A two part article by ConcreteRiver. The full article here
Why You Should Single Flavor Test:
Short answer, because you're not an animal smashing flavors together all willy-nilly. Getting familiar with your flavors is the single biggest step you can take towards being able to quickly develop recipes. Like any other craft, your work is going to be a lot easier if you understand the tools available to you.
That's not to say single flavor testing is some silver bullet to being able to whip up some certified BANGERZ off a shake. Single flavor testing can't really tell you how concentrates are going to interact with each other... at first. If you do enough single flavor testing AND enough work on recipes you start to notice some patterns. If you've done work with one flavor, and upon single flavor testing a second you find some similarities, it's pretty easy to extrapolate how that second flavor is going to work. These kind of inferences are easier and easier as you build up your library of single flavor tests. Testing builds your flavor muscles, and gives you a much deeper understanding of what's going on with what you're vaping.
You want to be able to quickly develop to profile?
Having a knowledge of your flavors is going to make that so much easier.
You want to "clone" a juice?
Pretty solid starting point if you can start picking out individual concentrates.
You want to grack it up and start mixing weird?
A big part of single flavor testing is benchmarking the limits of concentrates, and trying to push them until they break. You then get to see the interesting things that start happening after those flavors break. It gives you a deep knowledge of off-notes and oddities, which definitely facilitates doing something weird like cranking INW Cactus up to 2.25%.
If you want to consistently turn around "good" recipes that behave how you want, the foundational step is extensive single flavor testing... or just throw stuff together randomly and wait for lightning to strike. It's your time and your choice.
How I Single Flavor Test:
I single flavor test a lot. In fact the majority of my vaping is single flavor testing. This probably isn't normal, but I've been pursuing the development and content generation side of mixing. My testing procedure isn't particularly complex or daunting... but it is a pretty huge time sink. I'm not saying you should feel obligated, but if you're interested...
The single biggest factor in my testing is just getting to know a concentrate. I usually mix up 2 or 3 10ml testers of each flavor I test. Those starting percentages vary mostly by brand. I've developed a fairly heavy hand in mixing lately, so my testing percentages kind of reflect that.
Flavor Manufacturer My %'s Mixed
TPA 3,6%
Flavorwest 4,8%
Capella 4,8%
Flavourart 2,4%
Flavorah .25,1,3%
Inawera 1.5,3%
Jungle Flavors 2,4%
Purilum 4,8%
Flavor Express / Super Concentrates 1,3%
Real Flavors SC 2,5%
Hangsen 1.5,3%
Vape Train 3,8%
But, with all that said, these percentages can still go slightly awry. If I'm dealing with something that has a heavy spice note, I'll usually half the percentages. If something smells crazy strong, I'll also usually half my percentages. Whatever. There is a good deal of the time I won't have something perfectly dialed in. It's not a big deal. If it's still way too strong I'll start cutting it down with more testing base. I try to keep track of my exact mixing ratios because I write about it, but I wouldn't worry nearly as much about it if this was for my personal notes. It gives you something you can work with.
In terms of steeping, you should probably do it. Plenty of people end up testing a single flavor at several different steep times. Why not test something as a S&V, at 1 week, etc… If you’ve got the time and attention span, go for it. Like most things, I go lazy with my steep times. I mix up vast swaths of testers at a time, and usually just get to stuff when I get to stuff. I basically try to steep my samples for as long as I figure they’ll need to settle in. Each mix steeps differently, and I don’t really see notes on how long solo flavors need to get where they’re going as all that useful. If something feels particularly weird in a steeped sample, I’ll mix up a quick S&V version and compare. I will say, the more alcohol in a flavor, the longer you’ll generally want to let them sit before testing. And maybe give your creams and custards at least a couple of weeks.
Also, I wholeheartedly recommend using a premix base for your testers. If you're testing any significant amount of flavors, not having to try to measure out everything separately is a huge time saver. I mix a 60% VG / 40% PG 1.5mg nic base for my tests, geared for 3% of a flavor.
Should you really care about your vg/pg ratio? In a perfect world, sure. But I haven't noticed any huge difference in flavor from 40% PG all the way to up 60% PG. And I'm lazy.
Should you test without nicotine? In a perfect world, sure. But I'm vaping this stuff, and vaping 0mg feels a lot like punishment to me. You can have your intellectual high ground about nicotine affecting flavor, but I’ll be damned if I’m going to sacrifice my enjoyment for ideological purity.
In terms of vessels, I mix my 10ml testers in 15ml amber boston rounds. The extra headspace makes it easy to shake. I also use polycone caps instead of dripper tops. I routinely have testers sitting around for a month, and those dripper tips can get a bit drafty. Also, they are a pain to break down and wash. Polycone caps are cheaper, seal better, and are good for at least a couple washes before I usually have to swap them out. I'm usually dripping and I sort of just pour the juice into my RDA. If I need more precision control, I'll bust out a pipette. Since I'm using glass, I wash and reuse all my tester bottles. Nothing fancy. I grab some tongs, run my tap water damn near scalding, rinse them until I don't smell any residual flavor on the bottle, and then dry them on a bottle rack. Easy enough.
AND NOW, THE CONTROVERSY...
Testing setups. I would like to state, on the record, that just simply doing single flavor testing puts you way ahead of the game. You could be doing your single flavor testing on a tfv29 at 200w with the airflow wide open, but hey... at least you're doing the testing. That's the biggest hurdle here, the rest is mostly details.
I'd prioritize a couple things in terms of testing setups.
1) Use an RDA (and maybe get used to rewicking):
I'd personally use an rda. Rda's are great, and more importantly they are relatively cheap and easy to build and rewick. I'm not a big fan of mixing flavors when I'm testing anything, and it's so much easier to clean and rewick an rda than anything else. If you're a diehard tank person, I'd recommend an RTA, but I'm not made of pre-built sub-ohm coils. If you are a millionaire, that would pretty cool... the idea of that level of decadence excites me.
Various people (strawmen, mostly, but I’m pretty sure they exist) swear by using wickless or half-wicked coils. That's cool if you can get it to work for you. I use full cotton wicks, with some janky fasttech brick of muji cotton, but I'm in my testing for the long haul. I will say, wickless builds always sound like a good idea in theory, but be ready to take short drags and taste a whole lot of hot metal.
But what about squonking you say? Haven't tried it. I know there were a couple threads around about trying to run an unflavored mix in the bottle and dripping different flavors and clearing it out between tests. You'll be sucking a bit of flavor back into your unflavored bottle each time, but maybe it won't be a bad idea? You should probably test it or something.
2) Test it like you vape:
So, who are your notes for? Your primary audience is hopefully you. If you're up at 130 watts at .12 ohm dual fused staple aliens in a goon 1.5, just test like that. I guarantee you, if you get some quixotic notion of "reference flavor" in your mind and end up trying to test everything on a tiny 22mm "flavor atty" when you don't actually enjoy that... testing is just going to feel like a chore.
In my personal experience, flavor is more alike than different in varying setups. It's sort of like headphones. One set may accentuate the bass and have muddy mids, but it isn't going to make "Call your Girlfriend" sound like "Call Me". I'd wager you could still describe the difference between those two songs, even if you were using some stock-ass earbuds.
But yeah, with that said there are some differences. Generally you'll be talking about flavor saturation, or how bright and vibrant the actual flavor seems. Less air is the easiest way to get moar flavor, but there are ton of variables that I've never actually bothered to learn. In general, smaller rdas with less airflow are going to be warmer and denser, and do a better job of picking up bakery texture and flavor. Airier rdas can handle higher wattages, and tend to accentuate top notes a bit. Easy enough, right?
You ask a dozen people, they'll have a dozen answers on which rda to use. I use an OG Recoil, because it suits how I like to vape perfectly. I dig the airflow on the flavor cap, I dig how heavy it is, and the chamber size is going to be fairly restricted for an rda that isn't a tiny lip scorcher. Whatever though, use a RDA you like. Seriously, the entire point is to make your testing seem less like doing yardwork. The imaginary "flavor expert points" you're going to pick up by using a pain in the ass setup are more than offset by the creeping dread of living with a setup you don't actually like.
3) More flavor isn't necessarily better:
Most of the trick to the actual mechanical part of the flavor tasting is going to be finding what works for you. I prefer a whole bunch of wraps on a contact TC macro coil. I like the relatively short ramp up and cool down, and the TC gives me a consistent flavor while I take inordinately long drags. But that's just me. It gives me some time to poke around inside of the flavor. It basically isn't overwhelming and so I can get comfortable for 5-7 seconds and just unwind.
So more surface area on coils generally means more flavor, right? That's what we've been talking about for a while. Exotic coils have all these weird juice pockets and you get these super saturated warm vapes in short bursts. If this is your thing, continue to go for it. You have my approval. But, maybe don't afraid to use a setup where you are taking some longer draws. It gives you a minute to think about what you're tasting while you are tasting it. It really helps me, at least, contextualize and describe what I'm tasting.
We've talked about why you should single flavor test and all the mixing and equipment options, right?
Or at least I feel we've covered enough of it. I feel like sometimes people get lost in the weeds on the hardware side of all of this. Like there is some secret key to flavor and once you achieve the perfect flavor your notes will magically write themselves.. but we'll talk about the hard part, the flavor part, next time.
Why You Should Single Flavor Test:
Short answer, because you're not an animal smashing flavors together all willy-nilly. Getting familiar with your flavors is the single biggest step you can take towards being able to quickly develop recipes. Like any other craft, your work is going to be a lot easier if you understand the tools available to you.
That's not to say single flavor testing is some silver bullet to being able to whip up some certified BANGERZ off a shake. Single flavor testing can't really tell you how concentrates are going to interact with each other... at first. If you do enough single flavor testing AND enough work on recipes you start to notice some patterns. If you've done work with one flavor, and upon single flavor testing a second you find some similarities, it's pretty easy to extrapolate how that second flavor is going to work. These kind of inferences are easier and easier as you build up your library of single flavor tests. Testing builds your flavor muscles, and gives you a much deeper understanding of what's going on with what you're vaping.
You want to be able to quickly develop to profile?
Having a knowledge of your flavors is going to make that so much easier.
You want to "clone" a juice?
Pretty solid starting point if you can start picking out individual concentrates.
You want to grack it up and start mixing weird?
A big part of single flavor testing is benchmarking the limits of concentrates, and trying to push them until they break. You then get to see the interesting things that start happening after those flavors break. It gives you a deep knowledge of off-notes and oddities, which definitely facilitates doing something weird like cranking INW Cactus up to 2.25%.
If you want to consistently turn around "good" recipes that behave how you want, the foundational step is extensive single flavor testing... or just throw stuff together randomly and wait for lightning to strike. It's your time and your choice.
How I Single Flavor Test:
I single flavor test a lot. In fact the majority of my vaping is single flavor testing. This probably isn't normal, but I've been pursuing the development and content generation side of mixing. My testing procedure isn't particularly complex or daunting... but it is a pretty huge time sink. I'm not saying you should feel obligated, but if you're interested...
The single biggest factor in my testing is just getting to know a concentrate. I usually mix up 2 or 3 10ml testers of each flavor I test. Those starting percentages vary mostly by brand. I've developed a fairly heavy hand in mixing lately, so my testing percentages kind of reflect that.
Flavor Manufacturer My %'s Mixed
TPA 3,6%
Flavorwest 4,8%
Capella 4,8%
Flavourart 2,4%
Flavorah .25,1,3%
Inawera 1.5,3%
Jungle Flavors 2,4%
Purilum 4,8%
Flavor Express / Super Concentrates 1,3%
Real Flavors SC 2,5%
Hangsen 1.5,3%
Vape Train 3,8%
But, with all that said, these percentages can still go slightly awry. If I'm dealing with something that has a heavy spice note, I'll usually half the percentages. If something smells crazy strong, I'll also usually half my percentages. Whatever. There is a good deal of the time I won't have something perfectly dialed in. It's not a big deal. If it's still way too strong I'll start cutting it down with more testing base. I try to keep track of my exact mixing ratios because I write about it, but I wouldn't worry nearly as much about it if this was for my personal notes. It gives you something you can work with.
In terms of steeping, you should probably do it. Plenty of people end up testing a single flavor at several different steep times. Why not test something as a S&V, at 1 week, etc… If you’ve got the time and attention span, go for it. Like most things, I go lazy with my steep times. I mix up vast swaths of testers at a time, and usually just get to stuff when I get to stuff. I basically try to steep my samples for as long as I figure they’ll need to settle in. Each mix steeps differently, and I don’t really see notes on how long solo flavors need to get where they’re going as all that useful. If something feels particularly weird in a steeped sample, I’ll mix up a quick S&V version and compare. I will say, the more alcohol in a flavor, the longer you’ll generally want to let them sit before testing. And maybe give your creams and custards at least a couple of weeks.
Also, I wholeheartedly recommend using a premix base for your testers. If you're testing any significant amount of flavors, not having to try to measure out everything separately is a huge time saver. I mix a 60% VG / 40% PG 1.5mg nic base for my tests, geared for 3% of a flavor.
Should you really care about your vg/pg ratio? In a perfect world, sure. But I haven't noticed any huge difference in flavor from 40% PG all the way to up 60% PG. And I'm lazy.
Should you test without nicotine? In a perfect world, sure. But I'm vaping this stuff, and vaping 0mg feels a lot like punishment to me. You can have your intellectual high ground about nicotine affecting flavor, but I’ll be damned if I’m going to sacrifice my enjoyment for ideological purity.
In terms of vessels, I mix my 10ml testers in 15ml amber boston rounds. The extra headspace makes it easy to shake. I also use polycone caps instead of dripper tops. I routinely have testers sitting around for a month, and those dripper tips can get a bit drafty. Also, they are a pain to break down and wash. Polycone caps are cheaper, seal better, and are good for at least a couple washes before I usually have to swap them out. I'm usually dripping and I sort of just pour the juice into my RDA. If I need more precision control, I'll bust out a pipette. Since I'm using glass, I wash and reuse all my tester bottles. Nothing fancy. I grab some tongs, run my tap water damn near scalding, rinse them until I don't smell any residual flavor on the bottle, and then dry them on a bottle rack. Easy enough.
AND NOW, THE CONTROVERSY...
Testing setups. I would like to state, on the record, that just simply doing single flavor testing puts you way ahead of the game. You could be doing your single flavor testing on a tfv29 at 200w with the airflow wide open, but hey... at least you're doing the testing. That's the biggest hurdle here, the rest is mostly details.
I'd prioritize a couple things in terms of testing setups.
1) Use an RDA (and maybe get used to rewicking):
I'd personally use an rda. Rda's are great, and more importantly they are relatively cheap and easy to build and rewick. I'm not a big fan of mixing flavors when I'm testing anything, and it's so much easier to clean and rewick an rda than anything else. If you're a diehard tank person, I'd recommend an RTA, but I'm not made of pre-built sub-ohm coils. If you are a millionaire, that would pretty cool... the idea of that level of decadence excites me.
Various people (strawmen, mostly, but I’m pretty sure they exist) swear by using wickless or half-wicked coils. That's cool if you can get it to work for you. I use full cotton wicks, with some janky fasttech brick of muji cotton, but I'm in my testing for the long haul. I will say, wickless builds always sound like a good idea in theory, but be ready to take short drags and taste a whole lot of hot metal.
But what about squonking you say? Haven't tried it. I know there were a couple threads around about trying to run an unflavored mix in the bottle and dripping different flavors and clearing it out between tests. You'll be sucking a bit of flavor back into your unflavored bottle each time, but maybe it won't be a bad idea? You should probably test it or something.
2) Test it like you vape:
So, who are your notes for? Your primary audience is hopefully you. If you're up at 130 watts at .12 ohm dual fused staple aliens in a goon 1.5, just test like that. I guarantee you, if you get some quixotic notion of "reference flavor" in your mind and end up trying to test everything on a tiny 22mm "flavor atty" when you don't actually enjoy that... testing is just going to feel like a chore.
In my personal experience, flavor is more alike than different in varying setups. It's sort of like headphones. One set may accentuate the bass and have muddy mids, but it isn't going to make "Call your Girlfriend" sound like "Call Me". I'd wager you could still describe the difference between those two songs, even if you were using some stock-ass earbuds.
But yeah, with that said there are some differences. Generally you'll be talking about flavor saturation, or how bright and vibrant the actual flavor seems. Less air is the easiest way to get moar flavor, but there are ton of variables that I've never actually bothered to learn. In general, smaller rdas with less airflow are going to be warmer and denser, and do a better job of picking up bakery texture and flavor. Airier rdas can handle higher wattages, and tend to accentuate top notes a bit. Easy enough, right?
You ask a dozen people, they'll have a dozen answers on which rda to use. I use an OG Recoil, because it suits how I like to vape perfectly. I dig the airflow on the flavor cap, I dig how heavy it is, and the chamber size is going to be fairly restricted for an rda that isn't a tiny lip scorcher. Whatever though, use a RDA you like. Seriously, the entire point is to make your testing seem less like doing yardwork. The imaginary "flavor expert points" you're going to pick up by using a pain in the ass setup are more than offset by the creeping dread of living with a setup you don't actually like.
3) More flavor isn't necessarily better:
Most of the trick to the actual mechanical part of the flavor tasting is going to be finding what works for you. I prefer a whole bunch of wraps on a contact TC macro coil. I like the relatively short ramp up and cool down, and the TC gives me a consistent flavor while I take inordinately long drags. But that's just me. It gives me some time to poke around inside of the flavor. It basically isn't overwhelming and so I can get comfortable for 5-7 seconds and just unwind.
So more surface area on coils generally means more flavor, right? That's what we've been talking about for a while. Exotic coils have all these weird juice pockets and you get these super saturated warm vapes in short bursts. If this is your thing, continue to go for it. You have my approval. But, maybe don't afraid to use a setup where you are taking some longer draws. It gives you a minute to think about what you're tasting while you are tasting it. It really helps me, at least, contextualize and describe what I'm tasting.
We've talked about why you should single flavor test and all the mixing and equipment options, right?
Or at least I feel we've covered enough of it. I feel like sometimes people get lost in the weeds on the hardware side of all of this. Like there is some secret key to flavor and once you achieve the perfect flavor your notes will magically write themselves.. but we'll talk about the hard part, the flavor part, next time.
