With the summer of 2020 winding down, we went looking for e-liquid recipes you can mix at home to mark the end of the heat. We covered the basics of DIY mixing in an earlier article; this one is a follow-up with a short refresher on supplies, where to look for recipes, how to read them, and three summer-themed recipes we picked out.
Supplies for mixing
A recipe is useful at any skill level. You can follow it exactly to try a new juice, or treat it as a starting point and bend it toward your own taste. Either way the shopping list is the same:
- Vegetable glycerin (VG)
- Propylene glycol (PG)
- Flavorings
- Nicotine, if you want a throat hit
Dedicated tools make the work easier: graduated cylinders, an e-liquid mixer, syringes and chubby gorilla bottles. Liquid Nicotine Wholesalers carries those tools along with liquid nicotine, VG and PG. It sells flavorings too, though many mixers, the writer of this piece among them, buy flavors from The Perfumer’s Apprentice instead.
Where the recipes are
Searching the web turns up plenty of DIY juice recipes, and not all of them are any good. One site we like as a first stop is e-liquid-recipes.com. It works a lot like a social network for home mixers: anybody can post a recipe or leave a comment, and the Adapt button (a wrench icon) lets you rework someone else’s recipe to suit yourself. Get comfortable there before branching out.
Pinterest is a less obvious source, with many recipes posted as pictures and screenshots. Most of the ones we saw were lifted from e-liquid-recipes.com. A handful came from a site named Pinup Vapors, but those were thin on detail and some instructions appeared to be in Russian. You can mix from a screenshot alone if you like; we would rather have fuller information before building a juice from scratch.
At the time of writing, the plan was also to post themed recipes on this blog week by week. This first round covers end-of-summer flavors such as watermelon blends, sweet strawberry and cooling menthol. Themes floated for later weeks were Marshmallow Madness, a Cereal Celebration, a Fall Frenzy and a Harrowing Halloween.
Reading a recipe
Recipe instructions can look intimidating, but most are simple once you know the conventions, and the ones on e-liquid-recipes.com are easy both to read and to adjust.
Grams or drops
A recipe can be displayed by weight in grams, which calls for a kitchen scale, or by drops. Counting drops costs less because you skip the scale, but it takes longer, and some recipes run to high drop counts, so you have to keep an accurate tally.
Flavor brand codes
The three letters beside a flavoring, such as CAP, TPA or TFA, identify the brand that makes it. TPA is The Perfumer’s Apprentice and CAP is Capella, for instance. If you meet a code you do not know, search for it together with the word ejuice and the brand will come up.
Strength, ratio and batch size
You can change the nicotine level (3mg to 6mg, say), shift the VG/PG ratio (70/30 to 60/40) and set how much you want to make, anywhere from 10mL to 120mL. The settings are flexible enough that an oddly specific batch, such as 57mL at 4mg in a 64/36 blend, is entirely possible. Expect some trial and error before a mix turns out the way you want.
Steeping
Give a fresh mix a few days to steep before judging it. Many recipes leave this step out, so you will need to work out the steep time you prefer, and the comments under a recipe often show what other mixers tried. A juice that disappoints straight after mixing may improve a good deal; like wine, it needs time for the flavor to deepen.
Three recipes for the end of summer
The full ingredient amounts are on each recipe’s page, where you can also switch between grams and drops.
Summer Delight
Summer Delight caught our eye first, since fruit juices and certain dessert flavors are favorites here. It is built from three flavorings: Kiwi Strawberry, Strawberry Banana and Strawberry Custard. The recipe is set at 70/30 VG/PG, the most widely used ratio, and makes 120mL. We viewed it in drops, and you can flip it to grams if you would rather weigh than count.
End of Summer
End of Summer is the harder one to put together. It takes five flavorings: Lemon Sicily, Raspberry, Sour, Sugar Daddy and Watermelon/Red Summer. A few of those take some hunting down, and you can swap in flavorings you already own to keep it simple. The original mixer set it at 6mg of nicotine, 80/20 and 60mL, and that 6mg gives it a harsh throat hit. Nicotine level, ratio and bottle size can all be changed. We looked at this one in grams for comparison with the drops view above.
Last Taste of Summer
Last Taste of Summer stands out for its cactus flavoring and an unusual 4mg nicotine level. Alongside the cactus it uses apple, peach, pear, strawberry sweet and sucralose, the only recipe of the three to include sucralose. It is a 70/30 mix sized at just 25mL, which is sensible: try a small batch before making more.
Before you start
Mixing your own e-liquid is a rewarding hobby that asks for patience and close attention to detail. Buying ready-made juice from ejuice.deals or a local vape shop is just as valid a choice. If you do want to experiment, these three recipes are a reasonable place to begin, and readers who have tried them, or who have favorite mixes of their own, were invited to share them in the comments.