Tastes great but not for vape?

[NoProblem]

I wanted to make a really authentic strawberry jam e-juice, so I mixed the following:

Sweetener (FW) 8.5%
Juicy Lemon (CAP) .3%
Strawberry Ripe (TPA) 11.2%
VG (no nic) 80%

Now the smell and actual taste exceeds my expectations, I mean, I could drink a bottle this stuff it tastes so good, just like strawberry jam - but it tastes kind of like fake chemical fruit or something when I vape it. Vaping it tastes nothing like it smells or tastes when you lick a few drops.

It's been steeping for 6 days now and there has been no improvement in vaping it - any suggestions? I don't get how it tastes and smells so good yet the vape taste is nothing like the actual taste and smell.

 

[bobnat]

Any sweetener at 8.5% will kill all flavor of the juice. The Juicy Lemon is way too low at .3% as it's not very strong to begin with. The SR is too high at 11.2%.

Making ejuice is like baking, it is a fine balance of ingredients that have to be used in amounts according to their specific properties. You need to do some reading on the flavors you have and find recommended percentages. I suggest you start here. Type in the flavor you have, then go to the notes section. People list the %s they use both singly and in recipes. It'll give you a starting point, then you experiment from there.

http://e-liquid-recipes.com/flavors

As for the smell, this very moment I'm vaping a Sugar Cookie and Custard base I made on Jan 27 this year. It smells fantastic and it tastes like shit. That's the way it goes sometimes.

 

[Just Frank]

Holy sweetener Batman! You're ratios are all out of whack. Bobnats advice is solid.

 

[Angrygod50]

As for the smell, this very moment I'm vaping a Sugar Cookie and Custard base I made on Jan 27 this year. It smells fantastic and it tastes like shit.

Nice to see others who vape there mistakes instead of dumping them. I may just be a cheap fuck but it gotta make me gag before I dump it...LOL

 

[NoProblem]

Any sweetener at 8.5% will kill all flavor of the juice. The Juicy Lemon is way too low at .3% as it's not very strong to begin with. The SR is too high at 11.2%.

Making ejuice is like baking, it is a fine balance of ingredients that have to be used in amounts according to their specific properties. You need to do some reading on the flavors you have and find recommended percentages. I suggest you start here. Type in the flavor you have, then go to the notes section. People list the %s they use both singly and in recipes. It'll give you a starting point, then you experiment from there.

http://e-liquid-recipes.com/flavors

As for the smell, this very moment I'm vaping a Sugar Cookie and Custard base I made on Jan 27 this year. It smells fantastic and it tastes like shit. That's the way it goes sometimes.

Funny you say that it's like baking, because I actually got those percentages from some food recipe online for award winning strawberry jam lol - and it sure tastes like a really great Strawberry Jam, but vapes terribly.

 

[Hillbilly Pig]

Here's how I treat my mixes: may look great on paper, but may actually taste like garbage. But yeah try lowering the sweetener to something more manageable like ~2% maybe add some FA black currant if it still ain't jammy 'nuff (those are words)

 

[SteveS45]

I have never made DIY e-Liquid that was so bad I dumped it but have had a few disappointments I put to the side and used for something else. Now I had a couple of retail e-Liquids that were so bad I wouldn't even give them away to my worst enemy!

 

[JuicyLucy]

Definitely agree the sweetener is too high, as well as the strawberry

IME, TFA Strawberry Ripe doesn't do well above 5% and also needs at least a month of steeping, six or more weeks is even better

 

[NoProblem]

Thank you all very much for all the replies, much appreciated!

I've only been DIYing for about 6 or 7 months and have dumped maybe a few hundred ml or so all total - life's too short when the stuff turns out tasting like old gym socks. I only ever make 15ml for my first batch so I don't waste too much if it turns out bad. As it is with this batch, there's only about 4 ml left and I will just let it sit in the bottle for a few months before I try the rest of it.

 

[bobnat]

Nice to see others who vape there mistakes instead of dumping them. I may just be a cheap fuck but it gotta make me gag before I dump it...LOL

Nah, I'll vape a bit just to be sure I don't like it, but that's it. I just came into work and gave 8 bottles to 2 colleagues. They're funny because they'll vape anything I give them. They have no interest in DIY but are happy I make so much juice I don't like.

 

[HeadInClouds]

Sweeteners have that effect for me, too. I use lots of Sucralose in coffee/tea/sweets (in fact I prefer it over real sugar), but I can't stand what it does to vapes.

 

[fozzy71]

Nice to see others who vape there mistakes instead of dumping them. I may just be a cheap fuck but it gotta make me gag before I dump it...LOL

ha ditto, I have only dumped one bottle in over a year of DIY and that was a big batch of 11 or 12 different small 20ml single flavor testers (mostly fruit flavors) that I had just mixed all together in a larger bottle. I vaped a fair bit of it but finally gave up and didn't want to dump it into my kitchen sink bottle. Actual recipes that I get bored with, or don't strike my fancy, will get dumped into a 500ml bottle (that I call the kitchen sink) with other similar partial recipes and usually once it is topped off it ends up to be something I can actually vape.

 

[NoProblem]

Well, I found a good use for it - I just added a little of it to some other juice I made a few weeks ago that needed some strawberry jam flavoring - and mmmm, it sure did the trick! I will make another batch exactly like this and use it as Strawberry Jam (NP) at 3% - 5%.

 

[AndriaD]

Yeah, if I used over 2.5% of sweetener, it wasn't vapable. Stay at 2% or less, for vaping. I do go very heavy (14% these days) on my shisha strawberry flavoring, but that's just me.

Andria

 

[MagicJosh]

Sweetener (FW) 8.5%

Thats really high in sweetner. You only need 1-2 percent at max.

 

[NoProblem]

Ok folks, I've made a few tweaks - I am using this DIY Strawberry Jam (NP) recipe as a flavoring, not as an ejuice. It works really well for me that way.

DIY Strawberry Jam (NP) is my own flavoring, here is the revised recipe - you can probably exclude the lemon.

Sweetener (FA) 8.8%
Juicy Lemon (CAP) .5%
Strawberry Ripe (TPA) 11.2%
PG 79.5%


If you like sweet strawberry vapes and want to try it out, make 10 mls of the following, shake and vape is really good. There is alway room for improvement for sure, but I'm not sure what ingredients or percentages to change, plus it's pretty darn tasty as is.

Butter Cream (CAP) 1%
Cake Batter (CAP) 4%
Cookie (FA) 1%
Creamy Yogurt (CAP) 1%
New York Cheesecake (CAP) 3%
DIY Strawberry Jam (NP) 4%
Super Sweet (CAP) 1.5%
Whipped Cream (TFA) 2%
Yellow Cake (CAP) 1%

Anything anyone can revise to improve - speak up!