For vaping beginners, the thought of actually mixing your own flavours may seem a bit daunting, but once tried, it can be an incredibly fun and extremely rewarding pastime.
One of the many advantages of vaping, beyond the obvious health benefits, is the variety it offers. Smokers tend to find a cigarette they like and stick with it, but with vaping, as with a cup of your favourite hot beverage, you really can have it exactly how you want it.
New vapers tend to buy familiar-sounding premixed flavours, such as tobacco, menthol or fruit. And most of us have ‘everyday’ favourites (or ADVs – ‘all day vapes’) that we return to like an old friend. But over time, many vapers get a bit more adventurous and start exploring more exotic and unusual flavour types.
After that, it is a natural progression to start concocting your own flavours.
At a basic level, it can involve just combining a couple of premixed flavours together: fancy some candyfloss with a hint of roast beef? Raspberry and menthol? With the range of flavours available out there, pretty much any delicious or bizarre combination can be created.
But to reproduce that perfect individual flavour blend again and again requires more precision. That’s why many have taken to mixing from scratch.
Vaping is such a personal experience that sometimes even slight alterations in e-liquid formulation can perfect the experience, making a good vape a great one. For instance, you may want your e-liquid stronger in flavour, but without reducing the nicotine strength. This can be achieved by simply adding extra drops of flavouring at the expense of diluent drops – vice versa if you prefer the flavour weaker.
A word of advice: no matter what pipe, mod or vapouriser you have, it is only as good as the liquid you put in it, so make sure you always use liquids from a reputable manufacturer. Not only will this ensure the liquids are safe, but the flavour dynamics will be consistent, allowing you to reproduce your favourite concoctions time and time again.
So long as you have quality ingredients, mixing is actually very easy; after all, there are only 4 ingredients, 3 if you vape without nicotine.
So what are our general mixing tips?
Diluents
Diluents make the base for an e-liquid. They create the vapour, and different types of diluents create different effects. There are 5 diluent types to choose from:
Propylene glycol (PG) - Offers the best throat hit and is a greater carrier of flavour.
Vegetable Glycerine (VG) - The smoothest option, sweetens up your e-liquid slightly and provides the most vapour.
Aqueous glycerine (AG) - This is similar to VG, with the added benefit of being easier to pour due to the presence of distilled water.
50:50 PG:VG - A mix which offers a bit of both. Although 50/50 is the most popular, you can make them up to other ratios to suit your taste.
Polyethylene glycol 400 (PEG 400) - Not often used and quite expensive, it offers a dryer mouth feel and has its own distinct taste.
Nicotine
Advances in the quality of hardware have resulted in vapers moving away from high nicotine strengths, with many vapers tending to go for somewhere between 3mg/ml 0.3% and 12mg/ml or 1.2%. The nicotine Decadent Vapours uses is called Angelic Decadence. It contains nicotine at a concentration of 54 mg/ml or 5.4%. This is then diluted with flavourings and diluent.
What’s your flavour?
If you can think of a flavour, it is probably available as a concentrate. After years of development and testing, DV alone has amassed a range of over 90 flavour concentrates, from cool menthol to sweet Welsh Taffi and all kinds in between, including fruits, sweet, tobacco and even savoury. Roast chicken may sound odd, but when mixed with something else unlikely-sounding, such as chocolate, it can produce some decidedly pleasant effects.
An apprenticeship in mixology
For those daunted by the prospect of mixing their own liquids, DV designed The Easy Mix Kit, a starter pack which simply requires one bottle of 10ml flavour concentrate to be added to a bottle of pre-measured chosen diluent.
The kit is available in a range of nicotine strengths (0% to 1.8%) and a variety of bases: PG for the best throat hit and flavour profile, VG (AKA the ‘Big Cloud’ base) for a smoother vape with a plentiful plumage, and PG/VG for those who enjoy the qualities of both. The Easy Mix Kit is simple to use – the hardest bit is choosing a flavour concentrate from over 90 choices!
Once you have picked your flavour, you simply decant the entire 10ml bottle into the space in your 50ml bottle of Easy Mix base, shake thoroughly, and hey presto! Your liquid is ready to vape!
Graduate in Mixology
Those who feel a little more adventurous might move onto our Connoisseur Mixing Kit – the next step towards becoming a true mixologist,
This kit has everything you need to start mixing from scratch, including nicotine, 2 bases, 5 flavour concentrates of your choice and even pipettes, empty bottles and a comprehensive step-by-step guide.
Mixing ‘from scratch’ really is easy and just requires you to follow the basic principles. For example:
If you dilute your Angelic Decadence (5.4% nicotine) in a 50/50 mix with nicotine-free diluent, you will be left with a nicotine concentration of 27mg/ml or 2.7% for any volume of e-liquid.
Remember: the nicotine concentration of your e-liquid is determined by the proportion of nicotine in the final volume, not the absolute amount of nicotine that you add.
If you are new to vaping, a medium strength such as 6mg/ml (0.6%) is a good place to start.
Slowly does it
We recommend starting with small batches; these are best for testing and perfecting new flavours and nicotine strengths. Also, do keep notes of your amounts. Our Master Mixologist once concocted an incredible flavour that everyone loved, and then when he went to replicate it, realised he had completely forgotten the amounts. The flavour was lost forever!
Sit back and relax with a vape of your own making
As a vaper, there really isn’t a better way to get into your hobby more than mixing. It’s easy, very satisfying, and the only thing to hold you back is your imagination.
All Decadent Vapours products are made in the UK, using only the highest pharma-grade and food-grade quality ingredients, all EU-legislation compliant. They are all batch-controlled, tested and free of all the nasty elements like DEG, diacetyl and acetyl propionyl, and are specifically formulated to be ultra-low in non-volatiles.
