Mixing for noobs- stage 2, combining flavours, optimum ratios

[vapellie]

Dear apesters,

So I have my pg, vg and nic. I have a healthy collection of concentrates and quite a number of harvested, cleaned and de-labelled juice bottles. I have my little scales, and can follow a recipe, and even have a few that I really enjoy vaping. I understand the numbers enough to have pulled together my own juice calculator and recipe repository in Excel. In short, I believe I have got to grips with stage 1.

I have made single flavour 10ml batches of most of my concentrates so I know what they taste like by themselves.

Here's the bit I'd like your tips and advice on: how do you go about combining two flavours without ending up wasting a lot in unvapable rubbish? And then how do you tweak that to get the optimum ratios of flavour A to flavour B?

There doesn't seem to be much out there on the interwebs unless I'm looking in the wrong places. The closest thing I found of use was a guy on YouTube (Vape Crisis I believe) who suggested diluting a drop in 1-2ml water and drinking rather than vaping it.

At the moment I am contemplating buying a shed load of 5ml bottles and setting up my office like a science lab!! Any advice would be gratefully received!

 

[colchester 24]

Eliquid recipes . com (I don't know how to put in a link!) has a good database of recipes and has a handy 'what can I make with the concentrates I have?' feature. Good luck!

 

[vapellie]

Thanks @colchester 24 yes I've been predominantly using them so far, but I'd like to get to the next step, of being able to learn how to combine the flavours for myself or refine those recipes, and that's the bit I'm not 100% sure of!

 

[learnincurve]

I'm at the same stage as you and a being walked though it my a friend.
Few bits of advice I have been given:

Less is more, you don't need to overwhelm your juice with 20% flavours, people who really know there stuff know exactly how each exact concentrate will work with another can do so and create recipes. A beginner can't.

It does not work like you think it would, if you want a blackberry juice you don't need to add 20% blackberry, you need to add 6% blackberry.

Accent flavours are a thing, you want Blackberry and apple do you want BLACKBERRY and apple or APPLE and blackberry. Use 6% of one and 1-2% of the other.

and this is as far as we are at with my lessons.

 

[Mr Numpty]

One method I have found useful is to use a dripper and add drops of each (singly mixed) flavour directly onto the wick. So if I want to try a 2:1 ratio of strawberry to banana, I'd add 2 drops strawberry and 1 drop banana, then 2 drops strawberry and 1 drop banana again, and again, until the wick is saturated. This does seem to give a decent approximation of what to expect. It can be done with multiple flavours.
Another method of course, is to add the required ratios in small amounts into a new bottle and then drip that.

 

[chopper]

It's knowing the concentrates to start with, and their strengths. For example flavour art's espresso creme is 1 I use regular. I mix it at 4% as flavourart is notorious for being a very strong flavour. Then it was trial and error for caramel (TPA DX caramel original) at 3% for my own preference of caramel espresso

 

[oneeyedbob]

@vapellie

http://diyordievaping.com/

Have a look here, in the recipes section you'll find plenty of info on what percent of what flavours are used and most importantly why, plenty of other info on there too.

 

[nicotinelad]

This is the way i do it and i find it works great for me. i like fruit flavours so i mix them all as single juices at the levels i like pg /vg/ nic and percentage of flavour ,
pear 8% as its quite strong.
rhubarb 15%
banana 12%
blackcurrant 6% and so on with other flavours
so now i have four or more 60ml bottles of each flavour that i can vape
and if i fancy a rhubarb and pear mix i just get a empty 10ml bottle and pour in the rhubarb and maybe a bit of pear.
and i can mix and match any of these flavours at any combination .easy peasy.
I used to mix the way most people do, a little bit of this concentrate then a bit of another and just hope you get it right then leave them to steep for a few days, only to find you messed up and need to add more of one flavour or another.
my flavours are already steeped as singles at the percentage i like so no more guess work.
i hope this helps.

 

[learnincurve]

@nicotinelad
What flavouring are you using? With the top brand flavourings like innowara. FA or FW that mix is going to absolutely blow your head off at 60+W. If its a good flavouring then you need 2-6% at the absolute maximum for a single flavour. No problem with mixing up batches of single flavours and playing with adding more or less but it would make it impossible to type up in the standard recipe format.

Most people don't mix a bit of that, we do maths, experiments, and follow recipes, and know exactly what percentage each flavour should be added at.

 

[bigbluenose]

The most basic and simple method to gauge how 2 or more flavours sit with each other is drops in a 10ml glass of water.
I know, I know, it doesn't give you the exact flavour profile but it is close!
Especially if you pair your taste findings with your flavour percentage notes.
Even the drops on back of hand can help.
It hasn't let me down!