Yeah, @daath is quick like that… He’s been doing it since, what? 2007?
No, I haven’t tried those vendors yet @LordVapor. Soon though! If I don’t, eventually @Josephine_van_Rijn will have my testicles in a wood chipper! I told her a long time ago I was working on the Holy Grail of Irish cream mixes called “Angelpiss” (she coined the name), so I can’t let her down or its curtains for me!
I actually have a link like that to a baking page lol. Great idea and I don’t use it enough. Today I’m mixing a bit. Seen a peanut butter cookie banana I’m just trying for simple peanut butter cookie. Think I got the idea from a lady jojo here. I forget her name at the moment but she’s the one who got me moving again by simply having a public recipe that sounded good at the time.
JoJo has a lot of recipes I want to try once I get my stash of to a better selection. I have $100+ in my basket right now. And I just ordered $100 worth if flavoring along with a gallon of VG.
Dang it! I’m missing two flavors. I want to make this and compare now.
It an addiction Ray. The funny thing is , is that I keep buying more and I don’t work for a shop nor am I getting paid for this something is wrong here 
I like to go by intuition as far as using flavors and I like to refer to the flavor pairing thread you have and 3rd I like going by google searches related to my recipe!
You have to break your flavor hymen my friend 
We have all been there in one way or another. There isn’t any shortcuts or secrets, just time.
Time to get to know your flavorings, because there is a lot to learn about each flavor besides strawberry tastes like strawberry.
All you are doing during that time is taking notes, whether mental or on paper, about how it tastes, what %s it works the best at, how it changes after “X” weeks, what it is missing (good to know to fill in that gap with another flavor to make the perfect “X”)
Start low and most times lower than your gut you can always add more to the mix and retaste.
Having tons of flavors isn’t necessarily easier to create new things and can definitely be overwhelming, especially with ADD
Try not to get discouraged! This is your worst enemy for breaking your spirit and faith in your abilities. Remember that if you are creating something that sounds wonderful on paper, then you vape it and hate it… that doesn’t mean it’s you. It could be the company’s flavor itself and it isn’t what you were expecting. You could make that same recipe but use company Y’s version instead and it is great!
But I remember when I broke my flavor hymen! I had my stash for a little while and after some repetition and time it just kinda clicked and I was the flavor whisperer…I had a handle on my flavors and where to start them at in a mix. It doesn’t mean I’m an expert, I still have to learn any new flavors.
ELR is a good guide to use on flavorings and how people use them. If you see that FA Mangosteen is used as a mixer at a median of .5%, it’s safe to say that this is a good area to start with, even if you love mangosteens and want to start at 6%.
As far as ideas or inspiration, look at it from the culinary angle and pair pair pair. I fully stand by the book “The Flavor Bible” to get the juices flowing, there’s a thread about it here
Pick 1 flavor and pair/mix it 10 or 50 different ways.
It can be a grueling boring process at times, when you would rather be mixing a super kick ass 8 flavor juice, but you will be glad that you did and time well spent.
Don’t want to waste $? You can always mix with only pg/vg, no nic or try the drop in water and swish around the mouth, wine tasting style thing, it can be a good way to get a sense of the flavor’s profile.
All in all just have fun and know there will always be failures…but they are always filled with valuable information.
So I planned on mixing from I think it was about 7pm to 9 pm my time. Here it is almost 1 am and I got a lot of bottles in the closet steeping now. Plus 4 that I’m unsure what they were because I had to leave my working area to handle stuff. So a few mystery juices here in front of me, charted down if I can figure out what is what but still, a good night. You guys are all awesome and tomorrow I’ll look more into this book to gave note of.
I am ordering the flavors to try that Irish Cream. The more I think about it the more I want it. Real Irish Cream is my favorite cream flavor by far. Funny, I have never thought of it as a vape. I bet this would be really good
Excellent post
Why thank you sir
I remember being where @TELYgamer is and the frustration that it brings! Shit for me it was even more aggravating and discouraging because I’m a chef!!
Actually that is a good point right there! Being a chef all my life did not give me any other advantage over anyone else when it came to making a recipe. Sure I may be able to pair flavors together or have a little more knowledge as to what goes with what but that is all on paper.
I had to learn just like the rest of us about the flavors themselves and what they are capable of at different levels. Making, say strawberry ice cream, wasn’t as easy as putting strawberry flavor and Ice cream flavor together and that was it. There are other things that come in to play like adding marshmallow to give it a certain sweetness and mouth feel or a touch of cream fresh to get that dairy flavor out. More than one strawberry to give it layers or some vanilla/custards to pull out that creamy vanilla bean ice cream taste.
What I’m saying is it really doesn’t matter who you are or what your background is, it isn’t something you can just do without time, failure, trial and error, failure, wasting $ on a flavor you hate and…failure!
Failure isn’t the correct term here though. Learning is a better word.
Just like most things in life you learn over time. Like riding a bike. How many scrapped knees and tumbles does it take before you learn to ride without them. If you got on a bike for the first time and fell that doesn’t mean you can never ride a bike nor would you even think that. You just get back on that thing until you can!
Sorry if I sound like I am preaching cliche after cliche but patience isn’t something I am very good at. When I first started, I jumped in head first with these grand recipes written up and visions of grandeur right out the gate. I never tried making single flavor juices and it wasn’t until I knocked myself down a couple pegs, to start small and slow…SLOW that I started to improve…a lot!
I thought having 400 flavors was the way to go, when in reality it made it much more difficult for me! All that did was bring even more unknowns to my plate and overwhelm me even more. I had to take the time to go flavor by flavor, company by company, until I knew everything I could about that one flavor!
If there is one bit of advice I could give to a new mixer that would be to start small. Buy a dozen or so flavors at a time when you start and mix the shit out of them all until you know them like the back of your hand then more on to your next dozen or so flavors. It’s a lot easier and faster to learn 12 flavors all at once instead of 400 in my opinion.
Also you get to a point where you learn to mix 3 flavors to use as a base for the perfect “X”. For me this was Peach. I am a freak for anything peach!! Every peach flavor I bough in the beginning I did not like and for a while I thought I was doing something wrong. It took me over 8 different peach flavors and a lot of crappy juices to learn that the “perfect” peach for me wasn’t any particular flavor. It was a mix of 3 different peach flavors all at different %s to give me exactly what I wanted. For me that was INW Peach, CAP Yellow and FA white.
Also just because this is the perfect peach in my eyes doesn’t necessarily mean it is the perfect peach in your eyes. This is where that lovely word subjective comes in to play. The only person that knows what you like and at what %s is yourself. I can’t stand CAP’s juicy peach at all!! But there are a lot of people that do and there isn’t any right or wrong in that. It is a tricky balance of trying to follow others recommendations against your own palate but using people’s recommendations and recipes is a great guideline but it is never the end all.
Just remember, it doesn’t matter if you are a chef with 30 years experience or a plumber, we all start at the very same spot with the very same learning curves. Just don’t give up man and DO NOT be afraid to ask for help or suggestions!! Absolutely no shame in that what so ever! We are all here for one reason and that’s knowledge and you have some of the best people here to reference. Eventually we will be learning things from you as well!! Just like in the culinary world, there isn’t a person in the world that knows all there is to know about mixing
Also do not be intimidated by these vendor juices with their fancy bottles and names and prices. At the end of the day they are simply doing the exact same thing as you, with the exact same materials
I could go on and on but I will spare everyone my ramblings
Ramble on man. I am sitting here testing my liquids and taking notes on how well they are coming along. I like to think of a failure as gaining experience. It takes failure to become good at anything. So I have already gained some experience
My main problem I had when I started was my %s being too high. Not crazy high where I was getting a chemical/perfume taste but they were high and I didn’t have that obvious red flag that told me that was the reason. Granted I started out on 1.6/1.8 attys where I needed to be mixing a little higher than I would sub Ohm, I just didn’t have my balance yet.
It was hard to do but I stopped going with my gut. If I wanted to add 10% of this with 6% of that, I would force myself to go 6/3%. That’s when I really started to realize the whole less is more thing with a lot of flavors.
Then I got my first bottle of an Inw Cactus…
Just my opinion, but I think this ^ is really a great place to start.
As with almost anything in life, you need the fundamentals to have much hope of success with advanced applications. IF you want to build your own recipes (and let me stress there is NOTHING WRONG with only using recipes others have shared) you want to really learn your ingredients.
To put it another way, if you don’t know what a flavoring tastes like all by itself, what makes you think it’ll be good mixed with something else?
I have since adapted that water wine tasting route if and when I ever want to try a new flavor as is. I was a skeptic at first but it immediately gives me an impression of what it is like and it takes about 5 seconds with no waste (outside of 1 drop flavoring) or extra juice to use.
To each their own of course
Can you please elaborate on this? Does it accurately represent the flavor once it steeps if mixed as a single flavor? How much water to you put a drop in?
Thanks!
Everyone has their own feel for it and I think in total I may have done this 4 times but I got what I needed to out of it
It isn’t a representation of how they vape as much as a representation on how the flavoring is itself, in strength, flavor or whatever
A shot glass of water to a drop of flavoring works pretty well. If you get some bad flavors, you can then use the shot glass with the alcohol of choice to forget the flavor. 
This probably wont work for those that like the fruits, sweets, and desserts, but I’m a tobacco flavor mixer.
I had so many test mixes sitting around in 15ml, I was running out of bottles. I sorted all of them into ‘keepers & so-so’s’. I dumped all the so-so’s, and all the left over shop juices from my pre-DIY days, into one 8 oz squirt bottle. I call it my Jungle Juice Jug. Every once in a while, when I’m having a hard time deciding what to try, I’ll fill the tank with my Jungle Juice.
It’s really not that bad! It’s sure not a mix that’s repeatable again. I’d love to see the flavor list that’s in there!
You my friend, are extremely brave.
I’ve done this too and read where other do also. I had a good one going this year and would have loved to recreate the flavor. Just no way to do it. I had nearly 30 ml and ruined it by dumping in about 3 ml of some juice called Lava Ice. Hot cinnamon and menthol. Killed it.