It this normal for vanilla?

[nadalama]

Recipe:

Bavarian Cream (TPA) 1.27%
Cherry (One Drop Flavors) 0.43%
cinnamon (VW) 0.43%
Custard (One Drop Flavors) 1.7%
French Vanilla (VW) 1.7%
Sweetener (VW) .43%
Vanilla (One Drop Flavors) 2.13%
White Chocolate (VW) .43%

What I'm trying for is a really rich vanilla, similar to Vanilla Clouds from Vape Wild (has anyone tried it?).

Just mixed it up last night, and while it smells fantastic, it tastes like pretty much....nothin...

Does seem like I've read that vanillas and custards need a long time to steep. I'll check this again in a few days.

One of the things that does concern me is that these One Drop Flavors are such an unknown, and the percentage of the ODF Vanilla I used is pretty high.

The purpose of the cinnamon, cherry, and white chocolate (3 drops each in a 12 ml bottle) is just to give some depth to the flavor, to keep it from being so "one note."

ETA: I'm thinking now that I should have reversed the percentages of the ODF vanilla and the Bavarian Cream. ???

 

[jojosvapes]

A few thoughts first the numbers for VW are low, from personal experience the flavors is not near as strong as the other big brands.. Unsure what overall flavor your going for as I have not tried Vanilla Clouds... But from the site the primary flavors are "Cake, Graham Cracker, Caramel, Cinnamon, Vanilla"...

Personally when trying to clone for me I have better luck focusing no the primary flavors so I would suggest mixing with just those and get it close before adding anything else-it just seems to create too many variables otherwise (again this is just for me).

So like a CAP Cake Batter and Caramel, TFA Graham, Cinnamon, Vanilla and get those close-or other brands if you have them.

Have you mixed up single flavor testers of the flavors your using? This can be a huge help with coming up with a recipe and being able to tell which ones are really strong vs week so you dont have a single flavor mute/overpower another.

 

[nadalama]

I have not done the single-flavor testing yet. My excitement over mixing flavors is getting in the way of pragmatism. I will calm down eventually and act like a grown-up.

I do have VW Graham Cracker, and have TFA Vanilla Cupcake and Dulce de Leche on the way, should be here any day now.

I know for sure that the VW Cinnamon is a muted flavor, but then, Grape Candy from VW seems to be pretty bright. I've mixed up two batches of a Grape Ice (just grape and menthol) that is a short steeper, 3 or 4 days and it's good to go, and nary a hint of the soapiness that I might expect to find in grape. The Gingerbread I got from VW will knock yer head off. Anyway, from just the few flavors I got, I'm finding them inconsistent, and don't intend to order flavors from them in future. I do like their nic/pg/vg and the pricing, since I'm not ready to buy tubs of any of this stuff yet.

But thanks again, I will try your suggestions (come as close as I can with the flavors I have to work with), and you've also pointed me toward the obvious - check the website for a description of a flavor you're trying to clone. Duh. I didn't even think of that.

You're the best.

 

[eStorm]

You thinking too much into real life cooking and baking again, that won't reflect in the actual vape recipe, because while we have layers and depth in ejuice its not like physical layers you find around the kitchen.

chocolate, especially white won't add depth. It will add sweetness and creaminess but at much higher percentage, as well as adding the chocolate note. Its hard to bend chocolate in the direction you were going for. If you plan on extreme or a very dominant vanilla juice, you will have to layer not only higher vanilla dominant flavors, but as well as custards, creams and bakeries such as poundcake, or/and cookies/biscuits etc.

I have not gotten my one drop concentrates but they are advertised between 7-9% when using them as flavor and not just a boost. I would highly suggest making 3 testers at 5, 7.5 & 10 as single flavor testing them on daily basis up to 3 weeks and see what profile they actually have before putting them into recipes.

I doubt they are super concentrates, therefore im thinking a 3-5% for the custard might be better. Adding extra creams/vanilla and a second/third custard or/and vanilla bean ice cream to get what you're looking for at the end. No matter tho all of that needs at least 7-14 day steep before you could try adjusting the percentages.

 

[jojosvapes]

No worry and best of luck.

I can share this as I did the same when I first started mixing... I would mix up recipes with multiple flavors and honestly some times I got lucky and other times I made stuff I would not even give away.

Its like cooking if you asked someone to mix up some type of say fish sauce using sugar, ginger, garlic, sriracha, lemon grass, and fish sauce. Lets say they have zero knowledge on the taste of the the ingredients and they could not taste them until they had a finished mix....

Most would end up with something that they did not like or far from what they thought it would be, some would get lucky but it would be the exception.

I did not start having better luck until I gave up and started testing... Its almost a must because we all have different taste, and different brands of the same flavors have different strengths and slightly different flavor profiles. Just like above some people may want more garlic, others may want extreme heat but until you know the flavor profile of the ingredients its really difficult to know what you are making/how to mix it.... and even more of a challenge with flavors cause the smell can also be misleading.

So back to testing... I mix up single flavors around the 5% range for every flavor I buy. I even put nic in it... some purest may say why? But here is the truth it makes it less like homework and I stick to it (it works for me). Since it has nic I will vape it otherwise I will not continue to sample it-I just wont. At times on a recipes I am spending a ton or work on to get flavors I want I may skip nic but its the exception for me.

So I vape get my nic fix and learn about the flavor. My notes go in my excel book and i try to sample them about a week out again. Over time I found flavors I liked and learned a lot about them. Then a light goes off... that "xyz strawberry" I will go good with "abc other flavor I tested" and you have an idea of how strong they are at certain %'s so you know that xyz is strong at 5% but abc is too strong at 5%.

Point being it takes a lot of the guess work out of it and you dont have to look at testing as work, toss some nic in it and have a single flavor just be your recipes and what you are vaping on.

I know you mentioned getting an RDA and this will help as you can test more flavors without filling up a tank and having flavors mix up in it...

 

[wildgypsy70]

+1 to all the above. Single flavor testing, as tedious as it can be, is essential. What I think is fantastic at 5% could blow your face off. To me, your numbers seem low.

 

[Lannie]

I started out making simple one to three flavor recipes, which at the time, seemed great (because it was all new, and none of it tasted like an ashtray), but then I started getting bored with those flavors, so I began mixing different juices in my tank for variety. Half a tank of this, half a tank of that. If it was good, I'd do it again to see if I still liked it the next day, and if so, I'd combine those two recipes into one. So now I'd have a recipe with 4 or 5 flavors in it, and that would be a "new" juice. Over time, some of those "new" juices got combined in my tank (I love tank mixing!) to come up with even better recipes. At this point, I don't even LOOK for new recipes anymore, because I have so many really, REALLY good ones I've come up with in my experimentation. I really doubt that I'd find anything that was much better than what I have. It's taken a long time, and some of them have 10 or 11 different flavors in them, but they're so good it's worth it. To save time, on the ones I vape most often, I'll make up a base mix of flavor concentrate, so then all I have to do is add X percent to my VG/PG base and I'm good to go. It takes a while to mix up the concentrate, but then it's only a matter of a few minutes to make a bottle of juice from it.

Along the way, I've learned the personalities of the flavors I'm using, so if for some reason I want to add something to one of them, I know about how much I'll need to get to where I want to go. And lest I made that sound like I'm some sort of flavor master, I'm not. Most of the recipes I started out with were someone else's, from DIY threads, that I tank-mixed in various proportions to come up with something I liked better. I have several that I did make from scratch, and those are very good, too, but I never would have been able to do it without knowing what the flavors are like, and how they'd work together. That just takes time, trial, and error, there's no way around it. However, because I started out with "known" recipes, I can truthfully say I've never had to dump a bottle of juice down the drain. If I had one I wasn't crazy about, I mixed it with something else until I liked it. I'm frugal.

 

[nadalama]

@Lannie I'm frugal as well. The Graham Cracker Butt juice I ended up with last night is just begging for coffee poured over it, if it doesn't straighten up and fly right. I imagine enough of that coffee juice would drown out just about any other flavor. If I have to do that, then it's back to the drawing board for some super vanilla.

I've come across a few good things by combining flavors in tanks, too, but in the past I've rarely documented that, so after a little time has gone by, I forget. Since I started using ELR I will do better about documenting things.

Found a Spumoni recipe on 99juices.com last night that I'm anxious to try, have to order pistachio first. Also plan on mixing some Cromwell's Custard when I have a chance.

I'll get around to the testing. Maybe the way to placate both sides of this split personality of mine is to keep mixes in a couple of tanks, and single flavors in a couple.