Welcome Tim, to the wonderful world of vaping & this forum!
It's an exciting thing to discover vaping, and discover the neato community we have here.
OK so for now I'd like to address your juice question. You're a newbie...and you've realized that large bottles of premixed e-juice is not exactly the most affordable way for a newbie to try out new flavours. My advice is to forget all about buying premixed juices...and DIY. Here's why.
Premixed e-juices are conveniently ready to go, it's true. But you have no idea how much flavouring has actually been added in by the maker. You can't alter the juice without further diluting the flavour, either. And most importantly, if it's a flavour that you try & realize you hate...then the entire bottle will basically go to waste. At $10 to $30 a bottle, you can see how (especially for a newbie trying to discover their first go-to flavours) this is an expensive, unnecessarily wasteful hit-&-miss way of doing things.
With DIY, your juice isn't ready to go - you'll need to spend a minute or two counting drops & stirring. But you'll retain control over the nic level, over the amount of flavouring, over the inclusion/exclusion and amount of VG, and over the batch size (it can be as small or large a batch as you want). DIY lets you affordably, conveniently test out new flavours. And it's so simple to do that anyone could do it - it's nothing but counting drops & stirring for a few seconds. For the life of me, I don't see what's so inconvenient or complicated about that.
To DIY, you'd have the following ingredients on hand (Jack at
Happy Vaper has all of these except the flavourless PG w/nic, which you can get from
Evapers):
- Flavourless PG with nicotine
($19 + shipping at Evapers for a 30mL bottle)
- Plain VG (or plain PG)
(both $2.49 at Happy Vaper for a 30mL bottle)
- Concentrated flavouring
($2 to $3 each at Happy Vaper, per 3mL bottle, good starting point to get your first flavours for DIY-ing)
- A glass dram bottle & blunt-tip syringe
(again, Happy Vaper for $2 or less in both cases)
- The following simple-to-use e-juice calculator:
todmuller.com/ejuice/ejuice.php
Using that online calculator, you just type in:
- the nic level of your flavourless PG w/nic.
- the target nic level you want.
- how much flavouring you want
(typically most people go for anywhere from 5% to 20% - 10% or 15% are common - but different flavours work better at different levels, so experimentation is called for, in small batches).
- the size of the batch you want to make
(3mL is a good size for affordably testing out a new flavour - that's 60 drops).
- then click on the screen, and it'll tell you exactly how many drops of what to drip into your little dram bottle. When done, simply stir the contents together with your blunt tip syringe (though any sort of small stirring implement would work as well). That's it!
I'm sure you can see the savings. Making up a 3mL batch of e-juice takes only a moment and if you hate the flavour, you're out almost nothing (about $2 or $3 + a few pennies worth of your PG w/nic). If you like it, you're saving a bundle and can further fine-tune it to your taste if you want.
I'd rather be able to try out anywhere from
ten to fifteen new flavours for $30 than try out
one...wouldn't you?
Plus, with DIY you're basically doing what the premixed suppliers are doing - you're mixing up e-juice. The difference is that when
you do it, you save a lot of money & retain a lot of control...so that you can fine-tune a juice to be exactly the way you want it to be.
So yeah...that's my advice. DIY, instead of premixed. Consider that even if you order sample-size bottles of premixed juice...it may still taste weak, or vape poorly, or be a flavour you don't like. And it'll still cost more than DIY. Taste is such a subjective thing...we really owe it to ourselves to give ourselves the freedom to find what works for our specific tastes. DIY lets you do that in ways that no premixed juice ever will. The amount of flavouring in the juice alone can make a big difference; it can even affect the vapour production.
Anyway...I've said my bit. Wish you all the best, and above all happy vaping!
P.S. I
totally recommend the
Perfumer's Apprentice flavours (
Happy Vaper has them in 3mL bottles, though you can also order them directly from California in larger sizes). They are far & above one of
the best flavour companies out there. The lady who runs it & creates the flavours (Linda) not only really knows her stuff...she's super sweet! She recently created a new flavour that I requested (and I'm super excited about it, can't wait to see what it's like) -
Dill Pickle!
