Getting Started: DIY 101 – Mixing Your Own eLiquid

I really wrestled with writing this post. I am currently in the process of starting a juice company (starting small and local, will be expanding to direct online sales at some point), so on one hand this is (at least in theory) taking away from my livelihood. On the other hand, we have the FDA.

Fuck those guys. Man I hate government sticking their noses in where they don’t belong. Bottom line is that I believe that there is a real possibility that the FDA is going to try to squeeze out all of the small businesses that currently make a living from vaping. I hope I’m wrong, but there is just too much money in it for them, especially since vaping is destroying the revenue the states have become dependent on from the Big Tobacco settlements. Make of that what you will.

So, I’m dumping an enormous chunk of my savings into something that may get all dicked up by the government in the not too distant future. The best way I can think of to fight that is to spread the knowledge that I have about making juice. In all likelihood the first thing that the FDA will target is eLiquid vendors. The language in the proposed deeming regulations makes it pretty obvious. Even if the worst comes to pass, I’ll stay in business, I just probably won’t be able to sell premixed liquids. I’ll have to do “flavor doublers” like the Aussies are dealing with.

There are plenty of resources on the internet that will allow anyone who has the desire, to make their own eLiquid. I found the information, you can too. I’m not helping me by withholding this information, I’d be doing you all a disservice. Making my own liquid was part of my vaping journey, and it will be for many others. I’d like to give back to the community that helped me learn to make this stuff by helping others make it.

I really went back and forth over this, in the end I think that people who buy juice will continue to buy juice (for as long as they can), and those who want to make it will make it. I’ve been making juice for a fairly long time, and I still buy eLiquid from other vendors. I vape a lot of my own stuff (I love variety), but I still buy and try juice from other vendors for much the same reasons that chefs still eat at restaurants. Sometimes others do a particular thing better, sometimes I just don’t want to go to the hassle, and sometimes I just like seeing what everybody is raving about.

I’ll warn you now, this rabbit hole is deep. Mixing your own eLiquid is not something that is for everyone, or that everyone can do well. It is as much art as it is science, and just because you can successfully combine some liquids into something vapable does not mean that you can make something that is great.

Safety First

In the Juice Primer I talked a bit about the dangers of liquid nicotine. Since we are (most likely) going to be working with much higher concentrations of nicotine than you get in Vendor Juice, I am going to add a bit to that here.

• Liquid nicotine can kill you. Most eLiquid makers work with concentrated liquid nicotine at strengths right around 100mg/ml. This is way higher than you can vape safely. If you do not pay attention to what you are doing, you can very easily poison yourself. I highly recommend going to your local community college and taking a lab safety class (or finding a chem student to instruct you in basic lab safety and protocol). Seriously, this stuff is dangerous, and safety requirements cannot be overstated here. If you spill liquid nicotine in a concentration greater than 36mg/ml on your skin you are at risk for nicotine poisoning. Liquid nicotine in concentrations greater than 100mg/ml should be treated as Hazardous Materials, and cleaned up appropriately.
• I am not giving you advice here. I am sharing what I have found on the internet. As such you need to consult qualified specialists before actually following any of the processes or procedures in this post. I am not responsible for your actions. By reading any further you are agreeing to release me, and all of my heirs and assigns from any liability or responsibility for anything you do with this material. This material is presented for informational purposes only. If you do not agree with this statement, you must close this page now.
• Safety equipment (including gloves, safety glasses, and a lab coat/apron should be worn at all times when handling eliquid components.
• If you have children in your home, lock up the liquid nicotine. A tool box and lock from home depot is a cheap investment to protect curious children from something that could very well kill them. Seriously, just lock it up. If you’re not using it, keep it locked up and out of the reach of children.

Your First Steps

Before we even get started with anything eLiquid related go get a writing utensil and a notebook. Make notes on everything that you do when making eLiquid. Make notes while you are reading this post. Write down absolutely EVERYTHING. The worst feeling you can have is to vape the last of the best eLiquid that you have ever had, that you made, and relaize that you have no idea what is in it, or how you made it. I’ve had to redo hours of mixing and testing because I forgot how much of what exactly I added.

Almost every person who makes eLiquid will have this happen to them. For me it was pretty frustrating. Save yourself the frustration. Go get something to take notes with.

Once you have note taking materials, Write this down:

• Vegetable Glycerin
• Propylene Glycol
• Liquid nicotine
• Flavoring and additives

That’s all that you’ll need to put into eLiquid. Well that and sweat, tears, frustration, joy, and money.

Before you get to that point you’re going to need to buy some equipment, some ingredients, you’ll need to find a recipe, and you’ll need to do some math or download a mixing calculator.

Resources

Here are some links to things that you’re going to want to have.

Mixing Calculators

There are many mixing calculators for eLiquid, for everything from your phone to online, to spreadsheets. I’ll list several here, the one I use is this one. It is by far the most feature rich and thorough mixing calculator I’ve come across, and puts the others to shame.

Here are some others:

• Recipe Calculator (this is the one I use, it’s so good I have to list it twice)
• eJuiceMeUp (install required)
• e-liquid-recipes.com (online)
• .1ml Mixer (online)

DIY Forums

These are the places you’ll find recipes and help with your mixing

• r/DIY_eJuice
• ECF DIY Forum

Flavor and Supply Vendors

There are hundreds of manufacturers that make flavorings that can be used to make eLiquid, but not all flavorings are safe to vape. You’re going to want to carefully research flavorings you are considering using, in general you want to stay away from any flavoring that has any of the following:

• Sugar
• Oil
• Diketones (diacetyl, acetoin, acetyl propionyl)

A full discussion of all of the flavors and flavor makers of DIY eJuice is far outside the scope of this article. There are a handful of flavor makers that are commonly used in vaping (the stuff in parentheses are the common abbreviations used for the vendors):

• The Flavor Apprentice (TFA/TPA)
• Capella’s Flavor Drops (CA or CAP)
• FlavourArt (FA)
• Flavor West (FW)
• Inawera (IW)
• Hangsen (HS)
• LorAnn’s (LA or LAN for the Naturals line)

This isn’t exhaustive, but these are the common ones. Some of the flavors made by those vendors are not safe to vape. You need to do your research (check the forums listed above and you’ll find the ones that are ok).

All flavors are not created equally. Strawberry can taste radically different from different vendors. Flavor is entirely subjective, so you’ll have to try them until you find one you like.

Some of the resellers that we buy from mark the flavors that are potentially unsafe to vape. Here are some of the vendors I buy from:

• Bull City Vapor (the is the cheapest vendor I’ve found for sample sizes of most flavorings, they have an outstanding selection too and mark potentially unsafe flavors clearly)
• Wizard Labs (generally they have everything you need to get started making eLiquid)
• Heartland Vapes
• RTS Vapes
• ecigexpress
• One Stop DIY Shop

Finding a Recipe

This is perhaps the easiest thing and simultaneously the hardest thing about making eLiquid. There are thousands of recipes online, and millions more possibilities when inventing your own. And there is almost no way to tell if the one you find is going to be any good.

After you have hundreds of hours into DIY you’ll start to develop the ability to tell if you’re going to like a recipe, and if the flavors are in the right proportions (which is a topic for an entirely different post). Until then, you’re going to have to either experiment, or just guess that you might like a given recipe based on what is in it.

Just search one of the sites listed above and find a recipe that sounds like it might be good to you. For your first mix it is probably a good idea to try a recipe that others have said they like.

In the interest of keeping things complete for this post, I’ll use an example recipe that you can follow along with at home if you like (most everybody that has tried this likes it):

Pillow Mints
- 10% Double Chocolate Clear (TFA)
- 5%  Creme De Menthe (TFA)
- 1% Menthol (TFA)

This is usually posted with another name, but I don’t want to run afoul of copyright issues. It reminds me of a rectangular mint that comes in a green wrapper. It’s pretty dang good.

This is a good time to go over the way recipes are formatted on most sites. That first ingredient means that whatever PG/VG ratio and whatever nic content I want, I need to make sure that 10% of the total eLiquid content is a flavor called Double Chocolate Clear from The Flavor Apprentice (abbreviated TFA here).

Lots of people start with TFA and branch out from there (which is why I chose that particular recipe).

So we can see from the recipe that this particular eLiquid will have a total of 16% flavoring in its final form.

The percentages are of total liquid volume (or weight, but we’ll talk about that later). The flavors are concentrated, so adding them to a volume of other liquids will dilute them as needed (in some rare cases flavors may have to be diluted before they can be used, but that is the exception, and will be noted where it is needed).

If we want a 40PG/60VG end product, with 6mg/ml nic content we have some math to do.  This is where a mixing calculator comes in rather handy. Mixing calculators do the math for you. You tell it what you have, and what you want, and it tells you how much of each ingredient to put in. I suck at math, so I’m not going to even attempt to explain the long form here, just use a mixing calculator.

Let’s assume we have a bottle of 36mg/ml nicotine solution that is PG based (you can get either PG or VG based nicotine solutions, and in a range of strengths). To end up with a final product that is in the ratio we want with 6mg/ml nicotine content, we’ll need to mix together the following:

36mg/ml Nicotine (PG).........:  2.5ml (16.7% of total)
PG Dilutant...................:  1.1ml (7.3% of total)
VG Dilutant...................:  9ml (60% of total)
Double Chocolate Clear (TFA)..:  1.5ml (10% of total)
Creme De Menthe (TFA).........:  0.75ml (5% of total)
Menthol (TFA).................:  0.15ml (1% of total)

This will yield 15ml of eLiquid with 40PG/60VG at 6mg/ml nicotine strength when mixed together in those quantities.

Worth noting here is that the majority of flavors that are used in making eLiquid are suspended in PG. It is also common for them to be suspended in alcohol. Some flavorings are suspended in VG. If you are unsure, consult the manufacturer or one of the DIY forums to confirm, as having that information is important to achieving the correct PG/VG ratio in the end product.

Now that we have a recipe, we know what flavorings we need to make some eLiquid, so we need to go shopping.

Buying Ingredients

One of the downsides of this whole thing is that shipping is rather more expensive than any given liquid flavoring, so it helps to minimize the number of vendors that we need to order from to get everything we need.

I highly encourage you to try to find a vendor that has everything that you need in stock, as it will save you shipping costs.

Since our example recipe is all TFA flavors, and we are going to need PG, VG, Nicotine, and lab equipment I would probably shop for this at Wizard Labs. They are the most likely vendor to have everything needed to make the recipe listed above.

When first starting in DIY, you will likely not have any supplies, so the first bottle of eLiquid is going to be rather expensive (relatively).

If we’re ordering for just this recipe, we’ll need the following ingredients:

120ml - 36mg/ml Nicotine Solution (PG)....:  $8.79
120ml - Propylene Glycol..................:  $3.19
120ml - Vegetable Glycerin................:  $3.19
8ml - Creme De Menthe (TFA)...............:  $1.49
8ml - Double Chocolate Clear (TFA)........:  $1.49
8ml - Menthol (WL)........................:  $1.49

 

Oops, looks like Wizard Labs isn’s stocking TFA Menthol. Menthol is pretty much all the same from all manufacturers, is just varies in strength from some. We can either choose to buy TFA Menthol from another vendor (and eat a shipping charge), or substitute the Wizard Labs brand Menthol. I chose to use the WL Menthol simply because it’s not worth the extra shipping cost for me. Your call.

So far our total for ingredients is $19.64 before shipping.

We’re also going to need something to measure the ingredients (or weigh them, that will be covered in the Methodology section below), and something to put them in.

Necessary Equipment

A quick note about equipment. This stuff is frequently out of stock at common vendors. You may have no choice but to split your order among vendors, as I had to do when writing this post. I tried to find a single vendor with everything in stock, but at that time it wasn’t possible. It sucks, but those are the breaks. This is the main reason I try to buy more of whatever I am getting than I need at that moment. I would never place orders like I’m showing here, there would be much more in them.

If you’re not mixing by weight, you really should be using syringes to measure volume. I’ll cover this more in the Methodology section below. For the sake of this article, I’m going to choose to measure by volume, using syringes, which means I need to buy syringes.

Assuming we’re mixing by volume, we’re going to need the following:

• Bottles (always get more than you need, they’re cheap, and you need them to mix anything)
• Syringes

Bottles come in all shapes and sizes. I like to mix in bottles that are larger than the volume I’m mixing so that I have room to shake them afterwards. For this recipe I think I’ll choose this bottle. Unfortunately at the time of this writing, Wizard Labs is out of stock for 30ml and 50ml bottles. So I have some choices to make. I can either order 10ml bottles and will have to recalculate my recipe, or I can buy bottles from another vendor and eat it on the shipping.

Since the recipe called for TFA Menthol which Wizard Labs didn’t have, it makes sense for me to buy bottles and TFA Menthol from another vendor. Alternatively I could choose to use another vendor for the entire order to save on shipping (assuming I can find one with everything in stock). Unfortunately I was unable to find a vendor at the time I wrote this post that had both TFA Menthol and 30ml plastic dropper bottles in stock. Bummer, but those are the breaks. So since I don’t want to purchase 100 bottles, I’ll place an order with a second vendor only for bottles.

In the real world, I would really pad that order with additional flavors that I wanted to try that Wizard Labs didn’t stock. If I were to order bottles from Bull City Vapors, I would probably get some Inawera or FlavourArt flavors that I haven’t tried or that I am running low on. My DIYing gets rather expensive at times. I’ll go with this bottle, but because I’m gonna pay full shipping, I’ll get 10 of them to make it worth it.

So I paid full shipping for $5 in bottles from Bull City Vapor.

We still need syringes (which Bull City didn’t have in stock, but luckily Wizard Labs did). I prefer to have one syringe for each ingredient. You certainly can do it with one syringe, but you’re going to have to clean it after each ingredient, and you risk flavor contamination. For the cost, for me, it’s just worth it to buy one for each.

So we added the following to our Widard Labs order:

1ml Syringe (x3)........:  $2.25
5ml Syringe (x2)........:  $1.18
10ml Syringe............:  $0.69
14g Blunt needle (x5)...:  $3.15

So all in all, we spent $26.91 at Wizard Labs and $5 at Bull City Vapor plus shipping from both. Figure $45 all said (probably a touch high for shipping, but not much). Technically that means we are making a $45 bottle of eLiquid today, but anyhting else we make with those supplies is free.

One of the nice benefits of the mixing calculator I use is that it will tell you how much a given recipe costs. The recipe we are making using these supplies cost about $0.80 for the 15ml of eLiquid we are going to end up with, as shown here:

Click to enlarge

Of course like everything else, the cost per ml goes down when you buy in larger quantities.

My first DIY order was something like $270, but I ordered more than 80 flavors, and a bunch of equipment. The buy in for DIY is kinda steep, but once you have everything you can make eLiquid all day long for about $0.05 per ml. An investment that will definitely pay for itself.

 

Methodology

Before we start mixing eLiquid we need to talk about how we’re going to measure our ingredients.

You have two basic choices:

• By volume
• By weight

There are merits to both, but in my opinion measuring by weight is superior. Measuring by weight is now covered in DIY 102, but I’ll just say this here: it is faster, less expensive, and far more accurate than measuring by volume. Liquid mixing by weight is how chemists and manufacturers do it for a reason, primarily for repeatability.

I am using mixing by volume here only because it is much easier to explain (and this post is going to be long enough as it is, we’re at ~3200 words right now for those counting).

Since this post is using volume measurements, I want to talk a bit about how you can measure in volume, and why I chose syringes.

There are basically four ways to measure by volume:

• Count drops
• Syringes
• Pipettes
• Volumetric marked containers (beakers or flasks)

In the quantities that we are using volumetric marked containers is a bit of overkill, and can be difficult to get repeatable measurements with, plus some of that liquid is going to stay in the container.

Counting drops is the absolute least accurate method. Every dropper is going to dispense a different size drop, as will how you hold that container (vertical versus horizontal versus cocked at an angle will all produce different size drops).

Pipettes can be the most accurate of the volumetric measurements, but a 1ml marked Class A Glass Mohr Pipette is going to cost about $20, plus you’re going to need a pipette pump to make using it accurate (cheapest is about $7, but you lose accuracy there). Plastic pipettes are great for measuring by weight, but not as accurate for volume as a syringe. If you’re going to spend Glass pipette money, you’d be better served by investing in a good digital balance (scale).

Syringes offer the least variance in measuring in the volumes we are talking, and when not measuring by weight, at a reasonable cost.

Syringes can (in most cases) be used without a blunt tip needle attached, but the needles make it a much easier process. Except when measuring VG. VG is thicker than the lies told by politicians and anti tobacco activists about vaping. Seriously it’s thick. I use 14g needles because they are larger than most (smaller numbers means larger diameter with needles). I typically extract VG without a needle, but it can be done with a 14g needle. Try getting 25ml of VG into a syringe with an 18g needle. Your fingers will hate you for it.

To measure with a syringe: draw some liquid into the syringe, and keeping the needle submerged in the liquid, “purge” the syringe by pushing all of it back into the bottle. Now draw out the correct amount. If you did it right you should now have a syringe with no air bubbles in it. With syringes, measure using the bottom of the plunger (they are convex) as the marking point for the graduations on the cylinder.

When you have depressed the syringe all the way, you have dispensed the measured amount, but some still remains in the needle. Do not add this to the liquid you are mixing (unless you don’t care about accuracy). You can carefully put it back in the flavoring container (risking possible contamination) or just flush it with water.

Remember that you are working with highly concentrated liquids here, so a spill is no joke. I spilled about 3ml of Banana flavoring in my kitchen once, and the whole front of the house smelled of banana for a couple of days, despite my best efforts to clean it up. Delicious banana.

I find that using a mixing tray to hold all supplies when mixing is a good way to contain potential spills. You can get these from Amazon or most lab equipment supply stores. In a pinch you could use a sturdy cookie sheet. The lip that surrounds the tray should keep any spill localized and allow for more thorough cleanup.

Ok I think we’re ready to mix our first eLiquid!

Making Your First eLiquid

Safety first! Glasses on, gloves and apron/labcoat on.

Note taking materials and writing instrument at hand. Print out your recipe, or write it down in your notebook so it is at hand for easy reference.

Gather your ingredients, your bottle(s) (make sure to rinse with distilled water and thoroughly dry them before hand) and your measuring instruments. Lay out a work area (somewhere clean and free from obstructions and debris). Ideally you want a non porous surface, as a spilled flavor can potentially soak into a wood surface leaving a strong odor behind.

Here we go!

The order we mix things in does not really matter. I like to add my nicotine last, as that is the only part that is dangerous. However, the very first thing I do is shake the nicotine solution I will be using. This ensures that the nicotine is well distributed in the carrier, and will be delivered in the right concentration. Now set it aside and let all the microbubbles you just created rise to the top (this usually takes about 10 minutes for most of them to dissipate).

One additional piece of equipment that you’ll want is a cup to discard your used syringes for later cleaning. I use a red plastic solo cup, but any container will do. since my container is light and top heavy, I fill it about half way with distilled water. I call this the discard cup (original I know).

I like to add flavors first, then PG/VG, then nicotine solution, so that is the order I’ll go in here. Follow along or do it in whatever order makes sense to you.

1. Measure and add 0.15ml Menthol to your empty 30ml bottle using a 1ml syringe.
2. Cap the ingredient and set it aside, well away from your unused ingredients, place the syringe in the discard cup.
3. Note what you just did in your notebook.
4. Measure and add 1.5ml of Double Chocolate Clear to your 30ml bottle using a 1ml syringe.
5. Cap the ingredient and set it aside, well away from your unused ingredients, place the syringe in the discard cup.
6. Note what you just did in your notebook.
7. Measure and add 0.75ml of Creme De Menthe to your 30ml bottle using a 1ml syringe.
8. Cap the ingredient and set it aside, well away from your unused ingredients, place the syringe in the discard cup.
9. Note what you just did in your notebook.
10. Measure and add 9ml of VG to your 30ml bottle using a 10ml syringe.
11. Cap the ingredient and set it aside, well away from your unused ingredients, place the syringe in the discard cup.
12. Note what you just did in your notebook.
13. Measure and add 1.1ml of PG to your 30ml bottle using a 5ml syringe.
14. Cap the ingredient and set it aside, well away from your unused ingredients, place the syringe in the discard cup.
15. Note what you just did in your notebook.
16. Measure and add 2.5ml of 36mg/ml nicotine solution to your 30ml bottle using a 5ml syringe.
17. Note what you just did in your notebook.
18. Cap the ingredient and set it aside, well away from your unused ingredients, place the syringe in the discard cup.
19. Cap the 30ml bottle and shake well.
20. Clean up all materials.

You are now in possession of one 15ml bottle of eLiquid that (if everything was measured correctly) is 40PG/60VG, 6mg/ml nicotine strength, and delicious.

This particular recipe is good right away (just like Vendor Juice, some DIY eLiquid needs to be aged before it tastes good), so go ahead and try it.

I had intended to add a Tips and Tricks heading here, but this post is pretty long already, and that really deserves its own post.

Did I leave something out? Make a mistake? Let me know in the comments!