New here asking newbie questions

I’ll start with hello. I’ve been a heavy smoker for over twenty five years 2 packs +, and vaping saved my life. I’ve tried diy in the past with limited success. After tossing the flavor compounds I had used in the past (NN) I’ll soon be receiving flavors from vapewild (recommend by a friend) the question at hand is, are there any single flavor reference points that I can start from? I’ve used the search bar and found some guidelines, but the list appears outdated and in some instances incomplete. Is vapewild not used by many or low quality?
And in a recipe if it calls for say TFA @7% can I use VW a7%? Are flavoring percentages similar across the board or do they very wildly? And thank you in advance.

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the flavor percentages vary a lot sometimes , even the same flaves from different manufacturers can be so different you wonder why they are called the same thing the most popular flaves for DIY are Capella , TPA , FW and FA and then there are others that are Super Concentrates lile Medicine Flower , Real Flavors , Inawera etc but to use TPA strawberrry at the same percent as FA strawberry would be a mistake , im not sure where vape wild is but the most popular sites to buy from Are Nicotine River , Ecigexpress , Bull City Flavor , then there are others like Gremlin Diy etc these are all located in the US but ship everywhere typically

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here is something that should be read by everyone new or experianced mixers enjoy and i hope i was a little help

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@Nobody4
If you haven’t found the Resource page here at ELR be sure and give it a good read as it can save you some serious cash.

Bullcity and Gremlin both repackage and offer small sizes for the beginners that let you build a good selection without breaking the bank.
OOO is my choice for flavors as their 25% discount is hard to pass up. Combine that with any of the bundle sample packs and the price is really sweet.
eliquidrecipes-25
https://www.oooflavors.com/collections/sample-pack
As a new bee your starting from scratch anyhow and to be honest the first few recipes I bought exact stuff for didn’t turn out close to my target. I got closer shooting wild in the dark once I had a bigger library of flavors to work with and the early Capella flavors are orphans now.
I won’t say avoid LorAnn flavors altogether but lets just say of the 20 or so I found at a local cake shop all but 2 turned out to have a warning on for one reason or another and to be honest the flavors are not that all they could be either off target or it leaves an off chemical taste.

Keep an eye on this thread as Walt gives away flavors and has great deals and flavors.
Good luck and Welcome in to the Madness.

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It looks like you didn’t look at the recipe side of this website, only the forum.

It doesn’t look like it is used by many and from what I’ve seen of percentages used the flavours are not very strong. So when the recipe calls for TFA @ 7% you could keep those guidelines for VW and be ok, you might even need some more but I suggest you start low and work your way up when the flavour is too weak after a good steep.

Not many notes to be found on the flavours but look on the bright side, you could be the one to fill in the blanks :grinning:

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I also recommend Bull City Vapor for flavoring. They have great prices, fast shipping, and all around a good company. Their VG and PG is really good too. If you didnt understand all the abbreviations listed above, here are the most used flavor companies: Capella (CAP), The Flavor Apprentice (or purfume apprentice, abbreviated as TFA or TPA), Flavor West (FW), Flavorah (idk the letters lol), LorAnn (LA), FlavorArt (FA), Inawera (INW). Those are the big dogs in flavoring, I dont think I left any out lol! This forum has a lot of well educated people who have been mixing since mixing was a thing so any questions you may have let them know! Everyone here is very helpful and friendly, and would love to help you stay off cigs. Vapers stick together, especially the DIY community. Welcome aboard!

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Vape Wild comcentrates are their “one shot” blends of their recipes. Meaning they have combined actual brands of flavoring and sell thos combinations of flavors as a concentrate.
If you google " docs diy flavor spreadsheet" it will yield a very nice resource with links to almost all places where concentrates can be purchased. Good luck

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Flavorah ( FLV) are super concentrated flavors that do not take a high percentage to make a good mix. The customer service is good, I have 25 flavors currently and haven’t found one single flavor that needs more than 3 %. Most use between 1.5 and 2.5
Hope this helps

Could check out:
Recommended Flavors and Research List
A Beginner's Guide To Making The Most Highly-Rated Recipes

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So what percentage is a good starting point for flavors and what about sweetner?

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It’s all depending on what flavor to be honest. There is no fixed starting point unless you know your flavors.
What you can do is to search the flavor you are curious about here http://e-liquid-recipes.com/flavors and out of that info decide on how much you wanna use.
I don’t use sweeteners so i can’t say anything about that.

Have several different flavors tag but they come out pretty bland

Flavors are t f a

In order for someone to help you out with that you kinda need to post anything you have done that you mean is bland. Without that info all anyone can do is guess regardless where the flavors come from.

Excellent advice everyone. Thanks you.

@Jason64
Learning your flavors is the first thing I’m working on. Smart and Final for a few tubes of 1 ounce condiment cups and lids gives me plenty of cheap disposable containers to work in.
An eyedropper of water and 1 or 2 drops of flavor will give you a baseline for your nose to identify. I did this for all my flavors to start with.
Next up I did another round of testers in Base. VG and PG, 5 grams and about 5 drops of flavor and set that group aside to steep. That was 3 weeks ago and I’ve got a much better idea of what flavors do what now.
My strongest flavor is RF Wild Cherry and even the bottle open is enough to flood the room with smell. Weakest are some (VEC) I got from another member and I have to use like 10-20% to get any taste at all.
LorAnn flavors range all over the map in strength and the tastes are strange on over half I’d say.
OOO flavors are my go to but that’s partly because they are local to me and the 25% discount from ELR is really hard to pass up.
Since I’m not trying to copy many existing recipes there is no reason for me to stock many of the common flavor companies like Capella or TPA. I’d have to take the same steps and learn each flavor no matter the source company.
Some like Bavarian Cream I have from 4 different companies now and they all taste dead on to one another and the strengths are very close as well so direct sub is very possible on several flavors.
Sweetener I’ve been playing with Stevia liquid found in many supermarkets and big box stores. Pyure seems to be the brand of choice but the 365 brand I got at Whole Foods works just fine.

https://images-na.ssl-images-amazon.com/images/I/81WfC6iZ6aL.SY606.jpg

Could check out:
https://www.reddit.com/r/DIY_eJuice/wiki/index/flavor_reviews

Its a start.

I’ve poured over the recipes​ posted here trying to get a better idea of percentages. But it seems I’ve picked flavors from a company without a lot of background information. I’ve wound up with way more questions than I can grasp, remember I’m new to diy as of last week. Vapewild has a nice selection of flavors, not sure about quality but they so far I’m quite pleased I got a great deal on flavor samples during a sale and was able to stack discount codes and wound up with most or their flavors for close to 80 percent discount. But I kinda wish I found you guys first. Would probably have went with a company with more background information.

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Just try them out, they might be surprisingly good. :grinning:
I think you can basically follow the guidelines for TFA, FW and CAP concentrates, seems they’re in the same ballpark strength-wise as VW.

Don’t worry, you have now formally entered the rabbit hole called DIY and if you follow the example of most of us here, there will be a lot more flavours coming your way in the future. We just can’t help ourselves :laughing:

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Percentages are guidelines more than actual rules and we all have unique tastes so we tweak the percentages to match. The best way to find your favorite percentage is to mix a single flavor batch and then vape it. Try 5% to start and then move up or down as you like. Also, let the batch steep and test at 2 week intervals to find out when the flavor is at it’s peak.[quote=“mixologist13, post:7, topic:126843”]
Vape Wild comcentrates are their “one shot” blends of their recipes. Meaning they have combined actual brands of flavoring and sell thos combinations of flavors as a concentrate.
[/quote]

Many of my multi flavor mixes seemed unbalanced at 2 weeks but after a month the flavor was spot on. Single flavors, not so much a balance issue but a strength issue.

Take notes too, it really helps you learn and share what you have learned.

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