DIY e-liquid is vape juice that a vaper makes at home with just a few ingredients and a small amount of equipment. With DIY eliquids, you can experiment with flavour combinations and VG/PG mix ratios to find a vape juice that suits you personally.
What Are DIY E-liquids?
DIY e-liquid is homemade vape juice. While making your own vape juice may sound complicated, it’s a straightforward and fun process for any vaper.
All you need is a VG/PG base mix, flavour concentrates that suit your tastes and – optionally – nic shots. A handful of bottles, beakers, and pipettes are all the gear you’ll need to open your own DIY vape juice production area.
What Are the Benefits of DIY E-liquids?
There are numerous benefits to DIY vape juice, such as being able to control the flavour, thickness and nicotine strength of your batch. Making your own vape juice can also work out cheaper than frequently purchasing pre-mixed e-liquid, as the ingredients you buy can be stretched across several batches.
1. Curiosity
Sometimes, it can take a while to find an e-liquid that suits you, and making your own vape juice allows you to mix and blend various intense flavour varieties to see what matches your preferred palette of tastes. It also lets you try unorthodox combinations; most manufacturers won’t risk mixing menthol with butterscotch, but that might be a blend you adore!
2. Control
When you make your own e-liquid, you’re in total control over the flavour, the thickness of the final e-liquid batch and the nicotine strength. There’s no need to settle for what a manufacturer thinks is best when you’re the one measuring out the VG/PG and adding the nic shots.
The Tobacco Products Directive prevents UK retailers from selling e-liquid stronger than 20mg, but nothing is preventing you from cranking up the nicotine volume if 20mg isn’t satisfying to you.
3. Cost
When you buy pre-mixed e-liquids, you aren’t just paying for the juice itself but also the cost of manufacturing, bottling, and shipping it.
If you’d rather not shell out more pounds for greater convenience and have reasonable time to spare, large bottles of VG/PG, flavour concentrates, and flavourless nic shots are relatively inexpensive and can be used across several batches of e-liquid.
What Do You Need for DIY E-Liquid?
To produce DIY e-liquid, you only need four things:
- Nicotine shots (optional!)
- Flavour concentrates
- PG & VG
- DIY vaping accessories
We’ll now go over these and how they’re used in greater detail.
Nic Shots (Optional)
Nic shots are 10ml bottles of nicotine solution in the form of a flavourless PG/VG suspension. Nic shots are classed as e-liquid and, as such, must abide by TPD restrictions on size and strength, so they’ll never be more potent than 18mg or 20mg. You’re free to use as many as you like, however!
Nicotine shots are, of course, optional, as you may be vaping for flavour and cloud production alone.
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Flavour Concentrates
Flavour concentrates are liquids that carry powerful flavourings you’ll be diluting into a VG/PG base mix. The tastes themselves are often food-grade, but with VG/PG added to help them emulsify into the greater DIY batch you’re making.
The best flavour concentrates often take their tastes from natural sources. You’ll often see tobacco flavourings called ‘essences,’ sourced from genuine tobacco leaf cuttings.
Our top three recommendations are:
- Just Juice ICE Citron & Coconut
- Vampire Vape Coffee Cake
- Just DIY RY4 Tobacco
Just Juice ICE Citron & Coconut
Best Vape Concentrate
9.5/10
Total
Features We Love
Taste Gamut
Citrus, cream and ice all in one concentrate
Rare Citrus
Rare appearance of delicious citron flavouring
Cozy Coco
Mellow and relaxing coconut taste
The best e-liquid flavour concentrate doesn’t do half-measures. With Citron & Coconut, part of Just Juice’s recent Ice range of ready-made vape juices and concentrates, you get intense hits from several flavours for your homebrew e-liquid.
Citron is like an enhanced lemon, sending sharp shocks of citrus across the tongue upon inhale. Mellow and creamy notes of coconut waft in afterwards to provide a gentle grounding effect. The ice ensures that both e-liquid flavours are vibrant yet don’t linger on the tongue afterwards.
And it’s so versatile! Blend it with a bubblegum concentrate for a tasty fruity candy vape or tobacco for exotic shisha-style flavours. With icy Citron & Coconut, the possibilities are endless.
Pros
- Very versatile flavour combination
- Frosty and powerful ice addition
- Unique fruits used for a memorable taste
Cons
- Coconut not to all tastes
- Some may find the ice a bit too strong
Price
Shop now
£9.99
Vampire Vape Coffee Cake
Best for: Beverage
9.5/10
Total
Features We Love
Morning Vape: Coffee and cake for the ultimate AM vape
Dessert Drink: Perfectly combines pudding and beverage flavours
Double Shot: Excellent for crafting milkshake homebrew e-liquids
Vampire Vape is mainly known for its botanically infused fruity vape juices, but to our surprise, it also offers one of the most luxurious beverage flavour concentrates on its roster.
Coffee Cake Concentrate provides a combination of stimulating flavours. Rich and aromatic coffee soaks into the soft and pliant sweet sponge of freshly baked cake. The bakery notes take the bitter edge off the coffee, which is then allowed to stand as the primary flavour in this concentrate.
Fantastic used by itself, it also lends itself well to tobacco flavours as well for the ultimate breakfast or after-dinner DIY e-liquid.
Pros
- Sweet and moreish flavour
- Deliciously dark coffee notes
- The cake flavour doesn’t overwhelm the coffee taste
Cons
- Not everyone likes coffee this sweet
- Some may prefer a pure black coffee flavour
Price
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£9.99
Just DIY RY4 Tobacco
Best for: Tobacco
9.5/10
Total
Features We Love
Trad Baccy: Authentic tobacco flavour with a sweet twist
Perfect Match: Tobacco and caramel mix perfectly
Many Uses: Surprisingly versatile and easy to add to other flavours
Tobacco doesn’t get as much attention as other zestier fruit and candy flavours, but it’s essential for thousands of recent smokers looking to quit cigarettes. Just DIY’s RY4 Tobacco Concentrate is just what you need to craft memorable baccy brews.
RY4 has a long and storied history and is supremely popular due to its genius blend of gentle tobacco and caramel sauce flavours. It is two different varieties of ‘brown’ flavour, wildly different yet somehow perfectly compatible.
RY4 Tobacco is perfect on its own for a nostalgic yet sweeter note of tobacco, but it also mixes really well with creamy and vanilla flavourings.
Pros
- Perfect for nostalgic smokers
- Good blend of smoky and sweet flavours
- It can be used with many other flavourings
Cons
- Some smokers may prefer unsweetened tobacco concentrates
- The gentle rolling tobacco taste won’t suit all tastes
Price
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£4.99
If you’re cautious about getting too creative, check out our handy DIY eliquid flavour chart to see what pairings work well.
PG & VG
PG (propylene glycol) and VG (vegetable glycerine) are vital components in almost all e-liquids. So, what are the differences when looking at PG vs VG?
PG base liquid is a flavourless chemical used as a food additive derived from ethanol. PG has a similar viscosity to water and carries flavour very well. PG tends to impart a throat or chest ‘hit’ when inhaled.
VG base liquid is a natural sugar solution extracted from fruits and vegetables, often used as a primary ingredient in many cough syrups. VG is very thick, and using it will often make vape liquid smoother to inhale. VG also makes big vape clouds, and it’s worth noting that a high-VG cloudy vape juice will only absorb into coils that are built with it in mind.
99% of e-liquids use a blend of these two ingredients as their base mix, to which flavours and nicotine will be added later. Some people do have a PG intolerance, which causes them painful irritation. Luckily, you can make 100% VG vape liquid, but remember, you’ll need a sub-ohm vape kit to use it efficiently.
DIY E-liquid Accessories
Once you have your base mixes, your flavourings and your optional nicotine shots, you’ll need a small number of mixing accessories in which to mix and bottle them as finished e-liquid.
A 120ml e-liquid bottle is suitable for use as a brewing site. You can then pour it into 10ml or 60ml bottles for easy transporting or continue to use the 120ml bottle.
A syringe is essential for getting accurate amounts of each ingredient, and those wishing to use 10ml bottles will benefit from a pipette.
We also recommend you undertake any DIY mixing with the use of gloves.
How to Mix DIY E-liquid?
With everything to hand, all you need to do now is mix the ingredients and give them a few days to brew so that the e-liquid flavour is strong enough to enjoy. It’s a relatively simple process:
- Start mixing VG and PG into a flavourless base mix. We strongly recommend using an e-liquid calculator, which will help break down how much of each ingredient you require by the ml. Remember that the initial PG/VG mix determines how thick and cloudy your final vape liquid will be.
- Add flavour concentrate to the base mix. Be sure to read the product description of the concentrate, as different flavourings suggest different amounts of concentrate be used. Also, remember to be sparing if you intend to combine several different flavour concentrates.
- Add nic shots. Do some liquid maths to determine how much you need to add to attain your desired strength. 1x 18mg nic shot added to 50ml of vape liquid will result in 60ml of 3mg strength liquid, whereas 4 shots added to 10ml will result in 60ml of 12mg strength.
- Put the lid on your mixing bottle and give it all a good, long shake to ensure everything is blending.
- Put the final mixture in a dark, cool place with the lid off for a few days to let steeping take care of the final step. If you’ve used a lot of nic shots we recommend giving it a good while to brew, up to 4-5 days.
And with all that finished, you’ve now got some ready-to-vape DIY e-liquid! It’s an easy process, but if you’d like more detailed step-by-step instructions, check out our how to make vape juice guide.
Need More Help
To summarise: DIY e-liquid is a vape juice brewed by an enthusiast using a blend of VG/PG base mix, flavour concentrates, nic shots and a little patience. It’s a value-effective way to attain a large quantity of vape liquid, and it’s great fun to boot! Visit the MIST online store to get all the DIY e-liquid products you need to make your own vape juice!
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