Flavour Testing/Recipe notes organisation

E-liquids General
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Apologies if this has been asked before but a search didn’t seem to suggest so.

We have some amazing topics on how you all organise your flavours, I’m looking at you, fridge keepers! Having an expanding stash, and therefore a buttload of SFTs in progress and to do, I can’t help but wonder, how do you organise your notes?! Be it on SFTs or recipes. ELR? Apps? Spreadsheets? Post-It notes??

I started off making notes in a diary but that soon became a PITA; flicking back to original dates to add updates, and it was generally disjointed and unproductive. For SFTs I’d only want to update my stash notes on ELR with a concluded SFT, to keep it succinct. I can’t seem to get on with a digital version so I now use an index card system, different coloured cards for flavour type; custards & creams/fruits/bakery have their own colour (no baccy for me), these are sorted by flavour name, and then white cards for recipe WIPs.

So, show me/ tell me; how do you all keep your notes?

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I use to keepnmy notes in composite notebooks , each manufacturer had their own book , but I moved a few months ago and couldnt find the books :frowning: , very depressing …

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Oh man, that’s bad times. I guess that’s partly why I like my cards though, I feel like I’m less likely to lose that than I am accidentally delete a digital version.

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Everyone’s got their own system @BikesAndBacon. I too, like many others, started out jotting things down on paper, but ran out of patience. I have done a metric ton of SF tests here on ELR, and always use the same system.

  1. Make an initial post in the correct area, and either list all the flavors in that run, or add them as I go. Initially I was just making a single new post for each flavor, but I had a bunch of people ask if I could have a big mega post which was easier to follow, so, I did BOTH !!!

What I mean is, I keep the original post up top, and add to it, then below, I post the individual flavor posts so people can keep up AS I do them, OR, jump back to the master post with all the flavors.

  1. Because not everyone hits this side (the Forum Side) I also make a “recipe” with copy/pasted info so trollers who only live on the recipe side can read them too.

I basically gave UP on the paper, and actually type the review/thoughts/impressions while testing, which makes it much easier to get down, exactly what is perceived AS it’s being perceived.

WARNING !!! This method may drive you crazy. I could probably go far more into detail, but I felt keeping it short, sweet, and to the point would help people more, and in a faster way, rather than an indepth overload of information on any one flavor. Plus, I do too many to get too indepth.

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Thats cool @SessionDrummer, do you keep a copy of what you’ve typed up anywhere else at all or is it all straight on ELR?

This post was more about curiosity than anything else, I’m happy with my card/ELR combo system (for now :grin:). I was saying over on Discord, one of the most interesting things about DIY is everyone’s little quirks, how they go about everything differently to get their results.

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Well @BikesAndBacon it’s quite a bit to do, just to what I do already, and I typically slack off from adding those same notes directly to the flavors. I back up everything on ELR to Juice Calculator, so I have copies of all notes locally as well, so I don’t do anything beyond that point.

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I use a full featured writer (Linux LibreOffice Writer works) like MS Word. All recipes are entered by giving them a number assigned in sequence along with a descriptive recipe title. If I want to find how many times I used a flavor, all I have to do is use the built in search/find feature of the writer. Once a recipe is established in a writer, then it is entered into a calculator/recipe software/on line cloud etc. Most of my entries are copies of various recipes with variations suited to me, so I do very little recipe typing. In addition, once every 4 - 6 months, I copy/replace all existing recipes, from my main computer vape folder, on to a thumb drive. I have a minimum of 5 different places where my recipes are saved.This way I’m not dependent on any one program/storage area.The writer is the master record because that is the first original recipe entry.

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Well I always take things too an extreme. Trying to archive perfection one day, and yes that sucks lol

Anyways, I have note books I write my notes in (every company has a book, and every flavor has a reservation of 5 pages. I note everything, from smell and knuckle test of the flavors - not mixed, upon arrival, all the way too mixed at tons of different percentage, at different steep times, how they paired and what could be a substitute. Dave doesn’t call me the substitute queen for no reason :wink:

I then take copies, these get put in binders and stored in my office.

I use a offline calculator for mixing, Every ingredient gets not only put in there by the correct weight, but also the flavor notes are out in the description as well as my own percentage.

I do post some notes here on the forums, same as sessiondrummer I have a elr public “recipe” that I created with notes off the whole one drop line.

Most of the time I forget putting my notes in the actual note section on the recipe page, because mostly we posting them here in the categories or in private pm if someone asks etc.

Trust me, I have done this for all my 260+ flavors and keep continuing every time I get new flavors, it turns into a obsession and you don’t want to do it, there’s a lot of fun lost! But at least it’s precise, right lol

Edit: same for my recipes, I have books with more than one version, dates and what not and then I have one master book that only contains the finished versions, I or my husband and friends liked.

Everything else, even if finished but I didn’t approve goes into the “let’s revisit” book.

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For me its changed as I journeyed deeper into the rabbit hole.

Just stating out I just had a few flavors from liquid barn and nicotine river. didn’t know about e-l-r till a year later. was rather happy with the flavors I had just kept flavor notes in my head not much to keep track of and recipes I kept on an android table using an app called eLiquid Recipe Manager Pro that I bought for $3.99 it had one draw back. when software updated all data was lost. but I didn’t find this out till later. I was getting bored with the flavors I had.

so I search online to see if there was some sort of recipe site. I found a few . but E-L-R wa free and had the ability for me to save recipes… I think we have a winner here !!! well as time went on I rather happy with elr. thou when I cant pay my phone bill I don’t have access to my recipes. major drawback… but one I can deal with…

well not to long ago I needed to make

Strawberry Margarita v2
5.00% H2O - Pure & Pristine
4.00% The Flavor Apprentice - Strawberry Ripe
3.00% The Flavor Apprentice - Citrus Punch (Mt. Dew)
2.00% The Flavor Apprentice - Jamaican Rum
1.00% FlavourArt - Strawberry
0.50% FlavourArt - Lime Tahity Distilled
0.50% FlavourArt - Orange
0.50% Inawera - Cactus

but Strawberry(FA) was renamed to Red Touch I was like wtf I don’t have a flavor called red touch… spent hrs looking for what red touch was. so I broke out my android and started copying everything to the android . god that was a lot of work. then disaster hit… the app had an update and all my data was lost . wtf? so until I got a pc I was stuck with E-L-R…

did I say pc , I meant to say laptop. customer just recently gave me a laptop that didn’t work … key word didn’t. did a factory restore and still laptop crashed to the oh so loved blue screen of death. well that sucked… but all was not lost it was either corrupted software which a factory restore should have fixed or memory failure. time to erase the factory bull. formatted the harddrive and formatted the factory hard drive… and installed windows 10… using a usb drive… it worked now it was time to to look for sowftware so I had a local copy…

I found this video

but after watching the video a few times because I wanted to go back and watch were he was scrolling thru the menu saying he didn’t see how to do something… and I thought I saw a menu option for what he was wanting to do . the video left me with the feeling he created it to push the paid software he recommended using in the end or a complete idiot. well I don’t think he’s and idiot.

in the end I felt the one he kept trying to downgrade was worth looking checking out

JuiceCalculator

I found it was actually very user friendly . and had everything I wanted. and I can take it with me were ever I go since its saved on a usb drive…

still have stuff on e-l-r but now ive transferred everything on elr to juice calculator. presently going thru and redoing single flavor test and saving the notes to the single flavor test recipe…and rating them

1 star - bad
2 star - okay
3 star - good
4 star - pretty good
5 star - awesome

I think between elr and juice calculator I wont really need anything else. I wish elr had a few features that juice cacluator has…

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Loving these replies guys, I knew we’d all have a different way of doing it :rofl:

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@tartarusspawn THAT’S where it’s at !!!

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