Continuing the discussion from Most helpful single flavor:
So I have noticed there are a lot of experienced mixers on ELR. I’m sure it took a lot of trial and error to get good at creating flavors. I would like to see a list of “Definitely don’ts in DIY”. Things you know not to do again.
This should become a must read, especially for noobs.
Don’t make a 50/50 pg/vg nicotine base if you are heavy vg vaper. I noticed most flavors are pg based and it’s almost impossible to get vg ratio above 30% vg with a 20% flavor mix. That base has been sitting around for a while now. It’s a 50/50 @ 50 mg nicotine. I make most of my mixes @ 6-10 mg nicotine now.
Here’s some of my dont’s.
Don’t use a SMOOTH product on a batch of juice straight away.
Allow your juice to steep and then if you can, take a test sample to add SMOOTH to so that you can see if it makes a difference to the juice you created.
Don’t just use your flavours in a guesstimated percentage.
Test sample your flavours before using them in recipes in a PG/VG solution so that you know how strong or weak the requirements of %'s will be.
Finally
Don’t try and concoct a recipe without tasting it.
Vape Crisis on YouTube has a good mixing tutorial using 2ml of water and single drops of flavour added to the water. Then tasted like you would wine tasting.
Jon
When handling Nicotine base of any strength ! Safety First !! Wear rubber gloves and don’t get any on your skin and Don’t rub your Face ! It will burn and can make you Sick and in high amounts like 100mg it can Kill You 
Keep out reach from Your Children(if you have any) Remember Safety First 
I do something similar, i use one drop of flavoring per 1 shot glass of water. This works great for me. I also use these flavorings to make flavored water drinks.
Over flavoring is just as bad as not enough as over flavoring can mute the crap out of juices. I also add nothing other than flavorings, no smooth, wizard or any of that stuff. Koolada would be the only substance i add, that isnt a flavorings, and that happens rarely.
I’m definitely NOT an experienced mixer, but from one noob who hopes to help others…
Don’t get discouraged if something doesn’t turn out the way you hoped or if a flavor flat out sucks. Don’t be afraid to let it steep and try it again. If it still sucks, don’t be afraid to dump it.
Don’t get overwhelmed with all the information, recipes, possible combinations, flavors available, etc. Start small and work your way up.
And if a juice you make does suck, add menthol until you cant tastes the original flavoring. Sounds odd i know but i do not waste ejuice. In the two years i have been doing this i have only dumped appx 30ml of juice.
Also DONT make test mixes with nic, it is the most expensive component.
I have a good one, Do Not Wear 100mg Nicotine. A definite No No…
Do not let your nic get oxidized. Store your nicotine well, once heavily oxidized, though they say it won’t effect flavor of juice, It smells so bad it’s a bitch to work with…
Do not test your creations in a tank. Using a tank to test new juices is costly because to change flavors completely you would have to clean the unit, and replace to coil. This is quite wasteful and the money adds up. I now use a single coil RDA so I can just change cotton when changing flavors. How much better priced could it be than that…
Do not blend in small bottles. Blend in a bottle larger than the amount you want for your finished juice. This way should you accidently make a mistake you have room to adjust your recipe to a larger quantity. If you had to pour the contents of a smaller bottle into a larger bottle after a mistake, you have no idea how much loss there is by what you can’t get out of that small bottle, throwing off your recipe…
Don’t be afraid to pre-mix flavor concentrates for your favorite juices. Perhaps 15ml at a time is sufficient. Then when you go to mix the next batch, simply add whatever percent of the pre-mix represents the entire flavor portion of the mix. Example - I have one that uses 6 flavors. I mix those flavors together and store. When I make a new batch I add my nic, vg and pg and then 21% of the pre-mix. Perfect every time.
Don’t forget to clean mixing implements such as syringes, droppers, pipettes etc. Some of the concentrates, especially with plastic pipettes - will get embedded into the plastic and sully your next mix. Nothing tastes worse than espresso and peaches.
Don’t be afraid to experiment. On ECF one of the members has what he calls the 100 drop test. That is where the percentage of each ingredient is used in a test batch where each percent equals 1 drop. I use this all the time with glass droppers…although I never measure my base liquids anymore…they are always around 2.5 ml which is close enough to start with. Then for example if I have 2% strawberry, I add 2 drops. For 5% custard, 5 drops and so on. This saves time and supplies, mixes very quickly with just a few shakes, and allows you to test very quickly…in minutes. Credit to Bill’s Magic Vapor on ECF
I watched VapeCrisis’ tutorial as well. It was a good baseline for becoming familiar with your flavors.
Don’t buy flavors online without REALLY reading the name. I ordered a 4oz of what I thought was LA Cream Cheese Icing and turned out it was just CREAM CHEESE lolol. Yuck. Tasted like butt till I REALLY looked at the bottle!
Maybe a bit silly but don’t spill Koolada on your hand and lick it.
You’ll be tasting nothing but scorching menthol for the entire day.
Lol. I did that on purpose. I wanted to know what it tasted like. It’s very much mint without the mint. It took a good hour at least for the taste from the tiny drop I’d used to go away.
Lol all good things to know hahaha
Can you expand on this SthrnMixer.
Sounds to me that In a 100 drop test batch, each drop is equal to 1% of that batch. Give or take a little due to specific gravity weight of each additive.
Example: 5 drops of FA Fuji Apple would be equivalent to 5% in a 100 drop batch.
The only problem would be if you used less than 1% of any single additive. You can’t measure less than 1%.
Sounds like you need to use stronger concentrates like FA bc some of FW wouldn’t cut it.
If you have flavors for which you are using less than a percent you’re already dealing with difficulty making small test batches. This method works best when flavors are rounded to full percents rather than fractions of a percent.
If you were doing increments of .5% you could do it in 200 drops. That way each drop would be 0.5% instead of 1%.
Sounds like a lot of work to me, though.
I agree JoJo the whole 100 drop thing to me seems like a lot of work and counting. Hmm to each their own.