i started out with the average/median amounts according to the notes that i found when looking it up, which was between 1 and 3%. i tried that and found it weak. i bumped it up in increments, 3, 6, 9, etc. and each time just found it too weak. that’s normally my practice with any flavor, i.e., follow the average/median amounts that i find in the notes and increase from there in increments. when it comes to pods, i barely taste much no matter what flavor i use. i’ll also test with or without sweetener to see if that helps (i use 1-2% sweetener), but i find that i always taste the sweetener more than i do the flavor. but, i’ll try your advice and see if i should start even lower than the average/median amounts.
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Flavorah isnt like the rest of the flavor manufactures…
it has spots where it can seem weak, then mute, then come back and never taste like what it is supposed to, because you are over using… Unless you start low… .2% and work up… you will miss all that. I dont care if it is a pod mod or what… but… if you like that 15% keep it… in the end… as long as you are happy…
I have mod recipes with stars and they are under 5% total flavoring.
I do not use any sweetener… if I do, its flv sweetness… or cotton candy.
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Willie, allow me to chime in.
Back when a lot of us got started down this DIY path, we didn’t have much at all to go on. I wouldn’t call myself one of those people per se - there were folks mixing a while before I got started. However, if we didn’t have manufacturer’s recommended usage percentages then we either got that info elsewhere or would just experiment. People like myself would throw something together and vape it. If it tasted good, then we kept a record of what we did. Back then there were damn few highly concentrated flavors. This was the case for a few years.
So, when new flavor companies did emerge with stronger flavors (FA, INW etc), a lot of people already had some habits established. Being used to weaker flavors (like minimum starting point around 4-5%) we just jumped into it with the newer, stronger stuff the same as we had been doing with the likes of TPA.
That’s exactly how it was for me with FLV. I made some juices which now make me cringe to even think of. Point is, rather than do testing or take a gradual approach, a lot of people just instantly went to higher percentages than needed, made recipes and public flavor notes, and bam - misinformation in the flavor database. ELR and others are riddled with bad information. Case in point - check out Liquid Barn’s Vanilla Ice Cream. I entered notes on that flavor just yesterday. There are people who obviously started off at like 8, 10, even 15% for single flavor test. Plenty of them! So if you were brand new to DIY and went off the notes for that flavor, chances are you would immediately go high without the benefit of trying lower.
I encourage you to start low, even for your POD recipes. Doing SFTs for a POD may not be the right approach unless you had rebuildable PODS and don’t mind rebuilding/wicking after every test. But I do think working on one recipe per POD at a time makes sense. That way you can start low, make flavor increases incrementally, and stick with a single recipe per POD device till you find a happy spot. Also as I’m sure you’re aware, PODs take longer to purge older flavors than most other vape devices, so you need to give it time between flavor bumps before deciding you need to add more.
Flavor is not a one-size-fits-all thing, so in the absence of single flavor testing, doing what I suggest here will allow you to find the percentages that you like while avoiding waste by using things too high initially. Don’t forget that phenomenon that overuse of some flavors actually causes them to become muted.
I hope this info helps.
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Very well stated… 
I miss the old days… things weren’t as complicated as they can be now.
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ha!! i was just about to post a message when i saw new replies. well, this is what i did. i made five recipes. all 5 mL and as follows, 1 drop, 2 drops, 3 drops, 1% and 1.5%. i found that none of them suited me, they all tasted pretty weak. they were nice but weak. i found this to be true with both pods and rda’s as i switch back and forth and will use any recipe on both types of devices. also, in the past i had done 5% through 8%, in 1% increments, and still was unsatisfied. with the current 15%, it’s actually a mixture of 10% FLV and 5% Sweet Lychee (CAP). i mixed these two because i thought i could tone down FLV’s muskiness with CAP. after going through my 5 mixes during this entire week, i hit my 15% juice and the difference was astounding. my 15% is very rich in flavor, although it is still not the lychee flavor that i am after, which is not musky but more of a floral, tropical, sharper flavor. however, i did buy Lychee (FA) and the smell seems to be exactly the lychee flavor that i’ve been after. i’ll have to make a test of that one to see if that is my lychee holy grail!.
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