E Liquid Concentrates
Hey, what's up, guys? Today, we're going to test a new flavoring. So, one of the biggest requests for videos is asking how I test new flavorings and, what I do when I get new flavorings in, what's the procedure that I go through, and is it necessary to do extensive testing when you get a new flavoring in? And I'm going to address all those questions today. It's not gonna be a very long video, because it's a very simple process, and I think people overthink the testing process of mixing. It's really just a gauge for you to understand what the flavor tastes like, where the flavor sits at and where it hits on the vape. Really, that's the things that you really wanna focus on when you're testing.
Now, let me address the question of, Is testing necessary before we get into any kind of mixing? In my opinion, it's almost essential to what we're doing as mixers. You really can't use a flavoring unless you know what the flavoring does, what it tastes like, what percentage to mix it at. All that stuff is answered when you do your testing. Now, I don't think that everyone should be testing as extensively as everyone else. I think that you can really get by with just a simple 5% rule, or maybe just a simple single flavor mix or maybe even use it into some recipes that you already have. Those are the best methods of testing, especially if you're someone who doesn't have a lot of time, you don't have a lot of money and you're not really getting into recipe development. You're really just trying to get something good to vape.
Video Transcript: Testing New Flavorings (Beginner DIY E Liquid Tips) by DIY or DIE
Hey, what's up, guys? Today, we're going to test a new flavoring. So, one of the biggest requests for videos is asking how I test new flavorings and, what I do when I get new flavorings in, what's the procedure that I go through, and is it necessary to do extensive testing when you get a new flavoring in? And I'm going to address all those questions today. It's not gonna be a very long video, because it's a very simple process, and I think people overthink the testing process of mixing. It's really just a gauge for you to understand what the flavor tastes like, where the flavor sits at and where it hits on the vape. Really, that's the things that you really wanna focus on when you're testing.
Now, let me address the question of, Is testing necessary before we get into any kind of mixing? In my opinion, it's almost essential to what we're doing as mixers. You really can't use a flavoring unless you know what the flavoring does, what it tastes like, what percentage to mix it at. All that stuff is answered when you do your testing. Now, I don't think that everyone should be testing as extensively as everyone else. I think that you can really get by with just a simple 5% rule, or maybe just a simple single flavor mix or maybe even use it into some recipes that you already have. Those are the best methods of testing, especially if you're someone who doesn't have a lot of time, you don't have a lot of money and you're not really getting into recipe development. You're really just trying to get something good to vape.
So usually, when I get a flavoring in and today we're testing this new flavor, it's a rice flavor, almost like a rice pudding flavor. Usually, when I get it in, I'll do the 5% rule right off the bat. What the 5% rule is... Is this TFA, Capella, Flavor West, and maybe some other flavoring companies, but generally those three. You test them at 5%. Most of their flavorings sit at 5% in a solo mix and anywhere as FlavourArt, Flavorah... Some Flavorah and some other... More of the super concentrated real flavors. Those you wanna test at 1%. So the 5% rule is really just a name. The three companies that I named before, you test at 5% and the other five or six main companies, there's a lot of other ones out there and you really have to find notes on them to figure out what the best percentage is. But the other ones you wanna test at 1%.
This one is by a company that I'm not sure if I can really name them, but I will say that I'm going to be testing this ingredient at 5%. Which I've already done so, and we're not going to do that in this video. So what we're going to do with this is test it in a recipe, because that's really where things get a little bit more tricky. So basically, say I just got this flavoring in. The first thing I would do is look at the name, okay, this is this company. Let's test it at 5%. I'd mix it up, I'd vape it right off the rip, let it sit overnight, vape it again, write my notes, let it sit another three days, vape it again, write my notes, let it sit another five days, vape it again, write my notes and then usually after that, I'll have a pretty good understanding for what the flavoring is and if I'm doing flavor book entries, the testing is much more rigorous and it's a whole different thing. But, if you're just testing for yourself, you just wanna test the varying degrees of the flavor throughout its steep. That way you know, Okay, this flavouring needs at least, at least a week before it starts to really start to bloom or maybe this flavor is great right off the rip, so we can use it in a Shake'N Vape.
Not to mention when you're writing your notes, you need to figure out the flavor of the recipe, what it tastes like exactly to you, don't worry about anyone else, what it tastes like to you, and then you need to test, Okay, this tastes more of like a body flavor, this is more of a top. No, this more of a foundation flavor. And remember, this is all relative just to you. That's the main thing I wanna stress with your note-taking. It's all for you, this is your notes. This is what you perceive these flavors to be. If you're writing notes for other people, you still need to put in your thoughts for yourself. That's what critiques are, that's what anything that you're doing, where you're judging for yourself, you need to put in, Okay, this is what it tastes like to me, this is what it vapes like to me. Yadda Yadda
After I do the 5% rule I usually take that flavoring in and put it into a recipe that I've already developed, that I know the flavor. So say we're testing a new doughnut flavoring. I'd probably take that flavoring, 5% it, give it a test, write my notes down and then I'd put it into my Bronuts recipe just so I know, Okay, this doughnut tastes more like this when compared to this doughnut. And that gives you a really good understanding of how to use the flavoring in a recipe, how it interacts with other flavorings, how it tastes like once it's around the other flavorings and after a steep with a mixed flavoring. So there's a lot more variables and there's just a lot more going on when you're testing in a recipe and that's what we're gonna do here today with this new rice flavoring.
Now, this rice flavoring, unfortunately, doesn't have any... I don't have any recipes that call for rice, not a rice like this, right? So, I'm gonna have to develop my own recipe for it. And the way I do that is just using my creativity, my intuition, and my experience in creating a recipe. What I'm going to do is pretty much take the honeydew-y recipe and input rice into it because I'm getting sort of a boba soy milk-like flavor from this, and I wanna test to see if it works in that scenario, and that's the reason for these recipe testings. You wanna have a hypothesis and you wanna experiment to prove your hypothesis is right or wrong. Remember, a wrong hypothesis is just as valuable as a right one. Now, in the description of this video, you'll see a link and that is where this recipe will be. Unfortunately, you can't get this new ingredient right now, so a lot of you guys aren't gonna be able to mix it and the name is going to be different. What I'm going to put on the website is not the name of the flavoring that's going to be released. I don't know what they're naming it, I don't know when it's coming out, I don't know how much it's gonna be, I don't know anything about that, all I know is that from my testing so far, this new rice flavoring is phenomenal and I cannot wait for them to drop it. There's gonna be a lot of people very happy with this ingredient.
Now, looking at my notes right now, it's saying that around 5% is the sweet spot for this flavoring. I want the rice to be very prominent in this recipe, so I'm gonna use it at that top percentage. So, we're gonna go up to 4.5%. We're really just gonna pound this recipe with this ingredient. We're gonna add some TFA honeydew at 1.5%, it's a very strong flavoring, we don't need much of it. And remember, I'm testing the rice. I just wanna see if it's gonna work in this kind of scenario, so I don't wanna muddle the flavor too much. When you test your flavoring specifically to just check them out, you want them to be the main note, you want them to be the star of that recipe, of that test recipe so you could really understand it and get into the thick of it.
Then we're gonna add a little bit of TFA vanilla swirl, I kinda wanna see how it does with a light vanilla flavor. We're just gonna go 1% on that, and then we're gonna add a touch of sweetener to see what it's like when there's a sweetener involved, and that's it. That's the recipe right there. It's not crazy, there's not a lot going on, it's not complex, a very simple recipe that's going to showcase this flavoring, but put it in scenario where it's kind of stressed. Put it into a scenario where it shows its skill, it shows what it can do, and we're gonna mix these at 60-40 VG, and let's get mixing. This is a really just... It just smells so good. If you enjoy rice, you're gonna really like this flavoring. It's just so good. And I really hope that this is the right scenario for this flavoring to really see what it can do. I think so, I think it's gonna be a damn good recipe, but I'm not sure how long it's going to need. So, we'll see.
And that's that. So, I'm gonna mix this up, I'm gonna give it a test, and I'm gonna write my notes simultaneously while I taste it and vape it. And remember, this is strictly for your own notes. So, write your notes accordingly and make sure you're keeping your notes organized. And now, while I'm shaking this, the last thing I wanna bring up is batches. You can absolutely have multiple, multiple batches of one flavoring in its testing, that way you can kind of speed up the process. So, a lot of you guys who are mixing a lot, or maybe you have clients and maybe you have an e-liquid company, you need to put out a new flavoring, batching is the best way to go. Basically, you would break the flavoring down into different variables, so I would use this flavor in this scenario, I would use this flavoring by itself in its own kind of percentage variance. I would use it in another recipe that kinda showed off it in the opposite light of the first recipe, so on and so forth. The amount of batches is up to you. If it's a flavoring that you think could be a main profile, then you'd wanna kinda batch it pretty extensively. But if it's more of like an accent ingredient, then you don't really need to go too over the top.
But the batching process, which is something that I'm assuming a lot of you guys want to know about, is really just mixing the ingredient in all of its different variants, that way you can really just test the wide range it has in a shorter amount of time. It's mainly just for time, there's really no other reason to do batching. If you're very patient and nothing's really pressing, you don't really need to do batching. A lot of the time, those batches would go to waste, moreso than if you kinda developed recipes for it. Alright, so we've given it enough shake and now we're just gonna test it. And we're gonna write our notes. Immediately, I can smell what it's doing in the recipe. I could smell that honeydewiness, I can smell the rice working in there.
That is absolutely delicious. What's the hypothesis? Does this rice flavoring work in sort of a soy milk boba-like recipe? And the answer is yes. From my testing so far, I would write down, okay, right off the mix, it tastes great, it's doing exactly what I want it to do, it's got a nice kind of creamy backend, but that top end is all this, just this sweet rice flavor, the honeydew is just kinda mellowed throughout the recipe, and it's actually fucking delicious.
No harshness or anything. 4.5% percent seems to be an excellent percentage to use it at. And I would write this all in my notes, I'm writing it right now, writing this all in my notes, making sure it's all documented. I let it sit at night. An overnight steep is a lot different than right off a shake, believe it or not. Just an overnight is needed for a lot of recipes. So, after the overnight, the next day, I would give it another test, write my notes down, then I would generally wait another three days or another five days and test it again, and then I would wait another week after that, and then pretty much you're good to go. If it's a tobacco or other kind of heavier flavors that need a lot more time, maybe a custard or some type of heavy cream, you might wanna wait a little longer than two weeks. But two weeks is generally where I'm like, Okay, this is what the flavoring is doing. It's not really gonna change too much from there, there's a lot of diminishing returns that come after that amount of time.
Some people like to steep for months. I don't blame you, maybe you guys have better taste buds than me. This is really good. So, remember, I'm gonna put a link in the description to this recipe. Honestly, you're not gonna be able to mix it until this flavoring comes out. But once it does, make sure you that you come back to the website, diyordievaping.com, you look at the recipe, mix it up 'cause this is fucking phenomenal. I'll probably release the recipe 'cause it's been something I've been working on. But that's generally my testing process. Now, in that closet right there is a shitload of bottles mixed up in about 15-mL variants, 30-mL variants, 60-mL variants of all different flavorings, all different percentages, and those are just strictly for testing. I have in my one note an entire kind of breakdown of what I'm testing, the notes for them, and then once I'm done, that note goes into its own folder under its respective company and stored away for when I either put it on the flavor book, or when I need to go back to it for a recipe, or just to have it, just to have that stuff.
When I'm making entries for the flavor book, there's a little bit more of a rigorous process, it needs to go through a lot more different recipe variants. There's a lot of recommended pairings and percentages that I like to test out. So, the testing process is a little bit more different for a true flavor book entry, but that's for me, and my situation's a little bit more different than yours is. So, if you're someone who gets like five, maybe 10 new flavorings every month, then this is the kind of testing I recommend you doing, kinda straightforward, simple, make sure you're understanding your flavors, you're putting it into scenarios that you would enjoy yourself, and you're writing it all down and documenting it and organizing it in a folder somewhere, or maybe you're writing it by hand, I don't know. Anyways, I'm gonna get out of here guys. I hope you enjoyed this video. I hope this answered a lot of your guys' questions. Remember, diyordievaping.com is the place to go for all your DIY mixing needs, any kind of information that you need, motivation, it's all there for you, new podcasts, new videos and everything all the time. So, all right, keep mixing, much love. Peace.