If you vape, you will eventually come across the idea of making your own DIY eliquid sooner or later. We don’t know if it’s soon or late for you, but if you want to learn how to make DIY ejuice, welcome! True, some vapers are apprehensive about mixing eliquid but it’s really not that complicated. As a matter of fact, making your own eliquid is a relatively easy process, it just requires a little patience. So…are you ready to take the next step in your vaping journey? Read on!
Eliquid has four main ingredients: vegetable glycerin (VG), propylene glycol (PG), aromas, and nicotine. These ingredients appear in all ready-to-vape eliquids. However, with DIY juice, vapers mix all of the ingredients themselves, like a chef. This allows for full personalization of taste, cloud density, and throat hit. Naturally, before you attempt to make your own DIY vape juice, you will also need some equipment, including measuring beakers, empty bottles for storage, large measuring syringes, etc. You will want your equipment completely clean; no dirt, no dust, nothing unclean. Sanitation is a very important part of mixing DIY vape juice.
DIY Eliquid Pointers:
- PG means more deeply-felt flavor and a relatively harder throat hit. The more the PG percentage goes up in your juice, the more you can feel the flavors and the throat hit.
- VG is perfect for producing very large and thick clouds that are sweeter in taste.
- When you mix eliquid with 50% VG / 50% PG base, you get a balanced eliquid in terms of throat hit, cloud thickness and size, and flavor transmission. The majority of DIY vapers prefer 50/50 base, or around that ratio (such as 40/60, 70/30, etc.). If you are new to making DIY eliquid, you could start with 50/50 base and see how that works for you. Afterwards you can tweak your recipes to meet your exact requirements.
- Have all ingredients and tools ready at your mixing station beforehand; make sure everything is clearly labelled to avoid confusion.
- Mixing with salt base: the math when mixing with nicotine salt base is the same as when mixing with “normal” base. The mixing process is the same. The difference lies in what nicotine salt base can deliver. Vaping with juice made with nicotine salt base comes down to two things. One, the vape is truly and honestly silky smooth at relatively high nicotine levels like 40mg/ml. Two, eliquid made with nicotine salt base transmits flavor MUCH better than eliquid made with classic base.
Decide What Kind of Juice Will You Make:
The first thing you need to decide on is the PG/VG ratio of the eliquid you will make. The ratio refers to how much PG and VG you want in your juice. This decision will determine how thick your eliquid is going to be. If you are going to vape your DIY eliquid in a sub-ohm tank, you could try mixing with 70% VG and above. For MTL (mouth-to-lung) vaping, it’s a good idea to stick to 50% PG and above. Just ask Google and you will find an excellent cache of usable information from online vaping meccas like ECF (Electronic Cigarette Forum) and various other online vaping portals like POTV (Planet Of The Vapes).
The next thing you need to decide is the percentage of eliquid flavors to add. As a rule of thumb, most flavors work well at 15% of the overall juice, but obviously this can change from person to person and brand to brand. Just start with 15% figure and either dilute or add more flavor to personalize according to what you want.
Last but not least, a decision needs to be made about nicotine strength if you are not making 0mg eliquid. Some aromas work well at 10%, others at 12%, and some at 20%. Again, Google is your friend, check out all the accumulated info online and experiment.
Preparing To Mix Your DIY Eliquid:
When making DIY juice, it’s easiest when you first figure out how much of what you need. To work out the amounts of each ingredient you need an ejuice calculator, one example being Steam Engine. It will calculate the exact amount of each ingredient you need to mix together, including the desired ratios of PG and VG, nicotine strength, and flavor percentage. The order in which to add each ingredient into the mix doesn’t matter, but it’s generally easiest to start with the nicotine base, followed by the other ingredients. But again, it’s up to you. Whenever you measure something, make sure to check and double-check the amounts. Once you correctly mix all the ingredients, give it a really good shake to ensure that the nicotine and flavors are evenly distributed throughout the carriers (PG and VG).
Labelling and Steeping:
Ok, great! You just made you first ever eliquid! Now you need to label the bottle with the flavor, nicotine level, PG/VG ratio, and mixing date. If your eliquid is a menthol or fruit flavored juice, steeping isn’t really necessary. If you mixed a tobacco or some creamy dessert or pastry liquid, we say it is absolutely necessary to give it at least one week to mature.
Steeping is best achieved by leaving the juice in a dark room at room temperature, in a cool and dry place such as a cupboard or chest. In a lot of cases, if you don’t steep, your eliquid won’t taste right. The ready-to-vape eliquids your normally buy are all steeped before being sold, which is why you can vape it straight away. The same concept applies to DIY ejuice makers.
And that’s it, now you know exactly how to make DIY eliquid!