I’ve been mixing my own DIY juices for the last 6 months or so. I have learned a lot since joining this lovely community, but I still have a lot to learn.
I love browsing thru the recipes and seeing all the different juices people make. I see a lot of recipes even on other sites that have really high %'s of Ethyl Maltol / Cotton Candy, Sucralose / Sweetener, Super Sweet. So my question is, do high percentages (2+%) of these cause coils to gunk up? Specifically Ethyl Maltol and Sweetener?. Does it vary by brand? Is there a percentage that seems to be a good stopping point before it causes coil gunking?
I try to stay on very low %'s of my sweeteners for fear of the dreaded coil gunking, but I also know that there are some of my recipes that could and would probably benefit from a bit higher percentage of some form of the sweetener.
Any and all advice, opinion, personal experience is greatly appreciated. Thank You all in advance.
I try to avoid ethyl maltol and maltol because of their muting effects on flavors… but I’ve used them and my experience is that it gunks up your coils a lot less than sucralose. TPA Sweetener is a mix of sucralose and maltol. TPA Cotton Candy is just EM (10%). I can’t tell you much about stevia, I hear it’s pretty decent with fruity flavors but I have no idea how it is with your coils.
If you’ve been vaping DIY juices for about 6 months now, I’m pretty sure that you really don’t need all that added sweetener and if you do need it, it may be a better idea to get it from marshmallow, meringue, sweet cream, strawberry ripe and flavors like that.
TPA is the only manufacturer that really specifies which components are used in their flavors, so it’s hard to say which other brands gunk up your coils except for by trial and error. Going through the flavor notes will usually give you a lot of info about it though.
If you don’t like gunk on your coils but you like your sweet juices, you should be using an RBA and rebuild your setup quite regularly. It’s a little bit of work but way cheaper than buying your commercial coil heads. Lots of people dry-burn (SS and Kanthal) or brush off (Ni and Ti) their coils to clean and re-use… I’ve tried it a couple times but nothing beats a new clean coil.
That is usually how I try to sweeten my juices, with marshmallow, meringue,and sweet cream but I just see so many recipes that people use 2,3,4 even 5% EM, Sweetener and even Super Sweet, and I know that SS is insanely sweet almost sickeningly sweet. I just didn’t know if there was some secret to using all that sweetener that I didn’t know about. Like I said, I’m still learning and there are a lot of things I don’t know so I had to ask. I felt I was mixing in proper % with my actual sweeteners when I do use them instead of or with my marshmallows or meringues. Thank you for taking the time to respond. It is greatly appreciated.
Also, I’m not huge on overly sweet vapes and I do use RBA and clean or rebuild my setups often. But I’m a person who has to ask when I am curious about something, I love this community and feel comfortable reaching out for info/advice here so this is where I’ve been posting when I need a little guidance.
Recipes like that are usually the product of someone just starting DIY and haven’t learned some of the finer points of mixing. Chances are they saw their little friend do it, who saw someone else do it and so on. If you’re planning on using it do your homework and get familiar with it first by testing and taking notes. You should be doing this with all flavors you buy.
And good for you for asking questions…instead of just jumping on the bandwagon!
I mainly use Sweet Leaf Stevia drops from Nic River. I am usually around .5% but go up to 1% on occasion. I haven’t noticed much gunking at all from Stevia at those percentages.
I do use Supersweet on occasion, pretty much just in fruit heavy mixes. I don’t go above .5% with it and I don’t have many issues with gunk on my coils. I don’t use it as much because it tastes too artificial to me.
EM and Maltol I rarely ever use so I am of no help there.
Try the Sweetness of Flavorah! is an based on Stevia, you may have fewer problems with the coils …
Thank you all for your help. I def appreciate the time taken to give me your personal experience and advice. I mean common sense I figured that large % sweeteners in these recipes were likely something along those lines but I know that assuming something is not the best thing to do so I wanted to ask. I don’t mind cleaning my coils and changing my cotton but, if I can keep from having to do it every day, or every couple of days that’s a great thing… I don’t have too much trouble with my coils gunking up since I try to use little sweetener in my recipes when I do decided to use it. But I have noticed my coils do gunk up on any recipes I use chocolates, and cinnamons in and I hate that because I love the rich bakery dessert vapes like that, that I make. But they aren’t too bad and they are good enough to deal with it lol…