I’m sure this subject has been gone over before but I’m at a loss here I’ve tried some of the top rated recipes on this site and over sites all the reviews will say it tastes really good and then I make it and it just tastes like nothing to me I’ve been vaping 10+ years and mostly use rda’s at 0.13 ohm 80w-100w I’m fine with most commercial eliquids so it’s not vapers tongue any help would be appreciated.
Check the good by dates on your flavors.
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welcome! you and i have a lot in common, 10+ yrs vaping/rda’s and mechs for me. i also have the same trouble making popular recepies . most commercial liquids have a high amount of flavoring and sweetener. if its a fruit the best i have found contain .5% sweetener and that makes the fruit stand out and is still far lower than commercial juices. as far as desserts and bakeries go i have narrowed it down to flavor types i know appeal to me like creams, custards and my new rabbit hole Ice Cream.
so if you have a recepie that is bordering on good i would suggest adding a little sweetener (purillum super sweet is my fav) or even bumping the flavor percentage overall and see if that helps.
someone far more knowledgable than me will likely reply with other ideas. best of luck! <*))))-{
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They’re all in-date
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There are a few factors that can affect how your liquids taste. 1. Could be that the highly rated recipe that you are trying could be to low for your taste buds. Most commercial e-liquids are packed with flavor due to the use of high total % of the mix, sometimes up to 30%. A lot of times doubling the flavor % from say 6% to 12% or even 18% total flavor makes a big difference. If you are used to high flavor commercial liquids try mixing recipes with a higher flavor %.
2. Your choice of base VG/PG most commercial e-liquids run 70VG/30PG or lower. So if you mix over 70/30 or max Vg the flavor may not be as potent.
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I’ll give that a go thanks maybe I’ll also try to steep them longer as well
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Welcome to the madhouse @Tomkz23.
One of the first factors can be that many off the older, and highly rated, recipes where made for a previous generation of set-up: They are over-flavoured when it comes to your 0.13 coils and the wattage you are using.
Adding too much flavour is a common issue as they conflict with each other and can result in muted recipes. Sometimes, depending on the concentrate, 0.18% which give a much richer flavour than 2% or higher.
If you can share the ones you are making, then we can spot likely issues more easily.
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i am getting a feeling i may benefit from this discussion. 
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Then it may be a good night.
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In the beginning my brews seemed bland but over the years I either got used to them or was able to create recipes that I like. Last week I got caught by a power outage and had to buy some commercial juice, Mucho berry I think. Mega Yuck! Sickening sweet to the point if I vaped too much my stomach would go sour. On top of that it was a coil killer. About 75ml trashed two of my coils, bad. Big bulging black blobs with fried cotton. Note to self, keep a larger stock made up.
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Welcome and glad you joined.
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I had the same Walt, especially with being MTL only on my stuff. Took me quite a while to adjust recipes or invent my own to work for my taste. I think that the individual taste is definitely also a factor as most popular recipes on here don’t work for me unless I make changes to suit.
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I think individual taste is everything. I’m with you. I’ve not found many here or elsewhere that I like a lot. I think those helped me get started but it wasn’t untill I went in my own direction that I started making things I really liked.
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True Walt, I know from our previous discussions that we are similar in how we approach our mixing. For me, it is always a case of trial and error until I find a pathway that suits my specific needs taste wise.
Once you start to work it out, the possibilities are endless provided you are ok with a few throw away mixes during the process.
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Yes sir. I’ve made my share of draino for sure. Then other times a total mistake turns out great. Go figure.
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You’re right @Tomkz23 this is a topic that on and off has always been around for years “us” vs “them”, even if it’s not really a us vs them, it’s two faces of the same medal.
For some of you this is going to be boring, but still, let’s try to explain this without going too deep
- A manufacturer has to think that his liquid will have to be used on many different devices, from an MTL to a POD, has to think about “shelf life”, has to think about “fading” and other things, so the first thing he does is, load the flavor %, tons of it.
- Tons of the sweetener, it gives a persistance, it hides defects, and it’s a bit like salt.
- Type and quality of flavours used.
- KISS, their recipes are simple.
- Additives
- Steeping
Here we go:
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Loading the flavour percentages (not joking thinking about 27-30% flavouring) we don’t. Why don’t we push the percentages? Our recipes are more complicated then a commercial, and the risk of muting the mix is extremely high, recipes with 7-8 flavors have a molecular interaction that is quite complicated and our risk is really high, .
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We use small amout if sweetener, this is a bit of a tricky one we just don’t use it anymore, only when needed, and not a lot of it, it overpowers the mix, all our efforts to enhance the aromas just disappear.
As a side note to the two above, we also worry about gunking our coils, they don’t.
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This is something we underestimate, but improving lately, flavour quality, they have a team that researches the best available flavours for a profile worldwide (or in their country) those flavors are not usually available to the public, some of them are made by laboratories we probably never heard of, try Chemnovatic, Reka and similar, is a totally different game. Old recipes had to just cope with TPA,CAP, FA, LA maybe INW but that’s it, we made the best of what we had.
Things changed with MF and FLV, today WF-VTA-VSO and many other flavour houses are dedicated to vaping and making great new flavours by the day, but that’s another story. Long story short: look for the best available flavours for the profile you want to create. -
KISS… this is a good one, our recipes are NOT simple, let’s look at one of my latest, and it’s also a simple one
You’ve got a tropical fruits head note, of which one sits on the top, (Mango) of the other one in the background (Blood Orange) same % but different manufacturer so different strenghts, there’s a filling Mascarpone and Egg Tart, plus the bakery, it’s layered, cohesive, well blended, but at the end… complicated, can you just imagine a manufacturer having to source, deal, use, check the consistency, keep fresh and in stock barrels that go by gallons, and at the end mix, 6 different flavours? Yes, they use three to four flavors at most and the fourth one is usually a sugar or an additive, of which we’ll talk about it now:
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Additives, Acetyl Pirazine, Citric Acid, Malic Acid, Triacetin, WS23, or general enhancers, we tend not to use them, manufacturers do, and a lot.
AP on nuts, popcorns, it generally gives the toasted nutty bit, Citric on lemons work wonders, Malic Acid on apples and fruits, Triacetin for blending, but it works wonders on tobaccos, WS23 for that frozen feeling malesians and disposables are really full of. On my recipe above I used Starch base as an additive, but as all additives, if not used properly ruin any mix, they’re not easy to deal with so mixers tend not to use them (there are also other reasons, but it’s already a long post) -
Steeping is not only to make the juice stable, gives a longer shelf life and it also gives a consistency they need, it’s usually done mechanically with very expensive machinery, we have our ways (time, homogenizers, in time we’ve seen and used everything…)
On the top of that let’s consider that our taste buds change, refine, learn, improve, adjust, even get better, because of that I don’t think any of us would go back to commercial juices, we “probably” find them sickly, rough, not defined, too sweet (did I say sickly) , gross.
We tailor make our recipes to our taste buds that keep on changing, no manufacturer could do that.
We have a great community that help each other with suggestions and solutions, (they have to rely on an external flavourist), we have new ideas, check the flavor bible above, you’d be suprised.
Btw flavourists and manufacturers check regularly ELR recipes for new profiles and ideas and sometime use our recipes (I know for certain they’ve done that to me…)
Allright, as usual one of my long boring posts, there are a lot more things to say, this was jus to give you an idea, and it’s my: Welcome to ELR.
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Another informative and lengthy post: The Devil may be getting annoyed over how you are using those idle thumbs.
Personally. I view triacetin [Vape Wizard (FA), Smooth (TPA) et al] as a shortcut to artificially marrying the flavours in a blend through letterboxing all into a comfortable middle: a bit like lithium for vapes - As it impacts upon a number of receptors to remove the highs and lows to make a cohesive middling whole. It can be very useful for a beginner but it strips away the characterful concoctions which aid in future growth.
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Ugh, I had a similar experience lately. The flavors themselves were good and then they destroyed them with some disgusting sweetener with chemical overtones. It even permeated my lips. wtf? What a travesty.
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Yup, that’s it. They do that.
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I think if you’ll stop vaping for a while your taste will improve.