How to Make Your Own E-Liquid: A Beginner’s Guide to DIY E-Juice
If you’ve ever wondered how to make your own e-liquid, the good news is that the actual mixing process is much easier than it may first appear. Once you understand the ingredients, choose a recipe and use a free online e-liquid calculator to work out the exact amounts, making your own e-juice can become a simple and repeatable process.
E-liquid is made from a few basic ingredients: Vegetable Glycerin (VG), Propylene Glycol (PG), flavour concentrates and, if desired, nicotine. VG and PG form the base of your e-liquid, while flavour concentrates provide the taste. Nicotine is added to achieve your desired nicotine strength.
This guide will walk you through the entire process of making your own e-liquid, from choosing your first recipe to measuring and mixing the ingredients. We’ll use a 60 ml batch of Cool Strawberry Shake as our example and show you exactly how to use the Nicotine To Go E-Liquid Calculator to work out what goes into the bottle.
What Do You Need to Make E-Liquid?
Before making your first batch, you’ll need a few basic ingredients and some equipment.
Ingredients
- Vegetable Glycerin (VG)
- Propylene Glycol (PG)
- Flavour concentrates
- Nicotine base, if you want nicotine in your finished e-liquid
Equipment
- An empty e-liquid bottle
- An accurate digital scale capable of measuring in 0.01 gram increments
- Gloves for handling nicotine
- Your chosen e-liquid recipe
- Your free online e-juice calculator, to determine exactly how much of each ingredient you need
While e-liquid can be measured by volume, mixing by weight with an accurate digital scale is quick, clean and highly repeatable. Our calculator provides both the volume and weight of each ingredient, so you can see how much you’ll need and then use the weight measurements when mixing your batch.
Understanding VG, PG, Flavouring and Nicotine
Before you start entering numbers into a calculator, it helps to understand what each ingredient does.
Vegetable Glycerin (VG) is a thick, slightly sweet liquid that produces the vapour in your e-liquid. Higher-VG e-liquids are generally thicker and are commonly used in devices designed for higher vapour production.
Propylene Glycol (PG) is thinner than VG and carries flavour particularly well. PG also provides more of the throat sensation associated with vaping.
The amount of each in your finished e-liquid is expressed as a VG/PG ratio, such as 70/30 or 50/50.
If you’d like a more detailed explanation of the two ingredients and how they affect your e-liquid, see our guide to Vegetable Glycerin (VG) vs. Propylene Glycol (PG): What is the difference?.
Flavour concentrates are what give your e-liquid its flavour. Recipes normally specify each flavour as a percentage of the finished recipe. Most flavour concentrates are PG-based, although some are VG-based. This matters when calculating your final VG/PG ratio.
Nicotine is optional. If you want nicotine in your finished e-liquid, you’ll use a nicotine base with a specified strength in mg/ml and a specified VG/PG ratio.
The process is the same whether you’re using Freebase Nicotine or Salt Nicotine. If you’re not sure which type is right for your recipe, you can learn more in Understanding the Differences Between Freebase Nicotine and Salt Nicotine.
What Recipe Should I Use?
Choosing a recipe is often the hardest part of DIY e-liquid, not the actual mixing.
There are several ways to get started.
Use an Existing Recipe
You can find an e-liquid recipe online, such as those available at E-Liquid Recipes, gather the required flavour concentrates and use the recipe as your starting point. Once you’ve made it, you can adjust the flavours in future batches to suit your own preferences.
When you’re new to DIY mixing, starting with an established recipe is often the easiest way to learn how different flavour concentrates work together.
Use a One-Shot
A one-shot is a complete e-liquid recipe with all of the flavour concentrates already blended together in the correct proportions. The one-shot has already been steeped and is ready to use as a true shake-and-vape. When using a one-shot in the calculator, enter it as a single flavour and use the recommended percentage shown on the bottle. You then add the required VG, PG and nicotine to create your finished e-liquid. Once mixed, give it a good shake and you can vape it right away or within 24 hours.
If you’d rather begin with a ready-made flavour combination, you can explore the Flavours To Go One-Shots for a selection of blended flavour concentrates.
Create Your Own Recipe
Once you become comfortable with individual flavour concentrates, creating your own recipes is where DIY mixing becomes especially interesting.
You might start with one or two main flavours and then add smaller amounts of other concentrates to enhance the main flavour, add sweetness, introduce a cooling note or give the recipe more depth.
There are virtually endless combinations to explore. Start with small batches while you’re experimenting, keep notes about what you use and change one thing at a time when you’re adjusting a recipe.
Our Example Recipe: Cool Strawberry Shake
To demonstrate the process, we’re going to make a 60 ml bottle of Cool Strawberry Shake.
The recipe contains:
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%
For our example, we’ll use:
- Batch size 60 ml
- Nicotine Base 20 mg/ml at 50/50 VG/PG
- Final Target 3 mg/ml at 70/30 VG/PG
Now let’s put those numbers into the Nicotine To Go E-Liquid Calculator.
Using the Nicotine To Go E-Liquid Calculator to Make Your Own E-Liquid
Instead of doing all of the calculations yourself, our calculator works out the required amounts of nicotine base, flavour concentrates, VG and PG for you.
Use the Nicotine To Go E-Liquid Calculator
The calculator is divided into several sections. We’ll go through each one using our Cool Strawberry Shake recipe.
Batch
The Batch section is where you enter the amount of finished e-liquid you want to make.
The calculator has two options: Standard Batch and Flavours Only Batch. For this guide, select Standard Batch, which is used when making a complete e-liquid recipe with nicotine, VG, PG and flavour concentrates.
For our example, we’re making a 60 ml batch, so we enter 60 ml.
If you’re making your first recipe, there’s no need to make a large batch. Starting with a smaller amount allows you to see how you like the finished recipe before committing to a larger quantity of ingredients.
Nicotine Base
Next, enter the information about the nicotine base you are actually using.
The calculator uses mg/ml for nicotine strength. For our example, we’re using a 20 mg/ml nicotine base with a 50/50 VG/PG ratio.
The strength of your nicotine base is important because the calculator uses it to determine exactly how much is required to reach your desired nicotine strength in the finished e-liquid.
Always check the information on the nicotine product you’re using before entering these values.
When mixing by weight, I recommend adding the nicotine base first.
The reason is simple: nicotine is the most important ingredient to measure accurately. If you accidentally add a little too much nicotine and nothing else has been added yet, you can remove some from the bottle and correct the amount. Once the rest of the ingredients are in the bottle, correcting an excess of nicotine becomes much more difficult.
Target
The Target section tells the calculator what you want your finished e-liquid to be.
For our Cool Strawberry Shake example, we’re making:
- 3 mg/ml nicotine
- 70/30 VG/PG ratio
The calculator uses the information you’ve entered in the other sections and works out how much of each ingredient is needed to achieve those targets.
It’s important to distinguish between the VG/PG ratio of your nicotine base and the VG/PG ratio you want in your finished e-liquid.
For example, our nicotine base is 50/50 VG/PG, but our finished e-liquid is 70/30 VG/PG. The calculator takes both of those values into account when calculating the final recipe.
Flavouring
The Flavours section is where you enter each flavour concentrate used in your recipe and the percentage specified by the recipe.
For Cool Strawberry Shake, we enter all five flavour concentrates and their percentages.
If you would like the overall flavour to be stronger or weaker, you can use the Total Flavour Adjustment buttons to increase or decrease all of the flavour percentages together. This lets you adjust the overall flavour strength while keeping the proportions between the individual flavours the same.
Most flavour concentrates are PG-based, so the calculator assumes PG unless you tell it otherwise.
If you’re using a VG-based flavour concentrate, check the VG box beside that flavour.
This allows the calculator to account for the different properties of VG when calculating the finished recipe.
You can add as many flavour concentrates as your recipe requires using the + Add Flavour button.
Recipe
Once you’ve entered all of the information, the calculator produces the finished recipe.
The results show the amount of nicotine base, each flavour concentrate, VG and PG required, along with the total volume and estimated weight of the finished recipe.
The volume measurements are useful for knowing how much of each ingredient you need, while the weight measurements allow you to mix the recipe accurately using a digital scale.
If you’d like to add notes to your recipe, select Show Recipe Notes to open the notes section. This is useful for recording things such as steeping times, adjustments or other details you want to remember about the recipe.
For example, if the calculator tells you that you need 4.80 ml of a particular flavour and gives you the corresponding weight, you can simply place your bottle on the scale, tare it to zero and add that ingredient until the scale reaches the required weight.
What Does the Green or Red Message Mean?
The calculator will let you know whether your recipe can be mixed with the information you’ve entered.
A green message saying “This recipe can be mixed.” means you’re good to go.
If a red message saying “This recipe can’t be mixed with the selected ingredients and target.” appears, it will tell you what needs to be corrected before you can mix the recipe.
For example, if the nicotine base VG and PG values don’t add up to 100%, the calculator will tell you that they need to be corrected. Simply check the information you’ve entered and make the necessary adjustment.
How to Mix Your First Bottle
Once the calculator says your recipe can be mixed, you’re ready to make your e-liquid.
This is where an accurate digital scale makes the process particularly easy.
1. Place Your Empty Bottle on the Scale
Place your clean, empty bottle on your digital scale and press the Tare button to bring the display back to zero.
2. Add the Nicotine Base
Add the calculated amount of nicotine base first.
Once you’ve reached the required weight, stop and check the measurement.
Starting with nicotine gives you the opportunity to correct an accidental excess before anything else has been added to the bottle.
3. Add Each Flavour
Press Tare to return the scale to zero before adding your first flavour concentrate. Add the flavour until you reach the calculated weight shown by the calculator.
Press Tare again before adding the next flavour, then add it to its calculated weight. Continue this process until all of the flavour concentrates in your recipe have been added.
You don’t need to do any calculations yourself. Simply follow the weight shown by the calculator for each ingredient.
4. Add the VG and PG
Once your flavour concentrates and nicotine base are in the bottle, add the calculated amounts of VG and PG.
Again, use the Tare button between ingredients so you can measure each one individually.
5. Mix Thoroughly
Once everything has been added, securely close the bottle and shake it thoroughly.
Congratulations. You’ve just made your own e-liquid.
Should You Steep Your E-Liquid?
Some e-liquid recipes taste great shortly after mixing, while others can change considerably after they have had time to sit.
Creams, custards, desserts and more complex recipes often benefit from additional time for the flavours to blend together, while simpler fruit-based recipes may be enjoyable much sooner.
Steeping isn’t an identical process for every recipe, so don’t assume that every e-liquid needs the same amount of time.
For a more detailed look at the subject, see Why and How to Properly Steep Your DIY E-Liquid Recipes.
A Few Tips for Your First DIY E-Liquid
Start Small
When trying a recipe for the first time, make a small batch. There’s no reason to make a large bottle until you know you like it.
Keep Your Recipes
Write down the flavour concentrates, percentages, nicotine strength, VG/PG ratio and batch size you used.
If you make something you love, you’ll want to be able to make it again.
Change One Thing at a Time
If a recipe is close but not quite right, resist the temptation to change five ingredients at once.
Adjust one flavour at a time and make another small batch. That makes it much easier to figure out what actually improved the recipe.
Measure Carefully
A difference of a few drops can represent a surprisingly large percentage in a small batch.
Using an accurate 0.01 g digital scale makes repeatable mixing much easier.
Don’t Guess Your Nicotine
Always check the strength and VG/PG ratio of your nicotine base before entering it into the calculator.
The calculator can only produce accurate results from accurate information.
Nicotine Safety
Nicotine requires care and should always be handled responsibly.
Wear appropriate protective equipment when handling nicotine-containing products, avoid contact with skin and eyes, and keep nicotine and finished e-liquid securely away from children and pets.
If nicotine comes into contact with your skin, wash the affected area thoroughly. Follow the safety information provided with your nicotine product and comply with all applicable laws and regulations.
Never leave nicotine-containing ingredients unattended or stored where they could be accidentally accessed.
Frequently Asked Questions
Is making your own e-liquid difficult?
The actual mixing process is quite simple once you have a recipe and know the required amounts. The calculator takes care of the mathematics, leaving you to accurately measure and combine the ingredients.
What do I need to make e-liquid?
You’ll need VG, PG, flavour concentrates and nicotine base if you want nicotine in your finished e-liquid. You’ll also need an appropriate bottle and accurate measuring equipment, preferably a digital scale capable of measuring to 0.01 g.
How do I know how much nicotine to add?
Enter the strength of your nicotine base in mg/ml, along with its VG/PG ratio, into the Nicotine To Go E-Liquid Calculator. Then enter the nicotine strength you want in your finished e-liquid. The calculator will determine the required amount.
How much flavouring should I use?
Follow the percentages specified by your recipe. Different flavour concentrates have different strengths, so there isn’t one percentage that works for every flavour.
Does flavouring affect the VG/PG ratio?
Yes. Most flavour concentrates are PG-based, so they contribute to the PG portion of your finished e-liquid. If you’re using a VG-based flavour concentrate, select the VG option for that flavour in the calculator.
Can I make e-liquid without nicotine?
Yes. Nicotine is optional. If you want to make a nicotine-free e-liquid, set the nicotine strength to zero in the calculator and it will calculate the remaining ingredients accordingly.
Ready to Make Your First E-Liquid?
Making your own e-liquid doesn’t have to involve complicated mathematics or guesswork.
Choose a recipe, gather your ingredients, enter the recipe into the free online e-juice calculator, carefully measure each ingredient and mix your bottle.
Once you’ve made your first successful batch, you’ll have the foundation you need to start experimenting with different flavours, percentages and recipes.
The calculator does all the math. You get to make the e-liquid.
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