New to DIY - Having liquid pg/vg ratio trouble

I am new to mixing and also noticed the same thing, that my juice seems thinner than premixed juices and interested in why this is so.

When i do the vg i use a 10ml syringe and pour the vg into a shot glass with no needle as it’s much easier to draw into the syringe.

I have found that over time the viscosity of my 70VG blends changes and becomes thicker.

Also depending upon storage temperatures your liquids can be thicker/thinner.

If you heat steep any liquids this too can thin your liquids.

CMJ

.[quote=“ffrank, post:1, topic:23735”]
The only thing I can think of is I tend to get a decent size bubble in the VG and NIC syringes (NIC is 100% VG) and I get thrown off.
[/quote]

I know what you mean by this. It all happen to me when used syringes. When I started mixing by weight, it eliminated that problem. At some point you will get sick and tired of the syringes and all that mess. You may as well look into getting a scale and eliminate that problem now rather than later. Mixing by weight is alot more accurate as long as you hit your mark.

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I can confirm that mixing by weight is an absolute godsend.

I can knock up 100ml batches of my favourite juices in about 1 minute once all my supplies are ready and at hand.

The one downside I find is that I no longer make 10ml bottles of new mixes to sample.

I tend to jump straight in with a 30ml lol.

So here’s a +1 for mixing by weight.

CMJ

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Is that including your flavours, or just the base? If your base is 50/50 and you add your flavours which are mostly PG it will thin down your liquid quite a bit too. I use 100% VG but after adding several flavours the juice usually is around 75/25 VG/PG. If you buy in the store, the flavours are included into the ratio.

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Not sure if this is the case or not, but some brands of VG may be ‘watered down’ to make them thinner or they may just vary in consistency and quality.

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Thats a good question. I’m assuming it’s including the flavors. The VG percentage I’m going by is what I enter in the “Desired VG” field when adapting a recipe. All my ingredients I have now were bought from Wizard Labs.

The desired VG option is only the base, not including the flavours. Try checking the max VG box and then add your flavours and see what ratio you get.

Are you sure its just the base? I also put recipes in the Ejuice Me Up calculator and get the same values as this site. The fields where the PG/VG ratio is entered says its the ratio for the entire recipe. If desired VG is only the base, does that mean it’s not possible to have control of the PG/VG ratio? I did select MAX VG and end up with a VG of 87%

Actually, I’m pretty sure the calculator on ELR takes into account your flavors and wether or not they are PG or VG based when figuring out the PG/VG ratio. The ratio you put in is what your final ratio will be. It automatically alters the amount of extra PG or VG you should add after your nic base and flavors are taken into account to achieve your desired ratio.

[quote=“ffrank, post:10, topic:23735”]
I did select MAX VG and end up with a VG of 87%
[/quote]So you have used 13% of PG based flavours that are automatically subtracted from the VG base.
You can have controle to the extend that you can choose flavours that are VG based to up the amount of VG in your recipes.

I haven’t used anything from WL, so someone who has may be able to shed some more light on the quality of their VG or whether or not they water down their VG Nic. Do the VG and the nicotine both seem really thick in the bottle or is either of them thinner than you would expect it to be? You might try letting the mix sit a week or so as @Jondamon suggested and see if it gets thicker. But, as @NewDrip said, most of us will strongly encourage you to start mixing by weight. There’s a couple threads here that talk about it. LoL. It’s just much more accurate than drops and much easier and cleaner than using syringes/pipettes for mLs.

That makes sense. The desired VG field can’t be just the base then because the amounts of all liquids adjust accordingly compared to selecting max VG.

I think we have our wires crossed :smile: I meant that if you check max VG and then add PG flavours it will automatically be subtracted from the VG base, so in that respect it is only max VG as far as the base goes. The rest depends on the base of the flavours you add. So we are actually saying the same thing, I just got it out kinda garbled. It is past midnight over here, my brain is shutting down :confounded:

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I’m glad I still made sense. Hate to confuse people, as I said to @JoJo, my brain is shutting down. I had a look at the WL website and they do sell the pharmaceutical VG of 99.7% that is good VG, unless they have watered it down of course. I think there are quite a number of people on this forum that order from WL so I’m sure someone can tell you what the deal is with their products.

The VG and NIC are very thick, so I don’t think it’s quality related. With that being said, I’ve only been making juice for about 10 days, so I can’t compare them to other brands/batches. A free 15ml sample of Nude Nicotine is on its way, so I’ll see how they compare to that. It was mentioned in this thread that heat steeping makes juice thinner. Can it permanently make it thinner, or just while it’s warm? Could just be a time issue as you said since my juice is new. It might get thicker as time goes on. I had no idea making juice was so much fun. I thought it would be a huge hassle, but now I can’t imagine every buying premade juice again.

Welcome to the fun side! :wink: I don’t use heat, so I can’t say for sure, but I would imagine it is temporary. As it sits at room temperature, I would say it would return to normal as people talk about having to heat up their VG, nic, etc. before mixing with it so that it is easier to work with. On that note, you could probably stick your mixes in the fridge to thicken them up, but that too would probably be temporary.

A couple possibilities I can think of. You might be using flavorings that have alcohol in them, that might make them thinner than others. That will evaporate out over a couple hours, so you might see if that is the case. As mentioned, some VGs do have water in them, but you’d see that on the bottle as a percentage if yours was one of those. What I’ve seen is that my VG gets thinner over time if I have a big bottle and frequently mix directly from that. By the time I get to about 1/4 of the bottle remaining it seems much thinner than it was originally. I think that is because VG is highly hygroscopic, meaning it readily absorbs water, so each time you open the bottle it is absorbing more water. It might even be more pronounced if you are in a humid climate. I now transfer about a week or two’s worth of VG from my bigger bottle into a smaller bottle that I use on my mixing desk (unless I am doing big batches). That way I am exposing the big bottle contents less to outside water. I do the same with my nicotine, which is VG based, not only for reducing the absorption of water, but reduced exposure to oxygen and any other nasties in the air. Also I keep the bigger bottle of nic in the fridge.

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I do mix directly out of the VG bottle, so I’ll try transferring some into smaller bottles. I’m in Michigan, and this time of year is very humid, so it’s very possible my VG and VG based NIC are absorbing water.

Correct! :smile:

Desired VG/PG is what your finished liquid will end up with.

Max VG will make sure that there will be no added (pure) PG - the PG will then come exclusively from flavoring or your nicotine base.

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