Question to all the DIY juice makers using concentrates...

Wow you were adventurous with your selection of concentrates! They sound lovely!
xo

 

Hi Fab 4,
I have a lot of these so called tobacco flavours, and without fail they are all based on this Taberone base-=Peanut crap.
Perique Black=Pinocleen
Burley--same but not as bad.
Shade--slightly better
M type same crap
Maxx blend-same too.
Given up on the lot of them, only way to sort of fix them is add Tobacco Blend or the thicker Tobacco Extract--but why waste anymore money-they are all rubbish

 

sorry duplicate post.

ah...mrs Gruffy...are you suggesting testing our mixes without steeping? just asking cos i've been such a good boy in avoiding them for a bit. i'd love to test them out straight away!!!

 

Thankyou MrsG, I am going to place an order for a few atties for sure, I was holding off dripping but I see its really invaluble when coming to DIY among other things.
Cotton Candy can be like a replacement for EM? Until I stock up on my raw ingredients? xo

 

yeah beth i sorta jumped in feet first....i so should have read up some more. would have saved me on postage and headache. was getting all stressed i'd stuffed up the orders!!!

if i'd READ more and asked questions more i'd have had a more complete shopping list.

either way it's been a steep learning curve and i really only went with what i thought would be yum....hoping i can salvage this till my buying ban is up!!!

 

Well I wish I had got more of a variety like you, you did well, I have too many fruits as I was going through a fruit loving day on the day I ordered LOL xo

 

lol fruit is good. i bet you have an awesome collection by your next received order. this is almost worse than the hardware addiction.

i'm off to bed but i'll be on bright and early to hear how this conversation goes. we're lucky to have others' guidance in this.

i only got a dripping atty with my last order cos i anticipated tasting my new mixes. they are invaluable. i left a couple of video's to watch in my review at vaping cobra in case you wanted to learn how to use them. could just search 'how to use a dripping atty' in google though.

 

Yes, a classic Pina Colada is a rum cocktail. I've heard they tend to go a bit light with alcohol flavourings. You don't have anything else with rummy or alcohol flavours to boost it, but if you're not bothered don't worry about it. If you *would* like to boost the rum flavour and have a bottle of rum handy, make 10% of your mix actual rum. Yep, add some booze to your vape :-D

OK, here's the tweek for you, we'll see if we can get that pineapple to punch a little more. OoooH! silly error on my part. 5 drops in 50 total is of course 10%, not 5%. Dunno where my head was. That's OK, it sounds like we are in the ball park. Here's the next 1ml test:

44 drops nicotine base
5 drops Pina Colada
1 drop only of Key Lime

My theory is that a little bit of another acid/citrus flavour will make the pineapple pop a little more if it is lacking. If you want to try the rum addition add about 8 drops to the above test. Vape merrily.

... and yes with some of these concentrates a little can go a long way. I've just discovered that my 5% mellow sunset is a bit strong. I've cut it down with PG and VG to try it at 2.5%. It's a woody tobacco... more after I've tried it.

 

I'm liking maybe a caramel hazelnut cheesecake. You should really approach this the same way we are with Bethydy - find the right concentration for the cheesecake first. I haven't tried it but tried to help someone who had and they said is was basically creamy flavour. If that is the case, and assuming 5% of the cheesecake works for you:

43 drops base
3 drops new york cheesecake.
2 drops Caramel
1 drop Hazelnut
1 Drop Graham Cracker

The Graham Cracker will probably be quite biscuity and strong. This will steep over about 2 weeks and become more of a pie crust kind of flavour. It's up to you if you want to add some sweetener, maybe about 2%.

BTW, I tried Watermelon. Not a fan I'm afraid, but some people seem to really like melon vapes (I think Phil Busardo likes melon)

 

What would 0.25% of Koolada be in drops? My maths were always bad! I am making up a 10ml recipe I have seen while I am on the mixing wagon xo

 

Maybe 4 drops??

Just add koolada to taste, think of it more of a seasoning rather than a flavour. With some mixes it can be way too much and others not enough.

 

5% of this was waaaay to much. I cut it down to 2% and it's still got a woody aroma, a dry tobacco. Not bad actually. Very unusual and definitely a chill vape.

Then I had a bit of a brainwave

2% FA Mellow Sunset
0.7 % TFA Absinthe

I made Lucky Strike I made Lucky Strike I made Lucky Strike I made Lucky Strike I made Lucky Strike

I am so well chuffed. :-D

This one is definitely getting tried in a larger batch size. I think I found my chill vape.

 

Bethydy, now it's confession time for me: I glossed over the whole drop per ml thing be.comse it wasn't important until you come to scale a recipe up. Everybody's drops are different and you really need to test it if you want to use drops in a larger recipe. Since most concentrates are PG or thinner, the simplest way is to drop PG into a 2.5 ml syringe up to the 2ml mark. (put your finger over the pointy end first!) You then halve that figure, and that is your drops per ml. Mine is about 50 drops per ml but other people who've done this test have got 42, or higher.

But... continuing to assume 50 drops per ml:

1% of 10ml is 0.1 ml. One quarter of 0.1 ml is 0.025.

0.025 is 1.25 drops per 10ml, which of course you will have to round down to 1 drop. Not much, hey?

 

I am back and feeling quite woozy atm, all that mixing (and vaping) I might have got a bit too much nic happening LOL
Thankyou, I will experiment with the drops be.comse I see it most times on the calculators as 20 drops = 1ml :-0
Well, I have tried your second version of pina colada and wow, isnt it amazing what a drop of lime can do! It really has brought the pineapple to life without muting the coconut too much. I imagine in a dripper it would taste gorgeous as the plastic clearos dont do much for taste really I am finding.
I will make a bigger bottle of that up, so to make up 10mls please? Lazy bugger aren't I? Your a great help fabricator, thankyou!!
xo

 

Sounds like you have had a bad go with tobacco flavours. When I started vaping I went straight to tobaccos and that is what got me off the cigs. After about a month though they all started tasting really bad. I had a CE5 head go nasty on me and my favourite vape just tasted like a dirty ashtray. Even worse, any strong tobacco flavour made me .comseous after that. It was really bad.

I then tried vaping fruit flavours but they just didn't do it for me. As well as that, many of them have ethyl maltol and I can't use much of that - it affects my tongue really badly. I tried deserts, but they just didn't do it for me either - all of them tasted synthetic.

In desperation I got a really light tobacco flavour, FA RY4 and mixed it at 5%. It was very bland so I added single drop additions of a few other flavours, one of which was a really nasty strong FA tobacco flavour. It's a very mild but complex tobacco, and has been my ADV for a few months now. Nothing too objectionable about it at all.

I think if you take a break from the tobaccos and try again in a month or so, but mix them *very* weak. If your brain is associating tobacco flavours with an unwholesome strong peanut flavour you need to give it some time away from them. When you're ready to try again take a very different approach.


We have all been there my friend. The brain can play some really nasty tricks on us, usually just when we think we have it right.

 

Yes, a 10 ml batch is the logical next step. If you vape 10ml and still like it you know you are onto something. I've had plenty of recipes fail at this stage, so don't mix any bigger batches until you are sure.

I should make you work out the recipe you know - teach a (wo)man to fish and all that stuff etc ;-)

OK, I think we had in our 50 drop test:

5 drops Pina Colada which is 10%
1 drop only of Key Lime which is 2%

So for a 10 ml batch you want:

1 ml Pina Colada
0.2 ml Key Lime.

You can do drops if you really want, but remember what I said about drop accuracy. For me 1 ml = 50 drops obviously, so 0.2 ml would be 10 drops.

I often halve the nicotine in my base when I'm mixing. Nothing worse that getting nic sick in the middle of it.

Congrats on the new vape.

 

Aww thanks for all your help Fab, you have been terrific and have made me motivated to mix again
Just got to order lots more for my kitty now.
One more question about the colado we have made, should I steep it? Even though it tasted great straight away is it best to steep these juices?
Cheers and off to bed now with a headache LOL
xo

 

You might as well vape it straight away if you like it. If you make a larger batch, and if it lasts that long, you may find it changes in a couple of weeks.

YMMV. :-D

 

bethydy, all the various things which measure in drops are different. I have a micro pipette, which is 80 drops per mL and most of the plastic droppers on my bottles are 20 drops per mL. Since you're working with concentrates, whatever you're going to measure drops with needs to be tested to see how many drops in a mL. I use a 1 mL syringe and drip into that until it measures 0.5mL and double that to get the number of drops per mL. It's really worth doing, since drops can be as much as 4 times the size of the smallest one. That will make a lot of difference when you're working with concentrates.

 

I can't see why you guys are using drops at all, when you have on hand pipettes or syringes to measure how many drops go into it in the first place.

It's a bit like going to bake a cake, and using a metric cup measure to see how much liquid you need to put into your old coffee mug to make the measurement. Seems like double handling to me.

In bethyd's above example, measuring out .25% of 10ml. You don't have to be good at maths to work it out. Not when you can come on here and have people tell you that one quarter of 10ml is 2.5ml. With a 5ml syringe you should nail that exact measurement.

A couple of syringes (or pipettes but I find syringes more accurate) in differing sizes to reflect the amount you are measuring, should be all you need.

I feel that measuring in drops is something that started in the US, and should be left there. Too many variations, and if you are going to measure how many drops to begin with, then you are already doing the measuring in something a lot more accurate.

Just my two cents worth. FWIW.