Flavour sampling using premixed unflavoured nic?

Quick question for the experienced mixologists here..

I'm finding it a bit of a pain to constantly measure out tiny amounts for sampling flavour mixes (3-5ml) So much so that half the flavours I currently have I still haven't toyed around with! I'm not particularly worried about wasting u/f nic in the testing process, as I barely use any to start with and have ample on hand..

Do any of you keep a 50/50 mix of whatever your preferred nic content, in order to "quick mix" small samples, and then reverse engineer to get the measurements precise? As in, measure out 3ml (or whatever) of your unflavoured final mix, with pg and vg included, and THEN start adding flavours? It's easy enough to work out the percentages - though I guess the flavours in the final mix will be somewhat stronger, and the pg/vg ratio will be a little out, but having to calculate and measure out such minuscule amounts every time you have an idea for a flavour combination is turning into a royal PITA..

Perhaps I shouldn't have indulged so much when I plunged into DIY... Too many flavours to play around with, and not enough hours in the day. Just adding the flavours to a base, and then adjusting down for the final percentages seems so much easier!

 

That said, particularly with the super concentrates, I'm finding that I'm going through so many 1ml syringes that if my house ever got raided by the police they'd swear I was a big time junkie! :O

 

I bought 20 and 30 ml needle tip bottles with measurements on the side, so I have my base ready to go and make up 20 or 30 ml batches from concentrates or doublers that way. With concentrates I usually make up a 10ml batch first to get the flavour right, this way I can add more base or flavour to the bottle to suit.
For me I found this easiest, but more experienced crew might have better ways?

 

I've always got a few 30ml bottles of plain nic premixed at 70/30 and 8, 12 and 18mg/ml.

Mainly be.comse sometimes I vape plain, or to top up a just emptied tank of flavour and re-vape it mixed weakly with the pre-existing flavour.

But when using concentrates it's used exactly as you were suggesting, add a ml of concentrate to a empty 10ml bottle and top up with the premix nic base.

 

There's your problem there. You don't make 3-5ml unless they have passed the first trial. Reduce your quantity down to 1ml. You get 3x or 5x the amount of trial from your 3-5ml. One does not simply mix nic to their test trial flavours.

DIY takes time. You do not just mix it and vape. One would mix, vape, steep, vape, steep some more, and vape. You do not want to rush these things.

 

For testing I just keep some 50/50 in 18mg and use that. Even if you go up to 20% in flavouring you're not really going to notice a hell of a difference. In fact if you've ever tested pre mixed stuff you'll find 18mg varies between 15 and 20mg anyway.

For mixes I always test in 10ml batches, especially when using super concentrates as it is much easier to measure accurately when working with lower concentrates of around 0.5 to 1%.

To get an idea of the taste of a concentrate I'll go 5ml and build up from there if I want to make a mix with it.

 

I just mixed up 400ml(ish) of juice in my usual slack way. Same method used for test bottles and it works well enough for me.

100ml bottle, add 100 drops of concentrates, add extras (kool, em), fill with 20/80 10mg base, shake.

Do the exact same with new flavours, 1 drop concentrate, fill to 5ml with base, shake, wait, shake, wait, vape, wait, vape, wait, vape, hmmm. Repeat adding 1 drop per run to about 3-5 drops per ml.


Funny thing is, over time I've found I can drop the flavouring down to about 1 drop per ml with most concentrates and it's still plenty of flavour. For anyone who's curious, try vaping unflavoured for a week or two and then go back to your regular juices. You might be surprised at how much stronger they taste. Then again you might not, depends on taste buds.

 

I only just recently started having a premixed 50/50 bottle ready for mixing and it works really well. The reason i didnt premix it with nic is that its nor refrigerated. Is it ok to have that premixed nic without refrigeration? Have you had any problems with it?

 

I usually keep my mixed nic in the fridge, but I have left it out for a few weeks and haven't noticed any real degradation.

 

A few weeks sounds ok, i might start doing it in small quantities just to be sure. Ive always kept my nic refrigerated. Never worried about the pg/vg.

 

Yeah I'll try to give this a go... I've plunged fairly heavily into the juicefactory super concentrates, and its easier to get an idea of the super concentrate strength (in proportion to other concentrates) if there are a couple of mls. If only using 1ml of solution - well lets just say that 0.02ml is not so easy to accurately measure..

I break down all of my 200mg/ml bottles into 100ml amber glass and pop them in the freezer.. So I'll follow the techniques most of you seem to use, and keep a 100ml bottle of 5mg/ml in the fridge for quick mixing. As it stands, I've barely sampled half of the super concentrates in my growing collection (and I'm already looking at purchasing more!).. Most of them i don't see as something I would vape on their own, perhaps I watch too many cooking shows or something, but I always start thinking of mixing X with Y, then perhaps adding a dash of Z etc...

I've been using ejuicemeup, and there are a few minor additions I'd love to see in the already useful software. The ability to add more flavours for one (once you add in a bit of EM, koolada or whatever those spaces fill up fast), and the ability to add some type of concentrate "strength" qualifier. I know this is part of the learning curve that comes with trial and error, but when mixing a concentrate that's best left at around 10% with one that's best at 2.5% or even 1% it can quickly get confusing. When mixing a few super concentrates at fractions of a ml I quickly find that I've gone waaay overboard with flavor strength.. :O

And damn I need to pick up a US cleaner now as well :S

 

I make 30ml bottles of each individual flavour, complete with nic, in 60/40 or 50/50, and at around double the recommended strength. And I have similar bottles of flavourless standing by.

For the early mixing test process, I usually make 1ml samples consisting of 0.4ml of this, 0.1ml of that, 0.1ml of the other and whatever is necessary of flavourless to make it up to 1ml.

You can always math back to the exact ratios of flavouring when you hit a nice combination and want to make a bigger sample for steeping.

Low waste, and you can mix it straight into a clearo if convenient.

 

Frikn hell, soo simple and soo useful, thanks going to give this method a go
Cheers

 

I know. I came up with this after I had 50 half-filled 10ml bottles of crap lying around that I needed to wash out, and was thoroughly sick of trying to measure tiny amounts of concentrate. Thought there must be a better way

This method also makes it much easier to have accurate small quantities of flavouring in a mix. It's interesting how useful it is to be able to add < 1% amounts of flavouring, which is really hard to do from concentrate into a small sample.

 

Just saw my own ticker.

Woo, three months!

Not looking back.

 

sweet now all I need to do is order 40 odd 30 ml bottles :applouse: haha and throw out all dat useless food stuff that takes up room in the fridge !!!
Seriously tho am very interested in this approach , I take it that when I find a combo I'm happy with I would convert to percentages and then apply a calculator to make larger amounts ?
Hmmm I also wonder if this would have an affect on the steeping time before the taste of the juice reaches its sweet point ?

 

Lol, yes, get lots of 30ml bottles and a dedicated bar fridge

The math back is quite simply the ratio of the flavour mix in the sample times the concentration of the flavour mix.

So

Flav 1 @ 5%
Flav 2 @ 10%
Flav 3 @ 2.5 %

Mix is
Flav 1 - 1ml
Flav 2 - 0.5ml
Flav 3 - 0.1ml
Unflavoured - 0.5ml
------------
total 2.1ml

ratios:

Flav 1: 1.0/2.1 * 5% = 2.4%
Flav 2: 0.5/2.1 * 10% = 2.4%
Flav 3: 0.1/2.1 * 2.5% = 0.12%


Not sure whether this reduces steeping time due to the flavours having spent time in the PG/VG/nic state before mixing. The real mechanism behind steeping seems poorly understood (at least by me!). The further question on steeping is then whether pre-mixing concentrates to your desired ratios would allow them to steep before being mixed into pg/vg/nic. Surely one or the other should work...