Has anyone ever made a DIY juice that honestly compares to a "premium" store bought.

[Vapingvin]

The only premium one ive bought was beard vape no51 i think...vanilla custard...gorgeous....yesterday I made 5 variations of custard...no idea how they are going to be but its experimental...my own recipes kind of thrown togeter but also a little bit of knowlede on flavours and amounts...time will tell how they are,Im not expecting them to be right...if one os ok...i might work with it

My adv is the unicorn milk clone...it is gorgeous but I dont know what the original tastes like and im not paying 9 quid for 15ml to find out...keep at it I day

 

[blemmy]

The only premium one ive bought was beard vape no51 i think...vanilla custard...gorgeous....yesterday I made 5 variations of custard...no idea how they are going to be but its experimental...my own recipes kind of thrown togeter but also a little bit of knowlede on flavours and amounts...time will tell how they are,Im not expecting them to be right...if one os ok...i might work with it

My adv is the unicorn milk clone...it is gorgeous but I dont know what the original tastes like and im not paying 9 quid for 15ml to find out...keep at it I day

Out of curiosity how long did you steep the Unicorn for? I have 40ml and it's been steeping for about 5 weeks now. I tried it a couple of weeks ago but I felt it needed longer. Smells good now

 

[Miss Pepper]

Yes, but it takes time, practice and various mixes to get it to what you want

 

[Clownstyle]

I'm not meaning to belittle anyone that makes DIY juice because of my seeming inability to successfully mix up a 2 flavour recipe, but over the last few weeks of experimenting with limited and partial success; I've been wondering...

Using generally available base',concentrates and additives; With enough skill and knowledge could i realistically expect to recreate with a decent approximation one of the "premium" £17+ for 30ml juices?

Has the community as a whole had a lot of success in these endeavours in the time before i relatively recently became interested? Or, is it something that isn't really seen as important in favour of people making their own personal recipes over cloning already available and popular combinations?

Similarly, is there a range of flavours and perhaps additives that get used in these premium ranges that just aren't easily available to us hobbyist if at all?

I really enjoy being able to tinker with my e-cig and since getting into rebuilding about 12 months ago and becoming pretty proficient quite quickly I'm clearly still very much in the learning phase of DIY, I'm just wondering whether there is an end point where i'll be making juices that can compete with the super expensive sweetener drenched juices available or, as I'm hoping isn't the case; is it a trade off that the drastic saving in money will make it difficult to expect the same kind of flavour returns?

As ever, thanks for any replies/info/advice/mocking offered!

A lot of companies have wholesale accounts with the likes of Capella, TFA et al so I see no reason why DIY juice could not be as good as, or surpass juice made on mass. Granted, sometimes the larger juice manufacturers may have access to certain flavours before they are released to the public, but we have a boatload of concentrates already to experiment with.

Good luck

 

[Vapingvin]

Out of curiosity how long did you steep the Unicorn for? I have 40ml and it's been steeping for about 5 weeks now. I tried it a couple of weeks ago but I felt it needed longer. Smells good now

I like it after one week...the cream hasnt developed fully at that stage i feel.none of my mixes have gotten past 2 weeks old so cant help you too much im afraid.Its flavour is completely different up through the watts as Im sure you are aware...its good for me anywhere from 40-60 watts on the crown with .5 coil in...sweet spot is 54w for me...

 

[bigbluenose]

Have a couple of mixes that have been favourably commented upon by people.
Both of these took a while with tweaking the percentages and flavour brands to get where I wanted to be. So it is possible?
What I can say is that many premium brands use a lot of sweetener!

 

[Ment]

A lot of it is psychological, and I'm as guilty of this as anyone. Juices taste better because they cost a lot.

I think the very best premium juices are difficult to match because they're made by chemists from scratch, not from stock flavourings, but these represent probably less than 10% of juices.

I read recently that Mother's Milk, for example, is made from Capella flavourings so any one of us could copy it.

The Milkman (not OHW) is actually a clone of a juice I've been making for 2 years.

I came up with a mix recently that tastes as "premium" as anything I've tried, and every time I vape it I think it came out of an expensive bottle.

The answer is, be bold, use your imagination and try mixing flavours you may not think go together.

 

[Huggett]

There's a lot of cost in commercial juice, which does drive pricing up. But that's all I'm saying on the cost matter vs homebrew.

But yes, I've made some juices that imo and others who've tried it could rival some high street juices.

But that doesn't mean, I'm a master mixer. It means there's some really poor juices out in circulation, single flavours or 2 / 3 flavours. Nothing complex

You get better over time, you work out what works with what. How flavours blend together, how to add depth to liquids.

What creams give what effect and so on. It's a major learning curve, but fun doing so.

It takes a lot of time, effort and money tweaking a recipe to perfection. I've been working on a few for myself, the amount of headaches it's caused! Bugger that for a day job

 

[joe clay]

I would LOVE to find a clone for "CRUNCHY CREAM DONUTS" juice called; 'frosted lemon cream donut'.... Its right up there in my alltime fave juice and is now my ADV

 

[city461]

Was in the same boat but persevered , there a FB group called VHB which helped a lot and Chefs vapours or Chefs Flavours as they are called now (TPD preparation) do a one shot which is pretty much self explanatory. These sell out as fast as they are re stocked showing the quality and popularity of them. @Huggett can vouch for the one shot range.. I think...