New Mixer

[johnr7]

Silly / blinding obvious comments at your request:-

• Decide your recipe
• write it down
• lay ingredients out
• follow to the letter
• LABEL YOUR MIX so you know what it is
• Mix in SMALL batches first
• No point trying 100ml on your first go to be epic fail - start at 10ml max (recipe by % anyway so easy to bulk up if Ok)
• WRITE EVERYTHING DOWN
• note your suppliers / makers (makers flavours vary wildly even for 'same' ones)
• Note your VG/PG ratio as this will impact recipes
• note blend date so you can judge if / how long steeping is required
• read up in the Mixology section
• Mix single flavours or follow clone recipe to start
• Leave head room in bottles to allow good shake (I tend to mix 80% of bottle i.e - 8ml in 10ml, 40 in 50, 80 in 100 etc)
• heat your mix (water bath best, can do micro) after blending
• If using micro -NOT FOR LONG, you can melt the plastic easily. Circa 4 seconds @ 10ml, 6 ~ 8 seconds on bigger bottles, never above 10 in my experience (water bath better but takes longer, leave bottle (closed) floating in hot water for a few minutes)
• Once hot shake, shake,shake, shake your booty
• Vent the air & shake again
• Vent the air
• Label the bottle with ALL relevant info - Flavour name that corresponds to your records, VG%, Nic mg, blend date, volume etc
• Sit back and toot the cheapest liquid known to man
• if it is pants let it steep and go back later
• if it is complete rank after ages what have you lost on 10ml? - Less than a quid and 10 minutes of your life
• If it is good it can be remade.
• wear latex (etc) gloves if you want (advised for nic but many don't bother - including me normally)
• Regardless of gloves or not BE CAREFUL, ESPECIALLY with nic base
• Close nic (and others) ASAP after using
• Clean spills of nic IMMEDIATEY if occur
• Wash hands if get nic on them
• Be careful with nic - keep away from kids & animals
• Measure ingredients accurately

That should pretty much cover the basics I think.
Be careful & have fun.

 

[pava]

Hope you don't mind me jumping in here, but can you suggest a suitable dripper for a newbie then? I have around a dozen 10ml flavours steeping at the moment and there must be a better and easier way to test them. I'm also looking to start mixing multiple flavours in the near future, so a dripper sounds like being an essential piece of kit and not a toy, as my wife calls my vaping gear.

 

[walks]

For testing mixes I found a single coil in the derringer perfect.

 

[xplosiv]

Silly / blinding obvious comments at your request:-

• Decide your recipe
• write it down
• lay ingredients out
• follow to the letter
• LABEL YOUR MIX so you know what it is
• Mix in SMALL batches first
• No point trying 100ml on your first go to be epic fail - start at 10ml max (recipe by % anyway so easy to bulk up if Ok)
• WRITE EVERYTHING DOWN
• note your suppliers / makers (makers flavours vary wildly even for 'same' ones)
• Note your VG/PG ratio as this will impact recipes
• note blend date so you can judge if / how long steeping is required
• read up in the Mixology section
• Mix single flavours or follow clone recipe to start
• Leave head room in bottles to allow good shake (I tend to mix 80% of bottle i.e - 8ml in 10ml, 40 in 50, 80 in 100 etc)
• heat your mix (water bath best, can do micro) after blending
• If using micro -NOT FOR LONG, you can melt the plastic easily. Circa 4 seconds @ 10ml, 6 ~ 8 seconds on bigger bottles, never above 10 in my experience (water bath better but takes longer, leave bottle (closed) floating in hot water for a few minutes)
• Once hot shake, shake,shake, shake your booty
• Vent the air & shake again
• Vent the air
• Label the bottle with ALL relevant info - Flavour name that corresponds to your records, VG%, Nic mg, blend date, volume etc
• Sit back and toot the cheapest liquid known to man
• if it is pants let it steep and go back later
• if it is complete rank after ages what have you lost on 10ml? - Less than a quid and 10 minutes of your life
• If it is good it can be remade.
• wear latex (etc) gloves if you want (advised for nic but many don't bother - including me normally)
• Regardless of gloves or not BE CAREFUL, ESPECIALLY with nic base
• Close nic (and others) ASAP after using
• Clean spills of nic IMMEDIATEY if occur
• Wash hands if get nic on them
• Be careful with nic - keep away from kids & animals
• Measure ingredients accurately

That should pretty much cover the basics I think.
Be careful & have fun.

Thanks John, that's a great checklist! Just trying to make sure what's in my head is what others are doing, I'm hopefully starting off simple and will see how it goes. Cheers again

 

[xplosiv]

Hope you don't mind me jumping in here, but can you suggest a suitable dripper for a newbie then? I have around a dozen 10ml flavours steeping at the moment and there must be a better and easier way to test them. I'm also looking to start mixing multiple flavours in the near future, so a dripper sounds like being an essential piece of kit and not a toy, as my wife calls my vaping gear.

The gizmo Blaster links too in post #6 looks good for testing, and cheap. I think ecigstore also had an RDA down from £13 to £5, no idea on delivery though, or how good it'll be for that matter. Plenty of sites have sales & clearances on atm (post xmas/new year stock?) just have a browse.

 

[vapoteur]

http://www.thealchemistscupboard.co.uk/product/bauway 510 bridgless atomizer

@b road blaster , thank you for suggesting this bridgeless atomizer. It sounds perfect for trying lots of liquids without getting into rebuilding coils.

A few questions:
Is there any wicking material inside?
Does it need to be cleaned when changing liquids or from time to time?
It looks like it comes with a small coil inside. When it needs replacing, do you get a new atomizer or can you just change the coil inside?

 

[b road blaster]

@vapoteur have a look at this mate

 

[vapoteur]

Ha ha! Quite impressive how much vapour he can draw from just a few drops.

He doesn't seem to be very found of his child though!

I am convinced, @b road blaster, thank you so much for the tip. I just ordered one from the Alchemist's Cupboard. Reasonable investment at £4.60 and it looks like it will make liquid testing sooo much easier. I have 10+ recipes steeping and I can't wait to try them.

 

[pava]

I have the bridgeless atomizer too, although I found it does need cleaning between flavours. I've taken to boiling it, and my nautilus coils to reuse them. So far so good on that score, but I don't know how often I can get away with boiling them before they need replacing, so I treated myself to the velocity clone for £11 off Amazon. Now that I have my coiling kit, I can just rewick between flavours when testing.

The problem is, I've got around 14-16 juices ready for testing, but just when I thought I'd got over that flu virus thingy that's doing the rounds, and chest infection, it's back with a vengeance. Bronchial passages so choked up breathing is a real problem once again, so I'm not vaping, for fear of it irritating the situation. I hope this second course of anti-biotics kicks it's butt this time coz I'm missing my vaping.

 

[vapoteur]

Get better @pava. I just went through the same last week-end and am just recovering. My taste buds are back, what can be worst than vaping your top production and not tasting anything?!