Rejuvenating an old stash of juice to best appeal to my ravaged taste buds

[ChrisLikesCoffee]

Greetings all, this is my first post here other than a hello in the new members thread.

To re-iterate that post slightly, I'm an old vaper attempting to return to the fold; so have joined up for a bit of moral support, advice and general banter.
Right now, apart from a bit of flirtation here and there I've been off the vapes for a couple of years and been smoking again, heavily, and am now trying to wean myself back onto the good stuff.

I got seriously into mixing a few years back and have quite a stash of home made liquids hidden away, and apart from buying one or two bottles of pre-made that were favourites I intend to start working my way through my profoundly steeped juice cellar.

They've been kept well; in glass or quality hard plastic, in a cool, dark place all boxed up in batches of 10 or 20 bottles from 30-100ml and boxes sealed up for at least 2 years, some for 3; and yesterday I cracked some open - and they do smell very, very good !!!

Happily nic isn't a problem, I always mixed without it and added later, partly as some brewing was intentionally long-term and so I didn't waste it on a new recipe that I wasn't sure I'd be into.

I've got some nic concentrate that's been in glass at -17 centigrade for a couple of years (according to the fancy display on the freezer at least), will see how that is, maybe buy in some fresh.

I've resurrected a large pile of mods, drippers and squonkers etc. and have been happily coiling and wicking for a couple of days, nice to get back into the hands-on side of it again too !

The problem I'm here to chat about is that my taste buds are pretty shot with all the smoking, and my juices were all made for my taste when I'd not touched a roll-up for years, so are on the subtle side (well, apart from the dark chocolate cream cake.... nothing subtle about that recipe) by which I mean not overly sweetened, brewed with the emphasis on delicate notes etc etc. that I really don't think I'm going to be able to appreciate for a little while yet.

So, the question is, how to jazz up / supercharge some of my old juices to blow my socks off a little at first, to help me change over, after which no doubt I'll appreciate the subtle delicacy of the pomegranate pecan that right now tastes like I forgot to add any flavour to the base liquids.

of course I can buy some in, and have just picked up a couple of bottles and they taste good (if sweeeeet!!), but not great - my taste buds being the problem - kit-wise I'm using drippers and squonkers with RDAs like Dead Rabbit, Hellbeast, Recurve, Profile & Wasp (I like to have several vapes on the go !) with good old cotton bacon and delicious coils and meshes of various sorts, so all great flavoursome setups.

What do you reckon, just whack in a load of CAP Super Sweet, or maybe a touch of salt; or I guess, just alternate with shop-bought juice until my tongue recovers ?

The thing is though, I really don't want to be buying any more shop juice, I have ~120 flavours and a load of VG/PG (again, cold, dark long term stashed and still smell great) so really want to use my home brews and avoid starting the habit of buying from shops and getting too hooked on over-sweetened flavours.

 

[MarylinC37]

You shouldn't need to buy more juice. It's more about finding the right setup to get the best out of the juices you're got.

We all like different things so what works for one person might seem like total rubbish to others. Some people swear by a decent mesh setup or big lung busting 40mm atties that they can vape at 100+ W and chuck massive clouds.

I've found my perfect vape squonking on a single coil 22mm Dead Rabbit Solo RDA. I only need to vape it at 45W but the amount of flavour and vapour production is phenomenal and leaves my mouth with a perfect coating of juice residue after every toot so the flavour is mind blowing. Doesn't give my taste buds any chance to go on stike.

 

[ChrisLikesCoffee]

You shouldn't need to buy more juice. It's more about finding the right setup to get the best out of the juices you're got.

We all like different things so what works for one person might seem like total rubbish to others. Some people swear by a decent mesh setup or big lung busting 40mm atties that they can vape at 100+ W and chuck massive clouds.

I've found my perfect vape squonking on a single coil 22mm Dead Rabbit Solo RDA. I only need to vape it at 45W but the amount of flavour and vapour production is phenomenal and leaves my mouth with a perfect coating of juice residue after every toot so the flavour is mind blowing. Doesn't give my taste buds any chance to go on stike.

Hi, thanks, but I'm an old hand at the building side of things, and have several very good decks that I know produce fantastic flavours, no problems on that score. I've been setting all them up over the last couple of days and have 5 on the desk I'm sitting at and another 3 around the house

The thing is, your taste buds aren't wrecked by a couple of years of smoking 40+ roll-ups a day, so until mine recover from that over the next few weeks/months I want to get the most out of the juices I mixed for my previously healthy, sensitive, functioning tongue, like yours, not the scorched slab of luncheon meat I have at the moment - the better the taste, the less likely I am to prefer a ciggy during what will hopefully be a changeover back to the vapes.

So I was asking for suggestions about how to spruce up the mild-mannered juices that I already have to suit my wrecked taste buds - I know the setups I have are doing the business, it's more a mixology question than anything about how to tittilate an insensitive tongue, perhaps there's a better thread/section for this question.

Funnily enough though, like you, I find the sweet spot around 40-60w with nice clean, smallish RDAs like you, I have a deck that runs in 3 figures on a dual 21700 Odin with a pair of absolute beast coils, but the flavour isn't as good as the single 5mm framed staple in the recurve I just chuffed - though the monster does tend to fill the room like an anti-intruder system just kicked in

 

[andipandi]

Bang some of the concentrates - pomegranate pecan etc into your old stock, shake and vape. Nic should be fine, unless its gone a dark brown or something, in which case knock up a 10 or 30ml bottle and see if its got any off notes, like being peppery etc.

 

[Crispycritters]

If you still have the recipes and stocks of the flavour concentrates I'd try to add addition amounts of flavour, maybe an extra 30 percent to boost the flavour of what you have, leave it to steep for a month before trying it out and buy from a shop in the short term.

At the moment I'm vaping my way through a load of cheap outdated juice that I bought before Christmas because I knew things would be financially tight in the first few months of this year. The expiry dates range from 1/21 to 2/22 so the stuff that expired in 1/21 was probably manufactured over 5 years ago and the later batches well over 4 years. As it is obviously old stock that didn't sell the chances of it being kept for all this time in ideal conditions and consistently cool temperatures are practically nil but it's all zero nic shortfills so there isn't any nicotine in it to oxidise and turn 'peppery' so, to my taste buds at least it seems fine and I've been vaping it for the last 2 months without any problems.

What is odd is the expiry date seems to have little relevance to how much the flavour has faded. I'm familiar with the range as I vaped it regularly for a couple of years in the past so know what 'fresh' juice should taste like - some of the more recently dated stuff is very faded and a few of the older dates seem to have almost the same concentration of flavour as it had when it was fresh.

I'd try each batch you have made individually before considering adding anything as some may still be good and try adding a bit of extra flavour to any that seem too diluted. If you already have stocks of flavourings you have nothing to lose. Good luck.

 

[MarylinC37]

I came from smoking rollies so my taste buds still aren't the best, even after vaping for 11 years.

I found around 0.9 - 1% WS23 coolant really made my DIY recipes come to life. I like strong fruity flavours like citrus and cherry which your taste buds might pick up and enjoy more.

 

[ChrisLikesCoffee]

Bang some of the concentrates - pomegranate pecan etc into your old stock, shake and vape. Nic should be fine, unless its gone a dark brown or something, in which case knock up a 10 or 30ml bottle and see if its got any off notes, like being peppery etc.

Thanks yep, I guess it really is a case of just go over the top a bit, but am wary of how, as you surely know, mixing say 10% strawberry doesn't make it twice as tasty as 5% in a recipe, often tends to make it horrid - such is the fine art of mixology and all that - but maybe all bets are off when one's taste buds are the problem.

So yep, boost up the main flavours, especially where they're ones that don't tend to need a long steep like fruits say, and add a whack of super sweet for more cheap mouth tingle, maybe a drop of saline even.

 

[ChrisLikesCoffee]

I came from smoking rollies so my taste buds still aren't the best, even after vaping for 11 years.

I found around 0.9 - 1% WS23 coolant really made my DIY recipes come to life. I like strong fruity flavours like citrus and cherry which your taste buds might pick up and enjoy more.

Ah yes, I'd forgotten about that stuff, just checked and doesn't look like I have any, will pick some up - thanks.

 

[ChrisLikesCoffee]

If you still have the recipes and stocks of the flavour concentrates I'd try to add addition amounts of flavour, maybe an extra 30 percent to boost the flavour of what you have, leave it to steep for a month before trying it out and buy from a shop in the short term.

Cheers yep, I just reactivated my account on alltheflavours.com so have details of every recipe and batch, and all my bottles are labelled with batch number etc so yep, no problem recalculating from the original recipes.

What is odd is the expiry date seems to have little relevance to how much the flavour has faded. I'm familiar with the range as I vaped it regularly for a couple of years in the past so know what 'fresh' juice should taste like - some of the more recently dated stuff is very faded and a few of the older dates seem to have almost the same concentration of flavour as it had when it was fresh.

I've found the same here, a fair number of the flavours I have here I bought as a job lot in the 100 & 250ml Flavor Art and TFA bottles from a guy who ran a business making juice over here (Indonesia) before he left for the UK about what, 3 years back. There were a few that really had lost it, presumably having been left in the light or opened etc. - but the rest were fine. I think it's a lot more about storage than age, though it seems some ingredients age better than others.

I'd try each batch you have made individually before considering adding anything as some may still be good and try adding a bit of extra flavour to any that seem too diluted. If you already have stocks of flavourings you have nothing to lose. Good luck.

You bet - yesterday I went through the 2 boxes of bottles labelled 'Long Steep' and remembered some old favourites so now have 8 mods and decks with fresh wicks ready to start sampling them !

Actually... 7 mods... seems my Pulse Dual squonk has died... a sad discovery, second oldest mod I have; will have a go at dismantling and looking for obvious problems but it may be the end.

 

[Lee James 27]

Firstly it’s great to hear that you are back on the vapes mate. I mix my own juice and agree with what @Crispycritters said about upping the percentages of the juice a little that you have made previously but don’t go overboard or it could ruin it or mute the flavours even more. I personally find that WS23 or koolada mutes flavours for me but Super Sweet enhances, in moderation of course. All the best with your vaping journey, please let us know how you get on.