More Flavor secrets revealed.

[chinoy]

1. Its not as simple as buy flavor. See what others are mixing it at and hope for the best.
Everybody who starts out will do this step foolishly. And land up pissing huge qty of flavor and PG/VG down the drain. Or making really lousy tasting juice.
This system is put in place to put off the DIY crowd. And make it harder than it is to make your own flavor.
Why am I saying this ?. Because none of the places where they discuss % will they discuss what your mixing it with lol. So the % of flavor used is based on the % of PG and VG you use.
When selecting the % of VG and PG little to none of the guys even know what % should be used when and why. Its to do with chemical reaction that has to happen between the flavor the Base. Some reactions need a lot of PG some dont. Unless your know the exact fermentation process that has to happen to mature the flavor your just pissing in the wind. Mixing absurdly high VG ratios like we use. Requires its own set of rules which I have not found anywhere online and Im not going to post it either. Lets just say with VG we mix a lot of flavors at over 30%.

2. People are talking about making flavors without first establishing what type of VG they have. Is it synthetic or is it natural. That makes a huge diff. Synthetic as we get in India is petroleum based as is the DOW one. But as I have never got the Dow one I cant say. From what I understand if its synthetic it has to be made form a petroleum base. Synthetic is costly at least in India. And does taste a bit like Petroleum jelly. Google Petroleum Jelly taste in e-juice and you will find a few blogs talking about it.

3. People selling juice will never be as stupid to but a flavor mix it and sell it. They will all want to make their juices as unique and hard to copy as possible. This normally means adding multiple secondary notes in very minute qty. So while I can get my basic apple pie flavor from various companies and mix it I will never make an apple pie that is identical to say MFS Apple Pie. At best when copying a flavor your lucky to get the main note right. But after that forget about it. Esp with the flavors that are 5-6 mixes. Likewise nobody will be able to copy my Paan or Gulkhan. They can get one or two notes right tops.

4. Flavors are a funny thing. A bit like bikes and women. Asking another guy to tell you what flavor is hot is totally pointless. WHat one guy likes the other will hate. So do not waste your time going on the basis of what others have to say about flavors. Some of the flavors which got rave reviews on various forums turned out to be utter shit in my book. And some flavors that people said where a total waste of time turned out to be my best flavors.
This goes back to people trying ratios and shooting in the dark with the VG and PG %. Bottom line guys who have developed lines of juices that sell and are popular know what they are doing. Juices are one of those things that if you make something unique the world will beat a path to your door. No matter what your plans.

5. The brain likes complex flavors. I tried some guys juice and it tasted like it was eating a perfume of Jasmine. Its very easy to make a flavor like that. But long term it wont become a favourite once people taste better mixes. THe really good mixes will never have one over powering note. That you can catch. They just leave you wondering what the F is that. And then your brain has to work hard to try and extract all the flavors. Or you just enjoy it.

You will find you can smoke a lot of a particular flavor if its light notes. Strong notes you cant smoke for too long.

[chinoy]

The bigest misconception is that its cheap to make e-juice.
People look at the price off VG and PG and Nicotine and think its cheap and easy to make.

While this is true for most simple flavors. The more complex a flavor gets the higher the price goes.
There is no hard and fast rule that only some Natural Extracts cost a lot i.e. Paan oil is 1 lakh per kg. Rose is 1.8 Lakhs per KG.
You also have chemicals and absolutes which cost a lot. For example there are tobacco absolutes which cost 4 Lakhs based on the leaf used.
So How does company XYZ sell absolute for only so much. Its all about how much you dilute stuff.
You can buy absolute and dilute it 100 times and people will still buy it.
Tobacco flavors tend to be made up off 6-10 Chemicals these chemicals can be nature identical or not. But they tend to land up costing a lot.

Now a company can do two things. They can price their e-juice based on the cost of the flavor. Or they can price them all the same and offset the costs between the flavors. While its true that most flavors are cheap. This not always the case.

Like our Tobacco Supreme is so costly I haven't even had time to work out the costing. There are so many components to it.
The same rule goes for nicotine. Some people ask for no nic. Some people ask for 24 MG. But keeping the price the same. The seller will land up balancing out his total cost.

[chinoy]

The problem with VG is that its sweet.
There so its very hard to get any flavor to work with it. Think of taking thick sugar sryp. Now I tell you to change its flavor.
Not possible.
Yet the body craves VG. And hates PG.
So you have to start with using flavors that are designed to work with VG. Flavors developed for PG stop working in VG.
They where never designed to work with VG. You can make a compromise i.e. keep adding PG till the taste comes thru.

A good example of this problem was the Hangsen flavors. They just refused to work with VG.
Now by increasing the PG by 10% they are working much better.

The resulting juice is still better than the 100 PG of the original Hangsen flavor.
This complete exercise and to figure this all out cost me more than 100$.

So I will never again buy Hangsen Flavors. The 3 flavors I finally was able to make where Indian Tobacco, RY4 and Camell.
All are my favourites now and I have no issues saving this for my own consumption.

Indian Tobacco from Hangsen is nothing but Acetl Pyrazine with a touch of tobacco absolute. We will make our own version which is designed to work with VG.

Oh one more thing. Another short cut is to use Synthic VG. What we get in India is Petroleum based. So while its not sweet. It does taste a bit like Petroleum Jelly. We no longer use this in any of our flavors. Only experimented with it in the early days. But it sure makes life easy. As its less sweet and more neutral tasting. I just dont trust it from a health angle.
And think that Natural VG is the best from the health angle.
I know we can get greedy when we taste something nice. But dont let your health suffer just in the name of taste.

My primary objective is first health. Then taste. Then quality then price.
Everything we make is something I should be willing to smoke myself.

[atulchadha]

Its always nice to read your thoughts and secrets. keep posting so that we can read and understand the chemistry behind the great vapors more and more.

[chinoy]

If your a RY4 fan you should try the new Hangsen RY4. Its still got all the goodness of VG. With a little more PG. And all 3 flavors have been steeped for over 2 months. I just added more PG and Flavor Concentrate. 90% of the mix is still well steeped.

All 3 have taste of Tobacco Rustica and Tobacco Bulgarian.
The Rustica and Bulgarian Absolutes are super rare. Got it for free with one of my very larger orders from the US.
It was from their development lab. They dont even sell it.