5 DIY E-Juice Mistakes to Avoid
All DIY vapers have to start somewhere, and rarely does someone who sets out to create their own vape juices nail the process on the first try. DIY vaping is enormously rewarding, as it allows us to be creative, save money and exercise control over our vaping destiny. But the process of making e-liquids inevitably requires trial and error, and so mistakes early on are hard to avoid.
What are Some Common DIY Errors?
Mistakes do happen. When they occur, being able to learn from them is crucial to successful e-juice making. However, sometimes we might make a mistake and not even notice until it’s too late. So, in order to increase your chance of success, here are the some of the most common mistakes and how to rectify or completely avoid them, in the first place.
Error #1: Using Cheap Ingredients
DIY vapers who want to save money may opt for cheap ingredients, believing that they don’t really make that much of a difference. But the reality is that your propylene glycol (PG), vegetable glycerin (VG), nicotine, and flavoring(s) all need to be top-quality in order for you to be happy with your vape.
Low-quality, cheap ingredients affect your e-liquids negatively in a few ways:
·May have impurities in them that alter the flavor in undesirable ways.
·Introduces these impurities into your body.
·Can interfere with the e-liquid’s ability to vaporize, resulting in tank clogs, dry hits, spitting and more.
Always opt for USP-graded ingredients, and only buy from trusted sources. Trust us – this makes an enormous difference.
Error #2: Making a Huge Batch of an Untested Flavor
It’s very common for a first-time DIY vaper to create a huge batch of e-liquid from scratch right off the bat, anticipating having several weeks’ worth of e-juice ready to go. But this is not recommended. When you’re first getting started, there are so many variables that determine how satisfying you’ll be with your homemade vape juice. Therefore, making a huge batch could leave you with a lot of e-juice that is disappointing, and not meeting your needs.
More specifically, if you’re trying out a new flavor recipe, always start with a small batch. Even if the combination of flavoring ingredients sounds good on paper, you never know if it will actually appeal to your palate until after you’ve made it and have tested it. If it’s a small batch, you can easily throw away the unpalatable flavors you make without it being a huge loss.
Error #3: Using Too Much Flavoring
The more flavor, the better, right? Well, not necessarily. A quite common mistake is increasing the amount of flavoring in an e-liquid formula, since logic would conclude that it results in a stronger taste. But too much flavoring can backfire. Mainly, it can throw off the consistency of your vape juice, making it difficult to vaporize. Furthermore, too strong of a flavor can actually be unappetizing as it overwhelms your palate.
Error #4: Eyeballing Measurements
Each of the four main ingredients that goes into a batch of vape juice must be measured out properly to ensure that the proportions are just right. Otherwise, you can end up with a variety of issues that interfere with your vaping experience. This is why we urge you to not eyeball your measurements, assuming that a little too much or too little of one particular ingredient will go unnoticed. It is, in fact, very important that each ingredient is measured with maximum precision, or else you’ll likely be very disappointed with the end result.
If you don’t know how much of each ingredient to use, you can easily find formulas online, as well as calculators that will break down the proportions according to your preferred VG/PG ratio and nicotine strength preferences.
Error #5: Being Too Ambitious with a Flavor Profile
A lot of people who are new to DIY vaping get over-ambitious when creating a flavor profile. They finally have the ability to make any flavor profile that they want, and so they go for something that’s complex, rather than sticking to a simple flavor. Often, this backfire, because eventually we all discover that adding too many components to a flavor profile results in a muddy and overwhelming taste that’s actually unpleasant to the taste buds.
Rather than going for a super complicated dessert that consists of five or more distinct flavoring extracts, opt for something simpler, like something that only requires two individual flavor components. For instance, rather than creating a fruit punch with eight unique fruit extracts plus sweetener, go for a fruit duo that’s hard to mess up on the first try. As you get the hang of creating flavors, you can eventually start making them more complex since you’ll have a better understanding of balancing and layering individual flavoring extracts.
Mistake-Free DIY E-Liquid Making is Possible
Even the most brilliant DIY vapers likely made the mistakes above in the beginning of their juice-making journeys. But, by knowing how to avoid these mistakes, you can get a head start and be well on your way to crafting successful batches of delicious e-liquid.