How to make liquid for electronic cigarettes

General concepts and terminology can be found in our previous article"How to choose an electronic cigarette".

Composition of liquid for electronic cigarettes

In modern vaping liquids, there are at least three non—replaceable components — food glycerin, propylene glycol and flavorings. They may also contain nicotine, but its presence is not necessary, it all depends on the preferences of the steamer.

The so-called "premium" liquids, the price of which reaches $ 50 per 30 mL, include various additives such as distilled water, sweeteners, coolers, etc. The exact recipe for such premium flavors is not disclosed by any manufacturer, but there are enthusiasts who try to reproduce them at home. Such liquids are called clones or self-mixing.

To prepare the liquid at home you will need:

base or base (PG+VG);
flavors;
liquid nicotine "sotka" (optional);
distilled water;
tare — bottles in which self-kneading will be infused;
syringes.

Let's consider each of the points in more detail:

The so-called "base" or "base" is a ready-made mixture of polypropylene glycol PG and food glycerin VG. The most popular values of the VG-PG ratio are 50-50, 70-30, 80-20 and 60-40%.

PG is responsible for taste transfer, it is the transport of nicotine and flavorings to the taste buds, VG is responsible for the amount of vapor and viscosity. It is not necessary to buy a ready-made base, it can be made by mixing these ingredients yourself, but it will turn out to be more expensive in money and time.

There are a lot of flavors on the market, both flavors and manufacturers, all of them differ in quality, which in turn affects the final taste of the samozamesa. From one to eight, or even ten flavors are added to the liquid at the same time, recipes can be found by simply entering the appropriate search query, there is also a website where people from all over the world publish their recipes: http://e-liquid-recipes.com /.

There are fruit flavors — apple, cherry, banana, strawberry; confectionery pastries — pie, cookies, donut; various creams — custard, tiramisu, chocolate, tonic — menthol, mint, lemonade, tobacco flavors and this is only a small part of the list of available flavors.

They sell flavors most often in 5 mL bottles and their names always coincide with the names in the recipes, so it's very easy to find and buy them by looking into any vape shop.

There are also so—called concentrates — ready-made mixtures of flavors. They will be useful to those who have no desire to purchase flavors separately and mix them independently, it is enough to mix such a concentrate with the base and the self-mixture is ready.

Nicotine may be needed if you decide to make the base yourself, in other cases you can buy a base that already contains it. It is usually sold in 100% consistency, the so-called "nicotine-weave", it is highly toxic, so when working with it, you need to be extremely careful, and also store it in a place inaccessible to children and animals.

The table below shows the calculations of how much nicotine should be added to the base to get the desired strength:

It is difficult to say what dose of nicotine a particular person will like, this is influenced by factors such as smoking experience, the device on which the liquid will be steamed, etc.

Distilled water is not an obligatory component of self-mixing, in fact it does not affect the taste in any way, but due to the presence of water, the liquid becomes more fluid, wetting the cotton of the atomizer better and the steam is released much thicker. It is recommended to use distilled water because other water, usually, always contains foreign substances (salts, gases).

Also, to prepare the liquid, you will need a special container in which the self-mixture will be infused. The choice of containers is very diverse, there are plastic, glass and even metal bottles, and the variety of shapes and volumes is so great that there should be no difficulties with the choice.

You can choose based solely on your own preferences, because the shape, material, colour and size do not affect the final taste of the manufactured liquid in any way.

In order to measure the right amount of components, you will need syringes, a "five" or "ten" for the base, and an insulin one for flavorings (all this can be easily bought at a pharmacy).

After all the preparations, it remains only to choose the recipe for the liquid that we will cook and you can start. The amount of added ingredients is usually written in mL, but the number of drops can also be specified.

The order in which the ingredients are added does not matter, so just mix everything in one container, then tighten the lid tightly and shake well. Manufacturers of flavors recommend infusing self–mixtures for about 10 to 20 days, but usually one week is enough. If you start to steam it ahead of time, then the liquid may have a "chemical" taste, which means that the ingredients have not yet had time to mix properly and it takes more time for the tastes to smooth out.

To speed up the chemical process, a bottle of liquid can be placed in a warm place — on a battery or in hot water. There are also special ultrasonic devices that accelerate diffusion and reduce the infusion of liquid, it is enough to put a bottle of self–mixing into such a device and wait for about 10 to 20 minutes. It is worth noting that such devices are not cheap and will be useful rather for mass production.

For those who are going to experiment with flavors and create their own recipes, a self—mixing calculator will be very useful — https://e-smoker.com.ua/eliquid-calculator /.

In it, using the slider, you can select the desired result of strength, volume of liquid and PG / VG ratio, after which the programme will automatically calculate the amount of all ingredients in drops and milliliters.

Conclusion

It is quite simple to make a liquid at home, and with experience this process will take less and less time. Self-mixtures allow you to get the strength and taste that are not in the liquids sold, you can pick up the desired ratio of ingredients to the drop and experiment with flavors.

It is also advantageous in terms of savings, for example, for the same money that you buy the finished liquid, you can make 2-3 times more self-mixing, but of course it depends on the prices and quality of the components.