I think it may be interesting and educational to start a thread to see how everyone goes about the process of crafting recipes. There’s always some new little tricks and ideas we may learn even for experienced diy’ers.
I will start out by sharing my process I have been doing for a long time. My rule number 1 is you have to know your flavors to know how to use them and for me that involves making 5ml testers for each of my hundreds of flavorings. Its tedious but everything is based off this. I go by just a high avg percentage for how potent each flavor company is. Even if I should be testing for example at 2 percent I mix them up at 5 percent. The reason is only 1 tester needs to be made. I can dilute it with pgvg while I’m dripping it in a rda to test if I think it needs to be tested lower. Sure I may not know the exact lower percentage when doing this but it’s just for getting the idea. I can dial it in way later down the road. Another reason for doing all these testers is when I get down to making the recipes I can go off the flavor profiles after each flavor tester is pre steeped. Its very hard to build a recipe unsing a bunch of batches of unsteeped flavirings. A lot of flavors you have no clue on when unsteeped. I take notes of each one. I have most of these flavors in memory also.
Now that all that is done i can start to craft recipes. First step is thinking of what I think may work for a recipe but I also don’t leave it all up to what I think may work. My process is then testing each flavor for my testers by dripping them together in a rda. This way I can know right away the reaction between each flavor and makes it much easier for me to know right away that this or that don’t work together or needs to be bended with something else to achieve the note I’m looking for or if one flavor may mute another. This gives you some feeedom to play around too. You can try a flavor you would never think should be paired find find out it magically works amazing or makes a super enhancing reaction. Some flavors I will drip more drops then others to get a idea of percentages. When it’s close I then will make up a test batch and fine tune the percentages. Crafting this way also saves a lot on flavoring as I’m not even crafting most of it with my flavorings, just using my testers.Usually at this point the recipe is close enough where it will only take 2 or 3 bottles to fine tune the percentages and have a final recipe. I let each one steep some time before fine tuning the next one.
I test a lot of flavors, and take copious notes, and sometimes when I’m testing a flavor I automatically KNOW where it can be used, and sometimes get recipe ideas while testing, which I jot down. When I actually HAVE the time to mix or test new recipes, I start with the CORE of the flavor, or main notes and try to get that nailed down before adding ANY additional flavors, enhancers, even sweetener, so I can limit what may (or may NOT) have worked in the CORE, which makes that easier to fix. After it is nailed down, I can add accent notes, sweeteners, and enhancers.
Ideas usually come from something I run across on the internet. A lot of times if its a real dessert or food ill look at the recipe it self and try to replicate (ProVapes trick) . I usually pull the base first and get that figured out, then ill add my mid , accent notes after… The process anymore is routine . Mixing is also much easier now compared to pre 2018 . A lot of SF can be used for the base to build on unlike before where you had to sometimes build a recipe for the base before adding any other flavors. Personally i try to keep testing a SF as simple and quick as possible. The only thing i get from SF test is the strength, off notes (maybe) and the general taste which is more often than not lacking. @Chrispdx tests flavors by adding thwm to a MM and Meringue or fresh cream which i have adopted over the years but use different flavors. Testing this way gives me more of the answers i am looking for. Also i dont take the same approach with every recipe. Sometimes i just know whats gonna work so i grab them and go .
If this question is for educational purposes i would strongly suggest using @Chrispdx testing method. Doing it this way will help you know what the flavor will do in a mix.
I mix the way I cook. I’ll taste something my wife brings home from work and try to replicate the taste. Love bakery’s, candy’s desserts. Working on a butter cake that’s kicking my behind right now. I’m close but so far away from the taste of cake.
Another thing i do is instead of just writing notes, i just use the voice recorder on my phone. Makes it quicker and easier to document what im tasting.it also has the text to speech so it saves time if i wanna go and put the notes on elr or atr
Have you tried diyfs gooey butter cake. I dont know how much it changed over the years but that mixed with diyfs pound cake used to be a amazing base. If it is the same , something like crispy dontut with vso butter raw woukd be killer. Maybe even ssa shortbread cookie in there
Stared with a pound cake FLV and pushed it high then added FW yellow cake and simply cake Plurium low. The cake is very vanilla with a frosting of sugar, butter, and almond and vanilla pored over and into the cake. Pushed the vanilla way too high and it took the recipe over. Diluted the vanilla in half by doubling up the recipe only leaving the vanilla out.
Long story short it a decent vape but the cakes aren’t coming through at least the pound cake as front as I want. The cakes are muddled in the mix.
Everything sounded so good until this…I still go with FA butter or VTA Butterbase. FLV popcorn low around .2 to .3 pct can be bent into a sweet butter in a bakery .
Oops missed the “raw” i dont think introed that but the original was weak with very little taste or feel
I havent tried those butters. My goto was always cap golden butter but the vso raw butter i just started using. It seems just as strong as cap but more natural butter taste
Ive never had a lot of luck with Golden Butter , i know at one time it was all we had or the easiest to get at least. Fa is really good , VTA butter base is rihgt there with it . You should try the FA its at BCF
Golden butter for me has always been a more upfront slightly greasy butter flavor (thinking more on the lines of a buttery fried empanada) Where as other butter flavors like Butter base and tpa butter fade more into a baked in butter taste (like in a cake or cookie).
when i have new flavors in, i try to use them in mixes that i already know, this way you get to know how that new flavor works.
with a themed recipe, i look up recipes online, look for the ingredient list and stuff like that.
then i try to translate it into my diy flavors.
think about a coconut milk, i crafted one with 2 coconuts and milk flavors
It’s actually a good underrated butter flavor. It’s strong I’ve only used up to 1%. but after a steep it mellows out and seems to blend into the background.
Single flavor testing 100% helps me decide where the concentrate will go in a recipe. Sometimes I’ll google recipes but most times I just come up with an idea and mix it. Being on Noted has completely changed my mixing. I know single flavor testing isn’t for everybody,but it definitely makes a world of difference. I have many many testers steeping as of today. I usually go above recommended % and then add base to test lower. It’s fun for me to take a concentrate and know exactly where it’s going and what it’ll do for my recipe. I haven’t had a recipe in a while that I’ve had to tweak after mixing.
I put my notes in Note pad on my laptop and refer back. They aren’t as detailed as @SessionDrummer because I talk about them, therefore I hardly put notes on ELR because they are just my “chicken scratch “
Yes having that stash of testers lets me find things a flavor can do or work with that you would never find other wise expecially when they are already steeped. To me it actually saves time in mixing because instead of mixing random of things i think can work then waiting for it to steep where then it sometimes gets scrapped. I can go to my testers and drip this with that in a rda and immidiatly be like yup that works. Saves in base in the long run too because you dont scrap even half as many recioes. Sometimes i can come up with a many flavor banger recipe in a matter of minutes.
I have it set up with a pour bottle of premixed base too to save time making testers. I can make prob 50 5ml test bottles in 15min.
I’m not the best at SF testing, sometimes I will but only really when I find a flavour that I can’t totally work out. I tend to let my nose lead a lot of the time when I get new flavours, smelling things side by side looking for a pairing. I like working in pairs for some reason and will always look for what I call “best mates” sometimes going outside what may be a usual pairing.
For example, I recently got WF Powdered Donut & FLV Sweet Crunch, and something told me to pair them up. So, from that base I built up a recipe, using other layers that I’d used previously.
This is the third mix I’ve done with variations on this base so there must have been something I liked and a bit further I went onto something I’d tried but never been happy with Strawberry Jam & Custard Donut…I’ll chuck the recipe in here as well, I can’t stop lick testing it, that’s a good sign.
I’ll see how it pans out, sometimes I strike it lucky on the first go other times I may find something interesting to work off or it just may be rubbish.
Another one I’m going to try today is Duomei Fruit Loops and SSA Lemon Pound Cake, the lemon I got from the Duomei strikes as pairing that may work and why not try a Fruit Loop Lemon Cake. If that works then I’ll build up from there.
If I’m keen on developing something I mix it and vape it every day until it runs out. Mixing variations as I get the ideas from vaping the first mix.
It was fun and educational reading about how everyone approaches this subject. I discovered that I do a little of what almost everyone else does. I thought that maybe I was all over the map but now I can see that it’s just variations and creative ways of getting to know your flavors. Lol, I’m always checking my mental status. Thanks for the inputs and thank you @STR8V8PING for starting the thread. I think it will help a lot of mixers.