I am pretty new to DIY and so far have enjoyed mixing other’s recipes. I am not a real creative sort so this is the best course of action for me right now. I truly appreciate ALL of the folks here that share their recipes for others to enjoy.
A bit of history. I tried to quit smoking cigs a couple years ago and tried vaping. I even started to DIY my own juice because I quickly learned that I would go broke buying juice from local shops. Long story short, I ended up picking up the cigs and quickly forgot all about vaping. Fast forward to a month ago and i am trying again to get off the cigs. I have not had one in a month so that makes me happy.
Now to my issue needing help! I have made nearly 50 different recipes, copied from this site and the wonderful people who have created them. The problems is that for the most part I " can’t taste Shit"
A good portion of these Top ranked Recipes have little to no flavor to me. There are a few exceptions and those are what i am vaping on now.
To gain more knowledge of individual flavors i took 7 banana flavorings from my stash and mixed them each at 5% with a 60/40 VG/PG and zero Nic. All smell like Banana and taste kinda like Banana but when I vape them I am getting nearly 0 flavor from all of them.
Should I just up my percentage on all of them and then do a sample testing again? My thought is to bump them all to 10% and try again.
What do you all think?
It’s a well known myth beginners believe in, at least most of the times. Adding more and more ingredient and raising percentage will yield in amazing results, right?
Not at all, every flavor has a percentage threshold and every juices overall percentage has a threshold as well.
Dumping 35% of flavor in nowadays newer hardware will only yield one result. Wasting flavor, money and making you frustrated.
What’s your setup you trying to vape on?
Have you tried commercial juices and be able to taste these?
If you just stopped smoking or still doing both, your tastebuds will be shot and need to recover, but hardware plays a huge role too. Overflavoring your juices will give you no flavor either.
Try 1 maybe 2 main flavors and balance them before jumping on a 7 flavor/layer recipe.
A couple random points from my experience.
Banana flavors are strong to me and I would propbably sf test at a lower percent 1-2 and work my way up
Personally have only done about 15 sf tests. So how do I mix? When I want to make a kiwi strawberry recpie I review about 5 to 10 highly rated recpies and and go from there. I look at how people are mixing with just kiwi fa and then proceed to strawberry ripe tpa and then combined with red touch fa and so on. Then I make informed choices on what I see, can infer and build my mix based on my experience.
When I was new I would spend a couple hours reading prior to mixing. Now it take 30 mins because of user experience. But I still read research and play. Rarly
do I have a bad mix but I always am looking to improve.
When I first started mixing recommended percentages were too low for me coming off of commercial juices. If I was adapting a recipe I added 1-1.5% to each flavor and that helped some. Going much higher just muted the recipe overall. I found if I stuck with stronger flavors like citrus or dark berries I had better results. My first good tasting to me mixes were 15-25%. After eight months they are 13-5%. You just have to give your taste buds time to adjust.
@eStorm. I have purchased several tank set ups, Kangertech subtank plus, Triton Pro tank, Freemax Starre Pro, Aspire Nautilus and mini the latest is the smok tfv8 baby. Have used all sorts of different coils for all of these tanks. Currently using the kangertech RBA coil head with a single coil build at around 20 to 30 watts. Airflow adjusted down just enough to keep it from whistling! I have tried a bunch of commercial juices and have issues with some of them. While others taste pretty good.
I have not had a cig in the last month and have been strictly vaping.
I have found that custards and creams and nutty type flavors taste better to me at this point. I love the idea of fruits and creams combined but the mixes that i have tried taste more like the creams with little fruit taste. Its strange because my wife loves the fruit flavors and has no issues tasting them and she is still smoking cigs!
Also I vaped each of these seven individual flavorings on a Dark Horse RBA with a 1 ohm coil build @ 20 watts. New cotton wick for each flavoring.
Thanks for the reply! I have been doing a bunch of reading and researching as well. These are all single flavor mixes. I guess I should have made that more clear in my OP. I went through the notes pages for each of these individual flavorings and for the most parts 5% is on the lower end of the scale for average mixes!
I do know that at this point in my vaping journey, my taste buds are shot out from smoking cigs and cigars so I put them out and am hoping to keep from picking them back up again by vaping.
what recipes are the ones you CAN taste ?
I made each of these flavorings as a single flavor test batch at 5%. 60/40 VG/PG with zero NIC. Vaped as a SNV for initial test. My plan was to let these steep for a week and vape again and see if they had changed at all!
Ripe Banana TPA
DX Banana Cream TPA
Bananas Foster TPA
Banana Cream TPA
Banana Hangsen
Banana Cream LA
Bano (Banana) FA
In my mind the only one that would be to high at 5% may be the FA flavoring.
Everybody’s tastebuds are different and some people will pick up flavours even when using a tiny amount that others don’t taste at all.
Did you let them steep? Leaving them to steep for at least a week makes quite a difference.
Creams and custards need at least a couple of weeks of steeping to really shine. Fruits usually don’t. If you mix your creams first, let them steep for a few weeks and then add the fruits and wait a few days you might get a better result.
Currently vaping “Bust a Nut” by @Alisa. This to me is an excellent vape. Creamy nutty tank of Deliciousness!
Have a couple of tobacco recipes that taste good and a couple of coffees that are strong in flavor that taste good.
I did try a recipe created by @TorturedZen " Heros Milk" and so far is the only one that i have been able to get any strawberry flavor out of.
I am hoping that the longer I stick with vaping my taste buds and palate will get better and I may be able to enjoy a wider variety of flavors
These were not steeped! just playing with individual flavors looking for the sweet spot on them!! They are going to steep for a week and I will vape them again and see how they have changed! All of these were vaped on new cotton on my rba and none of them had more than a faint hint of flavor!
My reason for all banana flavorings is because I absolutely Love the taste of Suicide Bunny’s Derailed!
Currently have a couple batches steeping that are clones from here at ELR. From what i can smell one of the two smell pretty close. Have not vaped either yet.
You’ll be surprised what a difference that week will make. Banana gets pretty strong when steeped.
Also should note, I bought four bottles of naked 100 ejuice, and have the same issues with those as well
Naked unicorn. I get some creamy custard notes but little to no berries
Naked Amazing Mango all i get from it is a strong overly artificially sweetened mango. none of the peach or the cream.
Naked Really Berry. This one is not bad but way to sweet. I can taste some berries but not sure if I like the combination they used.
Naked Lava Flow is not too bad but the pineapple is the predominate note and the sweetness is up there with the rest of them.
Based on your reply i think i will just wait a week and try them again. I was thinking of making a second batch of samples at 10% and trying them. Then let them sit for a week and see where the flavors were at!
Maybe a batch of cinnamons and danishes! Hahaha
I mixed the EJM Cream base a month or so ago and was thinking of trying it with some strawberries or blueberries. I wonder if I could taste them in a mix like that!
You could put some banana in too 
This made me laugh, because that was one of the juices I bought, Naked 100 naked unicorn, together with a smok 85 al and a baby tank.
No matter what coil, wattage i were using, I could not taste any of it. It’s supposed to be strawberry cupcake with whipped cream. All I tasted was sweetener.
This juice stood now nearly 2 years in my shelf, it still taste like crap lol. Anyways, I did have to use heavy juices like thick rich custards, coffees, very dark berries because nothing else seemed to work in these smok setups.
I couldn’t taste fruits or anything for the longest time, and while I agree here with @Letitia that you can go above recommended percentages and even should if using high nic or vape a sub ohm tank with factory coils, it still has a limit.
Steeping helps sure, but again 35% is very high, and I fear that this might be the issue. A lot of flavors contain some kind of “sweetener”, might it be fructose, ethyl maltol, stevia etc. Stacking these will just cause that problem, only reason I actually brought it up.
But then again it’s subjective, I do hope that you can figure it out. Till then might stick with heavy rich recipes, and enjoy it, because the moment your taste buds return, you’ll be asking yourself what kind of crap you might have been vaping and probably not see why anyone would like such mix etc. At least for me that’s how I felt lol.
But by then you have gathered enough experience that making changes would probably be pretty simple. Good advise and suggestions here.
Seems like the best way to keep me vaping and not smoking the cigs!! Thanks!!
Absolutely!! Love this place!!
Maybe I missed something, I am stoned but I keep wondering where you get the 35% from. He (she?) made 5% SF batches and was asking if he should go up to 10%.
Am I confused or are you? 
edit, I see where the confusion comes from
They were mixed separately 
Probably i am because I read it as, took 7 
’s at 5% each mixed them but can’t taste it, shall I go up 10%?
I was like wait why we doing that? But then again it didn’t surprise me. Thanks for pointing it out, guess I stop commenting for today since I can’t read today 