Mixing with pre-blended concentrates

[Andre]

I came across this method for the first time on the FlavourArt UK site here. They advocate this method even for experimenting, but to my mind it seems only useful once you have the proportions of your concentrates fixed.

I see the following advantages:

1. Reduced steeping time. FA says your blended concentrates should steep for "3-5 days for Sweet/Fruit blends and 10-15 days for Tobacco/Complex blends; leave it in a bottle with
   the cap on, preferably in a dark place away from direct sunlight and excessive heat. You can give it a gentle shake once a day, but just let molecular interaction take place between the individual flavours.". When you mix your blended concentrates with PG/VG/Nic you can just shake and vape. Custard flavours are the exception to this rule - requires 2 more weeks of curing of the final mix.
2. This method will ensure better consistency and reproducibility. All commercial juice makers should use this method imo. Maybe they do?
3. Better incorporation and uniform distribution of the concentrates into a final blend to ensure uniform organoleptic attributes.
4. Easy to adjust the strength of you juice. In my example below, I can just vary the percentage of the pre-blended concentrates to make the juice weaker or stronger, as the case may be.
5. No need to keep large volumes of your favourite juice as it is very quick to just add the pre-blend to your PG/VG/Nic. This is especially useful for those flavours, which you know fade over time in a finally mixed juice.
6. We know concentrates keep for much longer than juices. Thus, your pre-blends of concentrates will have the same advantage.

An example:

Once I found out that my Juice Calculator program does the maths for me, it was easy as pie. Using @rogue zombie's White Girl (a milky and spicy Chai) as an example.

Creating pre-blend:
This is how my recipe looks at the moment. Note it is for 30 ml, which will be carried over to the pre-blend, but can be changed there. The total flavour percentage will also be your default when you mix the eventual recipe from the pre-blend.

Now you go to "Edit" and click on the very last item in the list - "Create flavor base from recipe..."
The window below will open up on top of your recipe.

Click on "Save as new recipe". A small dialogue box will open prompting you to give the recipe a name.

Click on "OK" and you will get confirmation of recipe creation.

Now name your ingredient on the right hand side of the window. As default it will retain the name of your original recipe. I called it "White Girl blend". Click on "Save ingredient". Ingredient creation will be confirmed.

Now click on "Close" and the programme will blink once or twice and display the pre-blend instructions. Remember to adjust the volume you want to make.

Now mix your pre-blend of concentrates from the above.

Mixing a juice from your pre-blended concentrates:

Just click the "+New" button to create a new recipe. Give it a name, adjust your nicotine, amount to make and VG and PG as required. Click on "Add ingredient" and select the blend you have added to your ingredients - "White Girl blend" in this case.

Note it will have your original recipe's total flavour as default percentage. My 6.25 % comes out to 1.875 ml/gram to make 30 ml of juice. From a 10 ml of pre-blend I can make at least 5 x 30 ml.

 

[Greyz]

I came across this method for the first time on the FlavourArt UK site here. They advocate this method even for experimenting, but to my mind it seems only useful once you have the proportions of your concentrates fixed.

I see the following advantages:

1. Reduced steeping time. FA says your blended concentrates should steep for "3-5 days for Sweet/Fruit blends and 10-15 days for Tobacco/Complex blends; leave it in a bottle with
   the cap on, preferably in a dark place away from direct sunlight and excessive heat. You can give it a gentle shake once a day, but just let molecular interaction take place between the individual flavours.". When you mix your blended concentrates with PG/VG/Nic you can just shake and vape. Custard flavours are the exception to this rule - requires 2 more weeks of curing of the final mix.
2. This method will ensure better consistency and reproducibility. All commercial juice makers should use this method imo. Maybe they do?
3. Better incorporation and uniform distribution of the concentrates into a final blend to ensure uniform organoleptic attributes.
4. Easy to adjust the strength of you juice. In my example below, I can just vary the percentage of the pre-blended concentrates to make the juice weaker or stronger, as the case may be.
5. No need to keep large volumes of your favourite juice as it is very quick to just add the pre-blend to your PG/VG/Nic. This is especially useful for those flavours, which you know fade over time in a finally mixed juice.
6. We know concentrates keep for much longer than juices. Thus, your pre-blends of concentrates will have the same advantage.

An example:

Once I found out that my Juice Calculator program does the maths for me, it was easy as pie. Using @rogue zombie's White Girl (a milky and spicy Chai) as an example.

As you can see at the bottom of the image above, the total flavour percentage for White Girl is 6.25 %. If you click on "Flavor %" at the top left, you get the following pop-up window:

This pop-up window shows you the percentages (40, 32, 16 and 12) you need in your pre-blend. So, I then decided to make 10 ml of a pre-blend of concentrates for White Girl. The program translates those percentages into ml, drops and gram for me:

For this program I then needed to add "White Girl Blend" as an ingredient as I would have for any new single concentrate. And my White Girl Blend joins my other concentrates in the cupboard. Once steeped, I wanted to mix 30 ml at 12 mg and 60VG.

My 6.25 % comes out to 1.875 ml/gram to make 30 ml of juice. From that 10 ml of pre-blend I can make at least 5 x 30 ml.

Thanks for the excellent breakdown and explaination @Andre - I have also been looking into this as I found some recipes posted in this fashion.
I couldn't have made it any cleaer than your breakdown. And the practical example, first class!

I see the eJuice Me Up app has a similar Flavour Percentage option I think I'll try mixing up a few Premixes this weekend.
Pity about the custards though

EDIT: Which app are you using for your recipes?

 

[RichJB]

Thanks, @Andre. @Greyz, how do you calculate the flavour percentages on eJuice Me Up? It seems it has a function where you can input the % of the flavour and it will apply that to the volume you want to mix. But not a corollary function where, if you want to find out the % of each flavour, it will calculate that. I suppose one can work it out with a calculator manually but it would be easier to have the app do it.

 

[Huffapuff]

Very cool @Andre! Thanks for sharing this

 

[Greyz]

Thanks, @Andre. @Greyz, how do you calculate the flavour percentages on eJuice Me Up? It seems it has a function where you can input the % of the flavour and it will apply that to the volume you want to mix. But not a corollary function where, if you want to find out the % of each flavour, it will calculate that. I suppose one can work it out with a calculator manually but it would be easier to have the app do it.

Yeah I'm not winning with eJuice Me Up to work out the percentages either. Looks like I'll have to use a calculator, unles @Andrfe comes back to me with the name of the app he uses

 

[rogue zombie]

It is the way I plan to go.

Lol but after around 2 years of mixing, i still only have a handfull of recipes I would want on the regular.

I will only go this way once Ive locked down a recipe.



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[RichJB]

I'm still at the experimental stage where I'm mixing up as many different recipes as I can to find out which are my faves. I think it'll be a while before I'm ready to produce batch after batch of the same thing. But once I get there, this will be an effective approach.

 

[Andre]

@RichJB and @Greyz, I do not know if eJuice Me Up has this functionality. The program I use, was downloaded from here: http://diyjuicecalculator.com/

 

[Greyz]

@RichJB and @Greyz, I do not know if eJuice Me Up has this functionality. The program I use, was downloaded from here: http://diyjuicecalculator.com/

Thank you kind Sir. Now begins the tedious process of moving my eJuice Me Up recipes to the new app...

 

[Andre]

Thank you kind Sir. Now begins the tedious process of moving my eJuice Me Up recipes to the new app...

It does have an "Import from EJuiceMeUp" under "Tools", but no idea if it works well.

 

[Greyz]

It does have an "Import from EJuiceMeUp" under "Tools", but no idea if it works well.

Thanks, I'm going to test that out now.
Worked like a charm! It failed to install all from a directory bit adding single .rec files works fine.

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[Glytch]

That app is the bomb-diggity-bomb! I tried pretty much all the main stream apps and this one is as good as it gets.

I keeps meticulous track of inventory and has a shopping list feature and cost calculator. It really is the most feature-rich mixing app I've tried. The one thing I wish it had was a feature to add a list of batches of various recipes to a list and it tells you how much you'll need and if you have enough in your inventory.

 

[GregF]

Thanks @Andre this is quite a good idea. I followed your steps and did a few recipes then noticed that you can do it all with one step.
In the recipe calculator, on the recipe that you want to create a base for, click
Edit
Create flavor base from recipe.
From there you just give it a name and/or add to your ingredients.

 

[Andre]

Thanks @Andre this is quite a good idea. I followed your steps and did a few recipes then noticed that you can do it all with one step.
In the recipe calculator, on the recipe that you want to create a base for, click
Edit
Create flavor base from recipe.
From there you just give it a name and/or add to your ingredients.

Ah, yes, thank you - much easier. And it also adds your original recipe's flavour total as default - winner.

 

[Ernest]

Thanks @Andre , I downloaded the program and it works great. Then I noticed that you can do the same with e-liquid-recipes.com
You can either use an existing recipe or add your own.
Go to the blue tools button, click "Make flavor base" and it give you everything you need.

 

[Spydro]

I came across this method for the first time on the FlavourArt UK site here. They advocate this method even for experimenting, but to my mind it seems only useful once you have the proportions of your concentrates fixed.

I see the following advantages:

1. Reduced steeping time. FA says your blended concentrates should steep for "3-5 days for Sweet/Fruit blends and 10-15 days for Tobacco/Complex blends; leave it in a bottle with
   the cap on, preferably in a dark place away from direct sunlight and excessive heat. You can give it a gentle shake once a day, but just let molecular interaction take place between the individual flavours.". When you mix your blended concentrates with PG/VG/Nic you can just shake and vape. Custard flavours are the exception to this rule - requires 2 more weeks of curing of the final mix.
2. This method will ensure better consistency and reproducibility. All commercial juice makers should use this method imo. Maybe they do?
3. Better incorporation and uniform distribution of the concentrates into a final blend to ensure uniform organoleptic attributes.
4. Easy to adjust the strength of you juice. In my example below, I can just vary the percentage of the pre-blended concentrates to make the juice weaker or stronger, as the case may be.
5. No need to keep large volumes of your favourite juice as it is very quick to just add the pre-blend to your PG/VG/Nic. This is especially useful for those flavours, which you know fade over time in a finally mixed juice.
6. We know concentrates keep for much longer than juices. Thus, your pre-blends of concentrates will have the same advantage.

An example:

Once I found out that my Juice Calculator program does the maths for me, it was easy as pie. Using @rogue zombie's White Girl (a milky and spicy Chai) as an example.

As you can see at the bottom of the image above, the total flavour percentage for White Girl is 6.25 %. If you click on "Flavor %" at the top left, you get the following pop-up window:

This pop-up window shows you the percentages (40, 32, 16 and 12) you need in your pre-blend. So, I then decided to make 10 ml of a pre-blend of concentrates for White Girl. The program translates those percentages into ml, drops and gram for me:

For this program I then needed to add "White Girl Blend" as an ingredient as I would have for any new single concentrate. And my White Girl Blend joins my other concentrates in the cupboard. Once steeped, I wanted to mix 30 ml at 12 mg and 60VG.

My 6.25 % comes out to 1.875 ml/gram to make 30 ml of juice. From that 10 ml of pre-blend I can make at least 5 x 30 ml.

Great post that should be helpful to folks @Andre.

Back when I started extracting some of my own flavors (NEF's), I also started doing similar to this basic concept with some of them by mixing them with the other flavors used with them in some of my DIY's recipes and storing them for future DIY batches made up with a base. I didn't use an elaborate calculator like your example (although I have seen it before). When I mixed by volume it was just simple math to know how much base and how much of the mix to use as my only two ingredients. But since I started mixing by weight I reverted back to using e-Juice Me Up for them with the only "flavor" factor being the mix input into it as a single entry at the percentage I prefer that mix in the base. Makes these DIY's quite easy since I don't add nic to my DIY and my base is usually just 100% VG or VG Heavy with minimal PG.

 

[Rob Fisher]

I guess my massive entry into DIY juice making fits here because I'm taking two established juices and trying to make a new one... I have it on good authority (@Darth Vaper) that Trinity and Menthol Ice do very well together... 80/20 or 75/25... OK here goes...

 

[Chukin'Vape]

@Andre - I could literally manhug the sh!t out of you now. Thanks Bro - this is bloody excellent.

 

[stevie g]

I can confirm that flavors do steep in a preblend. Been using this method for the last year on large scale.

 

[Junior]

This changes EVERYTHING. Thanx @Andre, and looks like a great app too! Keen to try it out.

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[Darth Vaper]

I guess my massive entry into DIY juice making fits here because I'm taking two established juices and trying to make a new one... I have it on good authority (@Darth Vaper) that Trinity and Menthol Ice do very well together... 80/20 or 75/25... OK here goes...

So, what do you think @Rob Fisher ? Do tell...

 

[Rob Fisher]

So, what do you think @Rob Fisher ? Do tell...

It's very nice for a change of vape... it's been added to my list of juices I like to have an occasional vape on... the list is growing slowly...
So far it's Trinity Ice, Slug Juice, Foggs Milkyway, Orions Yo Yo (Special Menthol edition), Dinner Lady Lemon Tart, Cuttwood Unicorn Milk, Hazeworks Sunset, Cuttwood Monster Melons and Porcupine Rock Coconut.... there are a couple of others but can't remember them offhand...

 

[incredible_hullk]

@Andre..how do you get the app to accept 0% pg and 0% vg. if i put 0 to pg it defaults vg to 100 and vice versa so i cant have 0 on both lines

 

[Ezekiel]

Thanks @Andre - great stuff! I remember the various "milkstone", "juicestone" and "custardstones" which made the rounds at a time (ie, premixed concentrates useful for adding a specific property), but I rarely see it used. I never mix this way though - I don't think I've ever mixed the exact same recipe twice (unless it is for someone else), I keep on tinkering until what originally was a decent juice now tastes like overly complicated crap. Oh well.

"Organoleptic" : acting on, or involving the use of, the sense organs. Guh, learning new things everyday.

Btw, White Girl looks like a damn fine recipe - can't believe I missed it! I really should spend more time here.

 

[Andre]

@Andre..how do you get the app to accept 0% pg and 0% vg. if i put 0 to pg it defaults vg to 100 and vice versa so i cant have 0 on both lines

If you are working from an existing recipe, just follow @GregF's directions in this post above.
If you want to create your own new pre-blend, I just press the down arrow next to PG and VG until the numbers register 0.00. Mine does not revert back to 100.