If you are looking to make your own e-juice for a fraction of the cost and get out of the rut of overspending at the vape store, the following is an easy step by step guide you may be looking for. E-liquid only has 4 ingredients, Vegetable Glycerin (VG), which is thick and creates the cloud, Propylene Glycol (PG) which enhances the flavours, give a bit of a throat hit and thins out your e-liquid, food flavourings and in most cases nicotine.
What recipe should I use?
The hardest part is not making the e-juice itself (it only takes a few minutes) but figuring out what recipe to use and which flavourings to add and at what percentage. Here are a few suggestions that many have done for themselves, all of which could give you that great all-day vape that you crave.
1. You could search an e-juice recipe database, find a recipe you would like to try, pick up the needed ingredients and easily make it yourself. Of course, you can always adjust, replace, add or omit certain flavours that would suit your personal tastes. Here are 2 sites where you could start your search for the recipe you’d like to try E-Liquid-recipes or 99Juices.
2. You could choose a one-shot, which is a full high-end premium recipe that the flavours are already mixed together and steeped and you would use the one-shot as a single flavour at the recommended percentage and all you would have to add is VG, PG and Nicotine, give it a good shake and vape away. You could see our friends at Flavours To Go for premium FTG – One-Shots and Drip Hacks – One-Shots from the UK as well.
3. This is the most creative, and honestly, the most interesting overall. It may seem daunting, but once you’ve created your first recipe, you will see how easy it really is. To start, pick up a number of flavours you’d like to incorporate into a recipe. Myself, my end goal is to create a new recipe with a total percentage of flavourings from 14 to 18 percent, depending on how potent my flavours are, from there I add in the main flavour (or 2) and start adding a few more to ether enhance the main flavour or add some depth to the overall recipe. You could look at how some individual flavours were used in other recipes and use them in the same manner. The possibilities and combinations are truly staggering.
Crafting your first E-Liquid with Steam Engine Calculator
Once you have your recipe and have all the ingredients at hand, it is time to begin. Measuring out each flavour is much easier and more accurate to do by weight instead of by volume when mixing smaller batches, you should have a Scale that goes down to .01 gram for the best accuracy and for our example, we will use our Cool Strawberry Shake recipe.
Cool Strawberry Shake
Strawberry (TFA) – 8%
Strawberry Ripe (TFA) – 10%
French Vanilla II (TFA) – 1.5%
Vanilla Bean Ice Cream (TFA) – 0.8%
Kool Effects (FW) – 0.1%
One of the preferred and accurate e-juice calculator would be from Steam-Engine and it would be just a matter of plugging in all the numbers and it will let you know how much of each ingredient to add to end up with a perfect e-juice every time. Let’s go through Steam-Engine’s easy to follow sections to make a 60ml bottle of Cool Strawberry Shake using the maximum strength of 20 mg/ml 50/50 nicotine and we want to end up, for our example, with a 3 mg/ml 70/30 e-juice.
Batch
This is where you put in the size of the bottle that you want to end up with. We’ve put in 60ml for the bottle size and (REALLY IMPORTANT) we have checked off the box saying that the nicotine we are using will be measured in mg/ml (you will see this information on the nicotine bottle as well).
Flavouring
This is where you would put in all the percentages of flavouring you are using for your recipe. Just as an added note, most flavourings are based in PG, however, should you have any flavourings that are VG based (such as from Real Flavours) then you could check the VG box next to the flavour. This will allow Steam-Engine to adjust the flavour weight for your end product because VG is slightly heavier than PG.
Nicotine Base
You will see the required information needed on the nicotine bottle you have in hand. The nicotine must be diluted in either VG, PG or a combination, in our example, we are using a 20 mg/ml 50/50 nicotine that is diluted with 50% VG and 50% PG. The process is identical for both Freebase Nicotine and Salt Nicotine, you can read about The difference of Freebase and Salt Nicotine
Target
This will be the last box of information to fill out. What will be the target strength and VG/PG ratio for your e-juice. In our example we want to end up with a 3 mg/ml and a 70/30 mix. And if you ever wondered about why regular e-juice is 70/30 and salt e-juice is 50/50 most of the time, you can read about The difference of VG and PG.
Recipe
And finally you have all you need automatically filled out in the last box called recipe with everything needed to make your e-juice. The order you put them into your bottle doesn’t really matter, but I would highly recommend always starting with your nicotine, this way, if you put in too much, you can just remove a bit, in this instance you would add 10.32 grams of the nicotine into a 60ml bottle, zero out your scale (Tare button), then add each flavour one at a time and zeroing out the scale for each item, then your PG and VG and give it a good shake and voila!
Once your Cool Strawberry Shake e-liquid has been crafted, load it into your favourite vaping device and enjoy the refreshing blend of strawberry, vanilla bean ice cream, french vanilla and a bit of coolness. And of course, you can adjust the flavours to your preference in future batches.
Remember, DIY e-liquid mixing requires precision and safety measures, especially when handling nicotine. Always use appropriate safety gear and follow local regulations.
Creating custom e-liquids allows you to explore a world of flavours and craft your perfect vaping experience. Enjoy your Cool Strawberry Shake and happy vaping! And as always, we here at Nicotine To Go are always available for any questions you may run into, we can be reached by email at info@nicotinetogo.ca.