The Flavor Apprentice Flavoring Thread

[Papillon61]

Oh man my first bunch of supplies I ordered, I got a pack of 18ga from NN and thought 'Oh those 14s will be too big and unnecessary'. Oh my god that was so frustrating trying to suck up VG haha. Finally figured out I could just take the needle off and do it that way hah.

That's the best way I have found too - pour the vg into a wide necked jar and draw it up with the syringe without the needle. I don't like using the cylinder to measure VG - it just takes for ever to completely empty and I do like to be precise. With a syringe I know I am. So far the largest syringes I have are 5ml but I'm thinking of getting something bigger since I am know pretty sure what juices I like and am mixing in much larger batches.

 

[Monotremata]

That's the best way I have found too - pour the vg into a wide necked jar and draw it up with the syringe without the needle. I don't like using the cylinder to measure VG - it just takes for ever to completely empty and I do like to be precise. With a syringe I know I am. So far the largest syringes I have are 5ml but I'm thinking of getting something bigger since I am know pretty sure what juices I like and am mixing in much larger batches.

Yeah waiting for it to all pour out is kind of a pain. Especially when Im holding a 60ml bottle with a funnel in it in one hand. My hands arent the steadiest anymore and it gets pretty unnerving holding that and the vial on top while it all runs out. I have a very long stemmed funnel I bought from Wizard Labs and I dont like just letting it sit all the way in because I dont want liquid sticking to it and wasting my precious mixes when I pull it out so I always hold it by the stem right in the top of the bottles haha. Ive only used VG from NN and Essential Depot, my first batch was from NN and was pretty thick and viscous. Ive found ED's VG is a little thinner than NN's and it helps alot cause it 'runs' faster out of the vial. I purposely didnt buy glass vials because VG has a tendency to stick more to glass, where its alot easier to get it to run off of the poly vials NN has. Alot of times when I transfer juice from the 60ml bottles into the plastic 15mls I carry around, I have to wait a couple minutes after I shake it up for all the VG to run back down. Otherwise, Ive had my carry around bottles come out inconsistent from time to time after I filled them. Ive had it happen before where the first couple of fills were full of flavor and put out very little vapor, and then all of a sudden the next refill is blowing out super clouds but I cant taste anything as far as the flavoring or nic goes..

 

[chanelvaps]

Ordered another 18-20 flavors from TFA today to add to this mega box of flavors that was gifted to me. I am going to make a lot of Bills recipes and that Yogurt one posted above, the Pineapple one (OMG) and a few others.

 

[Girod]

I'm sure you have heard this before, but mix by weight with a scale and all of your problems disappear. I was skeptical at first, but after I did it once I never looked back. I have my VG and PG in condiment bottles with caps. I use disposable pipettes for nic and flavors. No syringes, vials, etc. nothing other than a scale, my bottles, my ingredients, the pipettes, and a glass of water to rinse and hold the pipettes. Not that I care that much when I am making 30 or 50 ml bottles, but with my cheap scale and pipettes get me within a couple hundredths of a gram of my recipe. It's quick, easy, accurate and there's nothing to clean up except dump the water.

Using Essential Depot VG in a condiment bottle, I measure out the 26+ grams of VG in 20 seconds maybe. It might take me longer to prepare my recipe and get everything lined up than actually measuring it all out.

 

[Crocky]

That's the best way I have found too - pour the vg into a wide necked jar and draw it up with the syringe without the needle. I don't like using the cylinder to measure VG - it just takes for ever to completely empty and I do like to be precise. With a syringe I know I am. So far the largest syringes I have are 5ml but I'm thinking of getting something bigger since I am know pretty sure what juices I like and am mixing in much larger batches.

I use a 60 ml syringe from tractor supply. Easy peasy to suck the VG into it. I get most all my syringes from there, they are pretty cheap. Never tried mixing by weight as listed above by Girod, heck I just now getting the syringes down pat. Might have to explore the measuring by weight thing one day.

 

[Crocky]

Looking for a good peanut butter cookie recipe.

Thinking tfa peanut butter, FA cookie and a dash of AP. just not sure on the percentages yet. I can't open the zip files for some reason on my iPad even using win zip, so not sure if there is a recipe already on there for that. If so, if someone could share that would be awesome.

 

[jpasint]

Yes, I have a few 1ml and 3ml that are all glass, stopper glass too. One of my 3ml comes with a removable metal three finger apparatus (thumb and two fingers), to make dispensing easier, I removed it to make dispensing easier

I have one .5 ml glass syringe that has a steel plunger.
I miss, in a cynical way, using my old glass syringes. Now it's all done on a scale.

 

[Jason Duvall]

how do you use the scale to measure?

 

[hittman]

Has anyone used the kiwi flavor much? I'm experimenting for the first time with it. I started at 12% kiwi with 6% vanilla bean ice cream and 4 percent Bavarian cream. Not terrible but not sure if it's the right additives for kiwi.

 

[Robert Cromwell]

I fot an oral syringe 10 ml with a thingy that fits on the end and fits in the bottle opening so you can just fill it up. hard to explain but looks handy. Not tried it yet $1.49 at Krogers a while ago. Also USPS just delivered 2 quarts of VG essiential depot 12 something each and free shipping from Amazon prime.

 

[Robert Cromwell]

The little bottle adapter thingy works good. It fits down in the opening of my 125 ml bottles I keep my premix in. Has a little flippy door you flip open and the stick the syringe down in, invert the bottle and fill the syringe. Me likes it.

 

[Girod]

how do you use the scale to measure?

Use an e-liquid recipe calculator, and search the Internet mixing e-juice recipes by weight (or with a scale). There are several such threads on ECF, and all over, including YouTube. 24 ml of VG has a certain weight, and it's not 24 grams, it's several grams higher. All of your ingredients are heavier than water by weight. That's why you need a calculator.

If you use that instead of volume, and use your bottles, there is only one transfer from storage to bottle, so less loss. And less equipment, and less mess.

After you put the bottle on the scale, you zero it out (tare). Then you add an ingredient up to what it is supposed to be, then tare it again. So no math involved, let the calculator and the tare do the work for you.

 

[Alter]

I use my scale to tare the glass bottles I use to mix with so I know how much I'm seeding the next mix with. My scale angered me when it shut off in mid flight of a mix I was making so I have to use syringes but owell. I only make 50 +10 seed is 60 mils at a time of any given mix and generally stick to only a couple-few ingredients.
Documenting every mix and its adjustments into a calculator is mandatory as far as I'm concerned. I just removed the gazillion mixes in the EJuiceMeUp calculator and just have my own formulas in there now.

 

[disco180]

One of the most important things when getting a scale for DIY use is to get a scale without a auto shutoff timer or one with at least 5 min auto shutoff, or a timer that you can adjust. They are so inexpensive that you can usually trash the one you have in favor of one without the auto shutoff.

 

[MasteroftheVape]

I switched to gram mixing a while back and highly recommend it.

I have transferred all my flavors into 4oz dropper bottles. This allows you to make any mix you want with 0 syringe/pipette/dropper cleanup after mix session as every flavor has its own dropper to use.

Tfa makes gram mixing easy if you use a calculator that has gm/ml for individual flavors because the ratio for 90% of their flavors are listed on the msds from their website.

 

[chanelvaps]

I switched to gram mixing a while back and highly recommend it.

I have transferred all my flavors into 4oz dropper bottles. This allows you to make any mix you want with 0 syringe/pipette/dropper cleanup after mix session as every flavor has its own dropper to use.

Tfa makes gram mixing easy if you use a calculator that has gm/ml for individual flavors because the ratio for 90% of their flavors are listed on the msds from their website.

Ay Yi Yi just as I got all outfitted with syringes and all now every one is going to move into this new way with weight and I will be a dinosaur asking "wait how many mls in that recipe" and everyone will be yelling 'we moved into weight, can't help ya, see ya"

 

[Papillon61]

Ay Yi Yi just as I got all outfitted with syringes and all now every one is going to move into this new way with weight and I will be a dinosaur asking "wait how many mls in that recipe" and everyone will be yelling 'we moved into weight, can't help ya, see ya"

No don't worry. You will not have that kind of problem. The reason a milliliter is a milliliter is because a millilitre of water weighs 1 milligram. Granted, the density of eliquid may not be 100% equivalent to water but there is not that much difference. So 1mg - 1ml or vice versa. Unlike in the case of drops where you could be comparing apples and oranges because of the various sizes of droppers and pipettes etc., here you will always be comparing bananas with bananas.

 

[Girod]

Sorry to nitpick, but 1 ml of water weighs one gram, not one milligram. But flavors and pg are relatively close to water (example: my Acai is 1.034 grams per ml), but that is still 3% off. My VG is NOT even close, it's 1.26 g/ml. That's 26% higher.

 

[Papillon61]

I stand corrected - a lapsus on my part.

As for weight of water and eliquid, I agree also, they are not identical but since if you transcribe 1ml as 1 grm your proportions are still going to be the same in terms of percentage, it will not make much difference to a recipe. If you look at the ejuice calculator 1ml is always translated as 1grm. Whether it should be like that or not is something I am not equipped to argue with. What I can safely say is that it seems not all VG was born equal. I get my VG from Poland and it is so thick I have no hope in hell of pulling it up with a 12 gauge syringe, whereas some people here said it was no problem for them.

I have scales on the way. The moment they get here I will carry out an experiment and weigh 1ml of whatever I am likely to use.

 

[Robert Cromwell]

I ain't gettin no stinkin scales to mix ejuice with. The old fashioned volume method works fine for me. That might make me Jurassic Geriatric, but so be it.