Mixed Two Together and it was Awesome?

[Icemanxxxv]

I had two bottles about half full of two different recipes. I figured they might compliment each other so I mixed the two bottles gave it a good shake and it was a great combination. Seriously an Awesome combination. Now here is the question. Do I mix the recipe using the original percentages or half them when I mix it?

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[Bonskibon]

You would using original percentages because you just mixed "half" bottles (each with their own percentages) of different stuff to make one great one.

 

[tazzle]

I'll say it should be half. Let's say recipe one was 16% flavoring altogether, and recipe two was 12% flavoring altogether. When you add them together, they do not become 28% of the total, because the volume has doubled. You divide by 2: the new mix is a total of 14% flavoring. So you cut the recipe percentages by half to create the new mix.

Imagine it this way: if you had two 50 ml bottles of Recipe One at 16% total flavoring each, and you added them together, you would get 100 ml at 16%, not 100 ml at 32%. The same principle applies when you are adding two different recipes.

Makes sense?

 

[Bonskibon]

I don't get I guess. My math has never been that good.

 

[Bonskibon]

I'll say it should be half. Let's say recipe one was 16% flavoring altogether, and recipe two was 12% flavoring altogether. When you add them together, they do not become 28% of the total, because the volume has doubled. You divide by 2: the new mix is a total of 14% flavoring. So you cut the recipe percentages by half to create the new mix.

Imagine it this way: if you had two 50 ml bottles of Recipe One at 16% total flavoring each, and you added them together, you would get 100 ml at 16%, not 100 ml at 32%. The same principle applies when you are adding two different recipes.

Makes sense?

Trying to understand. What happens if one of the bottles has a flavor that the other bottle doesn't have? Does that get reduced?

 

[tazzle]

Yes, every ingredient should be reduced by half. (Remember that this recipe has roughly twice the number of ingredients.) So, if an ingredient in the first recipe was blueberry at 4%, it was 4% of the *first bottle* only; once the second recipe bottle (with no blueberry) was added it was diluted by half.

 

[tazzle]

On the other hand if both recipes had 4% strawberry, the amount of strawberry should stay 4% (half of the first recipe's strawberry = 2%, and half of the second recipe's strawberry = 2%, added together = 4%).

If the first recipe had 2% strawberry, and the second recipe had 6% strawberry, you would use 1% strawberry for the first and 3% strawberry for the second, for a total of 4% strawberry.

 

[Bonskibon]

Ok, I think I'm starting to understand.

 

[go_player]

Yep, tazzle's right, IMHO, if what you want to do is replicate mixing the two together at equal volumes. I would say that even if the result of mixing two juices together was very good, you might still want to experiment with the percentages a bit, because there are interactions between flavors that won't have been present in either of the original juices.

For instance, if you had two flavors that share main molecules, or have very similar main molecules, using half of each is probably going to be best. But flavors that are present in one, and not in the other, where there is no similarity might be a bit weak in the end result, depending on what you're looking for. How much flavoring you want in a juice isn't just about the strength of the concentrates used, it's about how they interact.

So even using flavorings that are good at a pretty consistent percentage, one recipe might be over-flavored at 8% total flavoring, while another might be great at 12%.

There are some other interactions you have to be aware of, especially as things steep. For instance, some flavors contain a lot of Ethyl Maltol, which can help smooth out harsher flavors, but can also mute some flavors pretty badly, especially over time. If you have a flavor in Recipe 1, which contains no EM, and you then cut that in half _and_ mix it with Recipe 2 that contains a lot of EM it might wind up just disappearing after a little steep time.

There's no way to know for sure what flavors will do with each other, other than trying things out and seeing, but the more you know about your individual flavors and how they interact with other flavors the easier it gets to guess at how things need to be tweaked when they inevitably don't do quite what you expected. This is a pretty deep rabbit-hole, and it can be frustrating, but it is also what makes mixing so interesting, IMHO.