraut will knock out our taste buddies for hours sometimes).

:::sigh::: DIYing. Who ever thought it'd be so tricky! :blink:

They probably used Saline with Sodium Bicarbonate in it
 

sc12

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People put baking soda in their refrigerator to get rid of odors. We need our sense of smell to taste things. Think of when you have a bad head cold. So, wouldn't it stand to reason that sodium bicarbonate (baking soda) in your mix would diminish the odor & hence the taste as well? Perhaps making your own saline mix with kosher salt would be better.
 
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