Some of us were up to a point. The over the counter stinkies were for when I didn't have the time to smoke my pipes or roll my own with tobacco's I had custom blended for me, or that I blended myself. So in that way I was a flavor chaser even most of the years I smoked tobacco's. With vaping it's all about the flavor to me. I don't care about nic, don't care about throat hit... but do care about enough flavor enriched vapor to get the taste I want.
Premium vs DIY
- Thread starter BrizzyZA (VapeLife)
- Start date
Some of us were up to a point. The over the counter stinkies were for when I didn't have the time to smoke my pipes or roll my own with tobacco's I had custom blended for me, or that I blended myself. So in that way I was a flavor chaser even most of the years I smoked tobacco's. With vaping it's all about the flavor to me. I don't care about nic, don't care about throat hit... but do care about enough flavor enriched vapor to get the taste I want.
I would also like to add to this.
diy is really fun and reminds me of when I used to smoke a pipe where you mixed your own tobacos.
diy juice is what I enjoy the most of vapeing and the biggest pro of diy is it is a lot cheaper than buying premium juice
diy is really fun and reminds me of when I used to smoke a pipe where you mixed your own tobacos.
diy juice is what I enjoy the most of vapeing and the biggest pro of diy is it is a lot cheaper than buying premium juice
There is zero difference between the 2. All premium ejuice started off as DIY. The thing is that taste is such a personal thing that its near impossible for anyone to make something exactly the way you want it. I liken it to a steak. I like my steak rare, but I like it a certain rare, more on the almost medium rare but not quite there side, so still rare, if I try and explain that to someone who is making my steak, they will have a different interpretation of where that line lies. Through trial and error I have learnt how long to put on my piece of steak, when to turn it and when to take it off to rest. This doesn't mean that I don't like the steak I get from a good steakhouse, just means that I know exactly what is the best for my own tastes. This is why I love DIY. I still enjoy a few of the premium juices, I vary rarely buy them anymore, but I can still enjoy them. Another really great thing about DIY is as you start learning the profiles and tastes of the concentrates you start tasting some of them in premium juice
On occasion, I whip out a bottle of "premium" juice to deplete the stock holding as my DYI collection is growing substantially and I need more storage space...!
This week I grabbed a bottle of Vaporfi catch ya latte (best in show Coffee juice at Vape Summit) which I paid R400 for a 30ml! Although it is a brilliant juice, I compared it to my humble first DYI coffee brew, and you know what, I honestly think my R22 DYI juice was better...
It's like going to a braai where some friend of a friend arrives with a piece of fillet which he bought at Woolies at R270 a kg. He slaps it on the braai together with the wors, chops and obligatory whole (raw) chicken that some "soutie" brought. He leaves it on the braai for a solid 30 minutes, forgets to turn or season it but dare not say anything as this is his R270 fillet and it better be good...(even if it is completely inedible).
I would wait for everyone to remove their charred items of meat and whip out a beautiful piece of prime rib, hand cut just for me by MY local butcher, Bert. I paid R79 a kg for my prime rib which is one of the most tender cuts of beef - full of fat and flavor and low in connective tissue. Remove the bone and its called rib eye steak but costs R210 a kg - don't tell anyone! I cook it on a hot fire, 4 minutes a side, season it with rock salt and cracked black pepper, add a squeeze of fresh lemon and let it rest for 3 minutes. I top it with a man sized slice of butter and let it melt into the meat. It is juicy, succulent and tastes like a million dollars.
Same principle with DYI - I take individual care in each step of the process. From the sourcing of the best ingredients to the Chubby Gorilla unicorn bottle I proudly decant it into.
I will NEVER pay R270 for a fillet from Woolies and will NEVER (again) pay R400 for a 30ml bottle if "premium" juice.
I will stick to my R79 prime rib thank you...
This week I grabbed a bottle of Vaporfi catch ya latte (best in show Coffee juice at Vape Summit) which I paid R400 for a 30ml! Although it is a brilliant juice, I compared it to my humble first DYI coffee brew, and you know what, I honestly think my R22 DYI juice was better...
It's like going to a braai where some friend of a friend arrives with a piece of fillet which he bought at Woolies at R270 a kg. He slaps it on the braai together with the wors, chops and obligatory whole (raw) chicken that some "soutie" brought. He leaves it on the braai for a solid 30 minutes, forgets to turn or season it but dare not say anything as this is his R270 fillet and it better be good...(even if it is completely inedible).
I would wait for everyone to remove their charred items of meat and whip out a beautiful piece of prime rib, hand cut just for me by MY local butcher, Bert. I paid R79 a kg for my prime rib which is one of the most tender cuts of beef - full of fat and flavor and low in connective tissue. Remove the bone and its called rib eye steak but costs R210 a kg - don't tell anyone! I cook it on a hot fire, 4 minutes a side, season it with rock salt and cracked black pepper, add a squeeze of fresh lemon and let it rest for 3 minutes. I top it with a man sized slice of butter and let it melt into the meat. It is juicy, succulent and tastes like a million dollars.
Same principle with DYI - I take individual care in each step of the process. From the sourcing of the best ingredients to the Chubby Gorilla unicorn bottle I proudly decant it into.
I will NEVER pay R270 for a fillet from Woolies and will NEVER (again) pay R400 for a 30ml bottle if "premium" juice.
I will stick to my R79 prime rib thank you...
It's always more rewarding to do something yourself. You can buy a cake from a bakery or specialist cake shop. But making it yourself, and decorating it the way you want it, will always be more satisfying.
Although people tend to downplay it and Enyawreklaw was positively incandescent about it in his reddit post linked earlier, I'll be honest and say that cost is the greatest factor for me. I gave up smoking for primarily health reasons. But cost wasn't far behind. Spending R600 a month to kill myself wasn't very smart. Although I love vaping and am grateful for it as a way to get nicotine with much fewer health hazards, I'm not kidding myself that it's healthy for me. So, just as with smoking, I want to limit the costs as much as possible. I would probably not be vaping now if DIY juice wasn't available. I vape very moderately, around 6ml per day. But for a premium juice, that is still +/-R30 per day - which is 50% more than I was spending on smoking. And that's without hardware costs.
So even if DIY wasn't fun and rewarding, and even if premium juices were 3x as tasty as any DIY creation could possibly be, I'd still DIY. I'm a believer in the free market. If there are enough vapers who are willing to spend R50+ a day on juice that a number of juice manufacturers can earn a decent living from it, it's all good. But I would honestly rather put that sort of money into my bond or unit trusts. That's just me, though, everybody must do what suits them best.
Although people tend to downplay it and Enyawreklaw was positively incandescent about it in his reddit post linked earlier, I'll be honest and say that cost is the greatest factor for me. I gave up smoking for primarily health reasons. But cost wasn't far behind. Spending R600 a month to kill myself wasn't very smart. Although I love vaping and am grateful for it as a way to get nicotine with much fewer health hazards, I'm not kidding myself that it's healthy for me. So, just as with smoking, I want to limit the costs as much as possible. I would probably not be vaping now if DIY juice wasn't available. I vape very moderately, around 6ml per day. But for a premium juice, that is still +/-R30 per day - which is 50% more than I was spending on smoking. And that's without hardware costs.
So even if DIY wasn't fun and rewarding, and even if premium juices were 3x as tasty as any DIY creation could possibly be, I'd still DIY. I'm a believer in the free market. If there are enough vapers who are willing to spend R50+ a day on juice that a number of juice manufacturers can earn a decent living from it, it's all good. But I would honestly rather put that sort of money into my bond or unit trusts. That's just me, though, everybody must do what suits them best.
Amen
What sets the juices apart for me is the fact some people don't want to muck around with DIY. Personally I love being able to create my own style of flavours and tweak my nicotine levels exactly as I want to. Right now I'm vaping 1.5 nicotine as I'm on a mission to get down to 0. After being a smoker for countless years the idea of not being a nicotine slave anymore is very appealing to me but jumping from 3mg to 0mg would be helluva rough. You just don't have that type of flexibility with your store bought craft juices.
That said, Premium juices are awesome and hats off to our local guys, they do amazing things for our vaping community. Vaping in South Africa wouldn't be a fraction what it is today if we didn't have the yummy goodness on the shelves accessible to everyone. I'll still support them with a bottle or two a month.
DIY just isn't for everyone, but if you don't mind fiddling around with percentages and flushing the odd failed experiment down the drain it can be very rewarding and save a huge amount of money in the process
That said, Premium juices are awesome and hats off to our local guys, they do amazing things for our vaping community. Vaping in South Africa wouldn't be a fraction what it is today if we didn't have the yummy goodness on the shelves accessible to everyone. I'll still support them with a bottle or two a month.
DIY just isn't for everyone, but if you don't mind fiddling around with percentages and flushing the odd failed experiment down the drain it can be very rewarding and save a huge amount of money in the process
From personal experience. It's all to do with what tastes good to you. I've mixed some of my DIY that I've thrown away. and I've bought some premium juice that I've given away. Find recipes online that suite your tastes and buy what you need and go for it. Good luck
Wayne's latest In The Mix podcast brings up a very interesting point. His guest Luke, a commercial juice maker, gently criticised Wayne's latest competition because the judges (Wayne, Manson, Skiddlz) will be mixing up the juices themselves according to the recipe provided. According to Luke, that is like making a Gordon Ramsay recipe by only using the same ingredients while disregarding oven temp and cooking time. He continued that the way a juice is made (temps, special mixing or steeping methods) is very important and any juice competition should allow the recipe developer to actually make the mix using the techniques he prefers, and then to present the final juice for tasting.
The counter-argument is that the DIY mixers who have entered the competition are unlikely to have completely off-the-wall techniques and most would probably prepare their juice the same way that the judges will, with minimal equipment or deviation from 'normal' mixing/steeping procedures. Still, this is one area where commercial juice manufacturers will still offer something different. We know that they use mainly the same concentrates that DIYers do. But how they actually prepare the juice may incorporate some special and individual tricks. For example, a commercial manufacturer may pre-steep certain ingredients and then only add the rest of the ingredients later. That might affect the taste and balance of the juice in a way that a DIYer using exactly the same concentrates and recipe couldn't replicate - unless he had knowledge of the special pre-steeping procedure used.
So commercial juice manufacturers will always be able to find some competitive advantage and trade secret even if DIYers have access to the same concentrates, VG, PG and nic. But for me, it again comes down to cost. Even if a commercial juice manufacturer finds that flash-freezing and then super-heating his VG just before mixing brings a whole new dimension to the juice depth and complexity, my question is not whether his product is good. It undoubtedly is. My question is whether this makes my DIY product unacceptable. I would never dare to suggest that I can make a lamb cutlet to the same lip-smacking gourmet excellence that Gordon Ramsay can, even if we are given identical raw ingredients and lamb cutlets. But is my home-made lamb cutlet so unacceptable that I need to eat at a Gordon Ramsay restaurant every night? That is the bottom line.
The counter-argument is that the DIY mixers who have entered the competition are unlikely to have completely off-the-wall techniques and most would probably prepare their juice the same way that the judges will, with minimal equipment or deviation from 'normal' mixing/steeping procedures. Still, this is one area where commercial juice manufacturers will still offer something different. We know that they use mainly the same concentrates that DIYers do. But how they actually prepare the juice may incorporate some special and individual tricks. For example, a commercial manufacturer may pre-steep certain ingredients and then only add the rest of the ingredients later. That might affect the taste and balance of the juice in a way that a DIYer using exactly the same concentrates and recipe couldn't replicate - unless he had knowledge of the special pre-steeping procedure used.
So commercial juice manufacturers will always be able to find some competitive advantage and trade secret even if DIYers have access to the same concentrates, VG, PG and nic. But for me, it again comes down to cost. Even if a commercial juice manufacturer finds that flash-freezing and then super-heating his VG just before mixing brings a whole new dimension to the juice depth and complexity, my question is not whether his product is good. It undoubtedly is. My question is whether this makes my DIY product unacceptable. I would never dare to suggest that I can make a lamb cutlet to the same lip-smacking gourmet excellence that Gordon Ramsay can, even if we are given identical raw ingredients and lamb cutlets. But is my home-made lamb cutlet so unacceptable that I need to eat at a Gordon Ramsay restaurant every night? That is the bottom line.
To be honest, I think that juice maker was promoting his own agenda.
Cooking techniques are far, far more important than that with making juice.
I would say juice is 90% about the recipe, and then steeping/curing and blending.
Yes there are some additive tricks that some may know, but you can't even compare it to cooking.
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I firmly believe making juice is like baking (not cooking)
Use the correct ingredients and follow the recipe to a tee. If you cure that juice for a month, it will be just as good as any "speed steeped" juice.
Now, its the folks that come up with the great recipes, that are the artist.
Cooking, is a whole new ball game. We could cook the exact same ingredients, follow the same recipe, and come to a totally different finished products.
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Use the correct ingredients and follow the recipe to a tee. If you cure that juice for a month, it will be just as good as any "speed steeped" juice.
Now, its the folks that come up with the great recipes, that are the artist.
Cooking, is a whole new ball game. We could cook the exact same ingredients, follow the same recipe, and come to a totally different finished products.
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I'm with you on this one - the baking analogy is more fitting.
However, there are times where commercial juices use something that isn't readily available or obvious to a DIYer. Charlie Noble's recently released recipe that used saline solution is an example, and so is @Rooigevaar's oak-steeped Good Boy that he so kindly shared with us.
A properly good commercial juice can always have something unique added to it, but this in no way diminishes the quality of our own DIY efforts.
Yes sure, I did say there are definitely tricks or whatnot that will give some the edge ....
Now, what's this about a "shared Good Boy"?
I've had premium juices that were spectacular and made diy juices that tasted like warm piss but I can honestly say my favourite juice by a country mile is one I made myself, I Vape it 80% of the time and it costs virtually nothing to make.
Yes sure, I did say there are definitely tricks or whatnot that will give some the edge ....
Now, what's this about a "shared Good Boy"?
The " shared Good Boy" was this: http://www.ecigssa.co.za/a-good-boy-story-and-giveaway.t32077/unread
I was one of the lucky winners
Although I do agree with your argument to a large extend, the only disagreement I have is that curing a juice naturally will most definitely not be the same as, not necessarily a speed steeped juice, but let's say a different method. In the end we are dealing with chemistry here. If you have the exact recipe and baking time, temp etc it will come out great, but what if you only have the recipe and the total baking time, but not the temp. There could be variations, such as bake for 10mins at 100 degrees and then for 30mins at 80 or something.
Speed steeping is a different thing though and if it is just naturally steeped then I agree, it will be great, if they have figured out some other way of steeping or doing something odd to make the flavors better, we might have mighty fine tasting juice, but there might be commercial juice that is just a step ahead.
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Fair enough, valid points.
I do still believe though, making juice is very, very much about the recipe.
I have tasted other people's Mustard Milk and Borra Borra White - and I can't differ them from mine.
I agree with that. The best thing is its entirely open for experimentation.
I think what I said above probably applies more to cloning a juice or commercial juice that are fantastic exactly because of such a guarded methid than a DIY juice where the recipe is readily available with comments etc. That PB cereal recipe is one of the very few I've seen with something odd in it, like the saline, I have seen a few others with other ingredients in, like lemon juice, or citric acid, but yeah, if you have the recipe then you are pretty much sorted.
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Oh ya for sure, there are even those next-level juice makers that look at the chemical breakdown of the ingredients, and work stuff accordingly.
But what I believe is this particular art is mostly in the recipe. Cooking is actually mostly in the technique. Two very different arts.
It would suit comercial juice makers if their "technique in production" is where the magic is. That would basically mean us "normal DiYers" could not replicate their stuff. But I firmly believe it is not - it's in their recipes.
Chefs sell their recipes with out much reservation, because even with the exact recipe, method etc. I can guarantee a chef-prepared meal will be far better than me making it. Far better.
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