DIY or not?

So I’m thinking about hopping on the diy train, but I’m nervous on the outcome. Have done extensive research but still can’t decide if it’s for me. As DIYers do you guys thoroughly enjoy your own juices? Do you have any tips or advice for starting out? Recipes to start with or must have flavors? Thanks in advance. :grin::grin::grin:

-Justin

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Do I enjoy my mixes. Heck yes I do. Do I ever wish that I didn’t start mixing. Nope. Do I have horrible grammar. Yes.

My only recommendation is read as much as you can. Welcome to elr. There is a ton of reading available. Be apprehensive about your first order. Just learn from all of our mistakes. We have posted them here. You will have some of those same mistakes.

Your first mixes may not be great. You may struggle at the start. But the more you read the more you learn!!!

Why do I focus on reading? Cuz I hate to read. I read all day work. When I’m not typing a response, documenting a conversation, reading a 100 page employee file I find myself wanting to watch tv, talk to a friend, anything but this darn screen.

But I focus on telling people to read because it’s there just waiting. I can telll you just joined elr. Welcome by the way…glad your here. I see you’ve read 9 minutes of material. Simply read 60 more minutes and you’ll learn a ton of stuff. Read 240 more minutes grads Hooper and
You may feel more confident about submitting that first order.

All you have to do is key word search. First=my first order steep=age vs heat vs mag mixers vs everything else. Butter= @VapeyMama strawberry=1000 posts about mix strawberry. Rating=the ins and outs about the rating system.

The possibilities are endless. Again, welcome home. Stick around, have some fun. And now I step off my soap box. Lol

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2 words… HELL YEAH!!!

In all seriousness though, I find this to be critical reading for anyone seeking to mix their own juice…

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You may never buy a bottle of commercial juice again.
Unless it’s to try and copy or improve on it.

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Yes!!!

until I started making my own I went into my local vape to buy juice every payday. Trying to figure out what I was going to tolerate for the next week.

Now I’m trying to figure out what am I going to enjoy this hour, with close to 30 Flavour in my daily travel case. And all of them I truely enjoy.

But the real pleasure comes when a complete stranger tries your juice and asks were did you buy this at

Best advice I give my friends is

Choose 9 flavors and a sweetener

Or if you like menthol
8 flavor, menthol and a sweetener

Also For 15% off use discount code: ELRECIPES

Liquid barn was how I got started last year. Order flavors of things I liked and didn’t regret a single flavor. There flavor bottles have recommended % on side . Which is good for the beginner. Their strawberry cheese cake is awesome.

Nic river also has a starter kit

But in my humble opinion I recomend liquid barns starter kit

Hate to answer a question with a question but

Let’s start with

What do you like?

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I really enjoy dessert or bakery type vapes but through my research so far fruity may be easier to get experience mixing first?

Just using liquid barn flavors

And if you like menthol

Edit: these are just a few of the juices I make in large batches.

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I’ll just say it now… You should get a scale and there are much better ways to start your DIY journey.

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I would say the best tip is reading the beginners section of this forum. It is a tremendous help and was put together exactly for this reason… It seriously rocks!

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I’d like to add to this by just saying that I prefer DIY over commercial juice. That doesn’t mean I never make a bad juice in trying something new… but it’s cheap so I always have a couple good e-liquids aside in case that happens.

The last 3 bottles of commercial juice I bought I really didn’t like. 2 of them I’m still struggling to get through and I’ve had them for months. Meanwhile I’ve been guzzling my own creations with pleasure.

Most people here have already given you good starting points. It’s a really good community here so if you need pointers or you have a question, there is always someone to help you out fairly quickly, most times faster than any commercial shop could and these people are here to help YOU, not themselves by making money off of you!

A couple things though… most people who fall back to commercial juices are lazy people who don’t want to make time for it or of course the ones that just can’t make the time available.Yeah, you will start reading a lot once you get into it. And mixing requires some patience. There are shake and vape recipes, but the majority requires weeks or some even months of steeping before you actually get to taste your creation. Be patient and plan ahead :slight_smile:

Read through the beginners forums. It’s cliche to write that (or read it) but if there’s one place where this is really true, where you’ll find a wealth of information, it’s right here on ELR.

Welcome, success & good luck.

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My decision to DIY was out of necessity.

I switched from mouth to lung vaping with 1.8 ohm prebuilt coils to direct lung vaping using sub ohm prebuilt coils in the .5 to .25 range. After going through my first bottle of $30 commercial juice in 3 days I knew immediately I had to do something different or go broke.

I ordered some cheap juice from Verde Vally Vapes to tide me over until I could get set up. With the guidance of @Skullblade789 my initial investment was $98. That included a cheap set of scales, nic, VG and PG, flavors, and glass bottles to steep in, plastic bottles to put my steeped juice in. Skull sent me some syringes, small tester bottles and about 500mls of juice he made.

My initial investment of just under a hundred dollars along with help from Skull I had about 6 months worth of juice in no time.

That was October 2015. This past thanksgiving I went though a little bad patch of depression and didn’t mix. Grabbed about $90 worth of commercial juice over a 2 week period and then got back to mixing. Previous to thanksgiving I really never enjoyed mixing. Again, I did it out of necessity. Now that I am back to mixing I’ve found I enjoy it a lot more. So yes, I do enjoy my mixes. I do think it is worth it.

As far as flavor suggestions go, I see that you like desserts and bakery. A few things that should be in your first flavor order, in my opinion…

Graham cracker clear
Vanilla Custard CAP v1
A sweet strawberry, I will let others reccomend on that
New York cheesecake
Sweet cream
Italian cream
Vanilla bean ice cream

I will let others recommend fruits and additives.

With the vanilla custard I would recommend ordering that in 30ml or more because you will probably use it a lot. Starting out I suggest 10ml flavors and re up on the ones that you find you use the most of.

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Of course I do, I enjoy the liquids I make!
I’m not saying that there isn’t any trial and error, especially when you test new ideas and combos.

But if you stick to good (that you like) solid and tested recipes (ELR is your best friend in this) you won’t be disappointed.

Everybody already told you to start… from the start… :joy: the ELR guides!

Probably the most famous and tested recipe is the Unicorn Milk and derivates… :joy::+1:

Enjoy your diy… practice, read, practice and read again, we’ll never end to learn new flavours and combinations. That’s why from time to time we also buy liquids from our local store or favourite shop, to see if there are new ideas worth doing or improving.

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how taste is so subjective… i’d say stay far far away from this. This was the very first juice that went down the drain. I cannot understand how anybody can inhale that stuff, sickening ;-p

So yeah, a lot of trial and error, but DIY prices allow you to make mistakes and not suffer the consequences.

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How right you are taste is really subjective, that’s why I wrote: the one you like…

But we can’t say it’s not one of the most tried and tested (you tried it as well, and threw it :joy:)

BTW I’m not fond of it neither… sickly!

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before you start diy and before you start investing time and money i have one suggestion for you.buy a couple of mix shots in the profile you like,but buy the ones whose recipes are public.if you like them start buying the concentrates and mixing them and see if you enjoy the proccess.if you do,you can take the next step.and don’t forget to read about diy like Chrispdx said. it is a whole new world!

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Do I enjoy my juices?
Oh yea!! I actually love my DIY better than commercial juice!! I’ve been mixing for a year and I’d never go back to buying them regularly again! I went from buying to mixing. Its a little bit of a learning curve but look for simple recipes at first in the flavor you like.
Buying commercial juices is sooooo costly and when u make ur own the possibilities are endless!! U can vape so many different flavors of juice. Its the best thing I’ve ever done last year!!
I say go for it!!! U wont regret it

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Yeeessss so much! Because I can put as much butter as I want into them! Seriously though, even when I was brand new to mixing and was making recipes that don’t taste good to me now, they were better than what I was buying. Even if I had all the $$$ in the world to buy fancy brand name juice, I’d keep DIYing.

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I’m not totally sold on scale since vg seems to change weight as you use it.

Tried measuring out 100ml of vg by weight ended up with close to 130ml… measuring by volume seems to me to be more exact…

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This doesn’t seem right to me. I would have over-filled and made a mess at some point by now. I usually don’t leave much room to shake, maybe 2 or 3 ml. So, my 120ml bottles would have been way over. Is your calculator set to use manufacturer specific gravities?

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Both elr calculator and one on android have the same results

Measured out weight of 1ml of pg and vg for calculator on android

Calculator on android

Liquid barn menthol by volume is right by weight based of the weight of 1ml. Comes out to be half as much

Vg comes out to be less
Pg comes out to be more

I’ve not given up on scales. Because it is less mess but may need a better scale than the on I got on amazon