🍊 Mystery Juice

Getting Started

Making your own juice is an absolute piece of piss. We'll go through this in a few steps from what e-juice actually is, some terminology, some basic supplies, as well as some key search terms and basic ordering sites to get you started.
This guide assumes some basic vape knowledge, so terms like Coil, Mod, RTA, Pod, Wick, Wattage, etc. won't be covered.

What is E-Juice?

At its core, e-juice is only three core ingredients, these are Propelyn Glycol (PG), Vegetable Glycerin (VG), and Flavouring.

• VG has a passive sweet flavour and will heavily affect the viscosity and flavour strength of your juice. It has a syrup-like consistency. Usually derived from soybeans, palm oil, or coconut. Most good suppliers will sell palm oil free versions for negligibly higher cost.
• PG has no flavour of its own and is considered as an additive. It is much thinner than VG and is used as a suitably vaporizable additive to juices. It is a chemical additive in the same family as alcohol.

Mix Ratios

The two ingredients above are mixed in many different ratios, the most common ones are 70% VG and 30% PG (70/30) and 50% VG and 50% PG (50/50).
As higher VG increases, you will generally need to vape at a higher Wattage and have a coil with a very large Wick in order to not burn your coils out. If you're unsure, your current juice bottle probably has this ratio listed on it.

• Most Pod systems will use 50/50.
• Most RTA/RDAs will use 70/30 or Max VG (80/20+)

Basic Supplies

Before you start, its really good to have the following things handy. They are by no means essential but will make empirical measurements much, MUCH easier. Pure Nature is very reputable for VG and PG, so consider using them if you are uncertain about the quality of a given vendor. Low quality base ingredients can be harmful - do NOT order VG/PG from places like Ali Express.

• Vegetable Glycerin - Essential. If you are mixing 70/30, buy more VG than PG. Buying bulk has very large savings.
• Propelyn Glycol - Essential. Shop around as prices can vary, make sure it is explicitly stated to be USP Grade (Foodsafe)
• Kitchen Scales - The higher precision the better. You will make a lot of small measurements, so being more precise reduces wastage.
• PET Bottles - Grab a few of these, shop around as price varies wildly. Ali Express is by far the cheapest but sterilize before use and as usual, shipping times are very long. You can reuse your existing bottles after sterilizing too. After you get some experience, you may want to consider some 500/1000ml bottles for batch storage/steeping.
• Funnel - Very optional but very useful. When you start making larger batches, this makes dealing with pouring VG and PG much less stressful.
• Disposable Nitrile Gloves - Optional if not using Nicotine, mandatory if you are. Every material you work with is sticky, oily, dangerous, or smelly. Or all 3. Highly recommended.
• Freebase Nicotine - Serious Health Warning! - Nicotine at these strengths is very dangerous. Always wear gloves, do not keep accessible in any way, shape or form to animals or children. Sufficient skin contact can cause nausea or unconsciousness, prolonged heavy direct exposure can cause DEATH. If unsure, buy Pre-Mix - this is much safer, but per-ml, MUCH more expensive.

Flavours

• Fruit-based e-juices are the easiest to produce, and a mismeasured batch is still likely to be tolerable or salvageable via dilution. Baked goods (apple crumble, muesli, etc) tend to be much harder to brew accurately and usually require specific additives like Acetyl Pyrezine. Highly recommend doing Fruit-based juices until you get used to the process.
• Flavours are almost always more complex than you would think, "Apple" isn't just Apple concentrate. It's usually combined with other sweeteners, complementary flavours, multiple types of apple, and berries. Hope you got good kitchen scales, because these quantities can be tiny!
• For best flavour variety, highly recommend purchasing your concentrates from Flavour Forest. They have the most common brands (The Flavour Apprentice, Capella, Inawera). Alternatively, if they are out of stock, you can use Mix Wizard. Mix Wizard also tends to have marignally cheaper Nicotine than FF.
  Never buy concentrates from Ali Express. They do not need to pass USP Standards and are potentially dangerous.
• Keep your flavours very simple to start. Watermelon is much easier than Double Orange Meringue Surprise with Chopped Peanuts.

Track Everything

This is optional but is very helpful to keep track of all the bits and pieces. Keep track of all your expenses and ultimately work out your PPM (Price Per ml)