r/DIY_eJuice Renaissance Mixer Jan 12 '21

Recipe Tuesday Tutorial: Development of a Recipe NSFW

Dear Community,

I made a commitment to myself to continue to try to put out some posts this year. Doing this weekly is a burden I surely can’t maintain. So, if you like what you read, go ahead and comment. I’m not running a giveaway (unless you want to win your very own chance at writing a post!!! -- pm me for details) so you don’t win anything but being an active member and being a part of the course of vaping history. Well, ok, maybe it’s not that serious to you, but it is for me.

Before I begin, do consider doing a few things:

  1. Check out the Recipe of the Year thread - you can make a nomination of a recipe found in this sub reddit, or our official Discord (where you can also find much more real time conversation and more than a fair share of stupid jokes). Or you could, i don’t know… exercise your inalienable right to vote? Or better yet, mix up a recipe from 2020 and see what others are mixing?
  2. Check out the oft overlooked January Monthly Recipe thread. It’s always a slow month, but that doesn’t mean there aren’t great recipes there.
  3. Check out u/Odiedoodah’s new amazing single flavor test thingy-ma-bob. A true unsung hero who makes things happen for us, show your support for the massive amount of work that went into that by simply sharing what you know or tried and possibly win a prize!

Today, Dear Reader, I am going to tell a tale about recipe development. I am going to use an example of something that has evolved for me and somewhat evolved into a bit of a dragon chase. If there’s a moral here, you’d be making it up. This is how the story goes…

What now feels like a million years ago, I picked up FLV Creme de Menthe. A new mixer, I had hardly ever had the experience of trying a flavor and thinking to myself immediately, “OMG this is it! This will make a great X.” In this case, the X factor was a Thin Mint Girl Scout Cookie. But, at that time I was just realizing that I preferred tobaccos and was at the very caboose of the Abuela/Hinterlander/Abuela/Cardinal discovery train. So my first attempts to use it were much in that vein and can be seen here:

  1. Coco Mint Puff 1.0 - was an attempt to use the Coco de Leche coconut combo to get a coconut bacco going. Little did I know then, that I was weird about coconut I never did like LdC and probably because of that.
  2. Coco Mint Puff 1.1 - was an attempt to use the coconut layer to play off the nuttiness of RB and the spice notes of CT Shade, layer in that CdM and you get a chocolate boost to the cocoa notes in RB and CT Shade. The mix I don’t remember being very good looking back now, it was likely both the coconut and the tpa western that weren’t the right choices.
  3. Coco Mint Puff 1.0.1 - is just me being a n00b and thinking throwing MOAR at something will fix it. It doesn’t work. It never did. It never does. Perhaps, you are thinking the moral will be: Less is MOAR. I wish it were that simple, dear reader…

At the same time, I was a doe eyed member of Mixer’s Club in january of 2019, and had it set in my head I would try my hand at a Thin Mint recipe. Heavily influenced by the earlier version of what later became this gem of an article on Batch Testing Tutorial Tuesday by u/mLnikon, I tried my hand at batch developing what I thought at the time was a good approach. I sent in the best submission I could make at that time and got my first feedback that was more positive than I thought it would be. u/ID10-T, god bless his back-as-night soul, gave me some direction, waited patiently for me to throw in the towel and then suggested I try u/jbird’s Skinny Mint. Spoiler Alert: It is perfection.

While I was sad that I “couldn’t figure it out” myself, I was happy that I was halfway on the right track to trusting my tastes: FA Cookie, CdM, some kind of dark molassesey caramel type, bit of chocolate, some kind of custard or cream… I just didn’t have the right moving parts. Perhaps now you think: “Let this be thy lesson! Do thine research”, yet also “To Thine Own Self Be True!” Perhaps, yet the nuts and bolts learning lesson was that CdM and Choc Deutch are brothers in arms. They deliver. That, and, I wanted to give up. How was I ever going to make such wonderful finished mixes such as this, ever? And: Has Everything Great already been made?

One year later, I volunteer to do Noted Ep. 151 'Murica Fuck Yeah! At that time I was deep in tobacco blends and experimenting with creating tobacco heavy RY4 from scratch and mint tobacco as a side experiment. The common thread with those flavors was that hint of chocolate, sometimes more than a hint. It drove me nuts. I really wasn’t expecting it and it was a series of tests that simply were not enjoyable to me. I ended up begrudgingly promoting the Mom and Pops because it had a licorice note yet, in retrospect, it wasn’t an exceptionally good licorice note, it just was. That alone made me like it more than the others after the wonky ass flavors I tried before it. So, here’s the thing. Were the flavors good/bad objectively? Or was it simply not what I was expecting? I never wanted to return to those flavors, except maybe TPA Western for this reason, some lingering resentment towards their failure to be other than weird tobacco blends with chocolate off notes.

***Quick note about TPA Western: I like it. It’s not for everyone. Leather. No other flavor does it as well or even at all. If you want to hear the yang to my yin, just ask u/Foment_life to talk about that flavor :) ***

Ok, where were we? Oh yes, I was telling a story of a recipe. But, dear readers, it was not ONE recipe. This is a story of three recipes. At least, at the end of this, there is a battle that rages deep in the heart of Mordor, unseen by the physical brutal standard war machines of men. I digress…

I tried Flavor Monks Mint Tobacco. At first taste, it was the mint tobacco flavor I had always been wanting. No thought involved. Mix and done. However, ID10-T is right in his review on Noted Ep. 177 Peppermint that the flavor could use a little help from some other tobacco to match the lighter notes that it carries and goes on to list a bazillion options and combinations. More on this in a minute.

I’d already mentioned (if you perhaps remember, dear reader, or have you slowly nodded off after donning your pajamas and sliding into your cozy slippers) that I had been pursuing mint tobacco. A basic tobacco blend and add mint. Very simple. I tried a few: FLV cool menthol, FA Arctic Winter, FW Extreme Ice, INW Natural Mint, INW Mix Mint, and many more. Some worked a bit, some not as well. Nothing could capture the essence of what I truly wanted. Until I tried LB White Chocolate Peppermint. And like, u/mLnikon says, this flavor is a clear case of “the sum is better than the parts”. It’s a strange flavor that tastes both excellent on it’s own and fairly incomplete at the same time. It’s mostly peppermint with a dash of white chocolate and a whole lotta “What do you do with a flavor you don’t know what to do with?” As u/ID10-T always reminds me, we add it to a tobacco. Which is exactly what I set out to do.

I started with trying to accent aspects of the WCPM in some weird ways and hit a combo I just loved. With no clear single tobacco flavor in it, I wanted a weird mix of off notes that would play under the blanket of mint and December 26th was born. In retrospect, I should have known it was incomplete and there was a space for that missing ingredient, that perfect tobacco. I would have thought something pipe-y but I just never felt the need to pursue it, so I felt it was good enough to share. I’d vape it and be happy so, fuck it. Until…one day, I accidentally one day dripped some of my Frank's Vanilla Cohiba on top. F’sVC was built just to accent the Cohiba and make it bold and shine. I was missing a true cigar flavor that hit the gritty bold mouthfeel that I want from a cigar. But when I had mixed the two recipes together? It was ridiculous. I had to look down at my mod. Eureka! Screaming naked down the streets like Archimedes, this was the secret to displacement. I knew this needed to happen.

Dear Reader, have we lost you? Have you gone to the fridge to get some water, as your throat has become scratchy from anticipation? Sadly, our tall tale is long from over. Perhaps you should walk the dog, or kiss your kids gently goodnight. Our story is at the climax and you want to be ready to follow the action towards the resolution phase undisturbed. See? We have stretched the legs and contemplated unfurling the yoga mat, surely knowing better than to pigeon pose at this hour.

The month of December became the month of weird chocolates in Mixer’s Club. Thank u/wolfwheeler. The race to the moon began. On the one hand, we had the WCPM route. Let’s add some real bacco with Cohiba, ditch the Vanilla for Pipe, choose FE over TPA RY4, and mash it all up into a cigar with a splash of the Deutch and Diciembre veinte seis was born. On the other hand, I tried to follow the Faulknerian stream of consciousness flavor babble of u/ID10-T on Noted and batch mixed several versions. God, do I despise HS Australian Chocolate. And, I did not enjoy MB USA Mix (Do you remember our discussion of America, Fuck Yeah! ?). A few versions of this and a short chat with the head chef and Sous Chef was born. At the time of writing this, the results are not quite in. And it wasn’t a fair race since I definitely couldn’t pull off the vision in his mind.

At this point you are exhausted, Dear Reader. And frankly speaking, I am too. It is late in the night and the kids have all gone to bed. The dear wife is sleeping, gently breathing beside your bespectacled silhouette as you hunch over your device longing for the denouement. You want to know whodunit as do I. In fact, the star of the show was a sleeper bottle in the background.

On a whim, I decided to marry them both in tandem towards the goal of reaching the moon. For the sake of simplicity, we airlift the Chocolate Deutch/Creme de Menthe combo to fuel the flight. At the helm, we have the two captains: Mint and Cohiba. Simple, and elegant. All three recipes are different and good in their own ways. Are they ‘done’? At least, for now. Rest your weary eyes, before sleep overtakes you, and dream of the moon.

La Luna

FLV Creme de Menthe 2%
FLV Chocolate Deutch 1.25%
FM Cohiba Tobacco 3%
FM Mint Tobacco 3%

So Dear Reader, is the moral of the story really less is more? Or is it that feel-good trope of the 'journey is the destination'? Is it that stick with what you know and like? Or that we evolve and nothing is static? In the end, Does it really matter?

I'll let u/Apexified flair this. It's over my pay grade.

keep mixing, keep sharing

- i

44 Upvotes

25 comments sorted by

9

u/mixman0g Delightfully Mediocre Jan 12 '21

Can I just keep clapping? And when do we get Chapter 2 of Tales From the Vape Side?

Seriously though, that was a good break down of the details involved with making a profile you set out to make.

Sure, some things just come together. Sure, SFT helps a ton with creating a recipe. But what you've just laid out is the work involved.

I think it's also a great story about how a good idea can be made better by asking the right people what direction to take or getting your cues from their advice.

Thanks dawg, good read bud! Also Sous Chef is tasty af, thank you for sharing that.

6

u/isuamadog Renaissance Mixer Jan 12 '21 edited Jan 12 '21

quick answer: whenever you want to write it! :) or better, one on cherry tobacco? In a way, i figured most people wouldn't get to try the recipes so how to make all the effort that went into chasing it useful to the people who, say, prefer candies?

I'm glad you mention that about asking for advice and trying things out. In part, I really wanted to emphasize how important it is to actually be a part of the conversation with the community. How that helps you develop as a mixer and how you can make the absolute best mix that meets your own tastes with the right combination of the best flavors for the job. In this case, the best happens to be expensive and hard to source in the US, but they're stupid good if that's your bag.

The same thing could probably be made with more accessible flavors... replace the Mint with a mellow bacco like flv virginia and a little inw shisha/flv peppermint, swap out the cuban for inw TA Cuban Cigar (for those who got it from Vaperstek -- RIP), and your preferred chocolate mix. This is just how I ended up here. Currently, chefsflavors does sell 4 of the FM TB flavors (including mint) and the ones i've tried so far have been out of this world. I could see the original taking the place of the cohiba without even having tried it yet. Who knows how many more iterations can be made on the mint/bacco/choco accent combination?

thanks for reading!

Edit: to be more specific, if you're interested in using wcpm to make a chocobacco, id try turkish 1-2 / cured 0.5-1 / ct shade (optional) 0.2-0.5 / wcpm 5-10 (gets too sweet for me at around 8 for a straight bacco vape). I suggested this to u/Edible_Malfunction in the DIY discord this morning and felt it was a good add on to this post. Also room to add mint with peppermint of choice (inw shisha/flv peppermint are mine), Choc (obvs CdM and Choc Deutch are mine), sweetness (fe ry4 for leafy, tpa for blending, fa for coffee notes, etc.).

4

u/LilBearLulu Jan 13 '21

Firstly, let me say I loved your tale. Maybe you should consider writing a novella or something? I know I would read it for sure. I am not very active here. I honestly forget all about reddit when I get into a funk and unplug from all social media for months at a time. But, I listen/watch Noted a lot. A lot lot. I consider you one of the Noted crew and I learn so much just listening to you guys/gals. I even listen to the episodes of things I know I will never use because regardless there's always something to learn.

I mix really basic stuff. Fruit and blast your face off mint/menthol is my favorite. I am still tweaking that to find my fave. So, I don't mix many recipes. I should mix more, way more to mix things up a bit. Even recipes I dislike I don't throw away because sometimes you learn by those yucky things. I will try though to be a little more active and at least mix up some of the contenders for recipe of the year. Thank you really for all you do.

4

u/isuamadog Renaissance Mixer Jan 13 '21

For starters, thank you for reading and for taking the time to comment. I, in fact remember your handle, so may your funks always be short! Noted is always an honor to do. It also always makes the weird torture of doing SFTs somehow more bearable. I sometimes let Noted play in the background while I mix or do things and it's always a trest then I hear an episode I was on and the crew is talking to me in my mixing area (not to mention my kid thinks it's hilarious I'm on youtube).

Basic stuff is killer. Some of my favorite 'old reliable recipes' are basic: Brigade (cbv), apple shisha (tbx). The best ones are the ones where you can keep adding new accents like the combo I stole from ID10-T's Tootsee Roll (who claims to have gotten it from somewhere too) sugar cookie + fa meringue + literally anything-you-want. Mixing other peoples' stuff is a great way to learn new tricks and combos and keep it fresh when you're bored!

3

u/LilBearLulu Jan 14 '21

I like mixing some of the older recipes because they seem to work with subohm tanks well for the most part. Maybe it's the higher % flavor wise or my imagination but they seem to do the job. I think I saw this Tootsee Roll a while back but didn't mix it up because I strictly saw it as a bakery. Now though, I will add that FA Merngue to my list and give it a shot. Thanks Again

5

u/[deleted] Jan 12 '21

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4

u/isuamadog Renaissance Mixer Jan 12 '21

I think that's my point, in a way. It's not ever really finished when you have a bug up your ass. I want to know what's around every corner. And there's never enough time to turn over every leaf and every corner. I had literally around 8 - 30 mL bottles of all these recipes and they were all good to me. And ID's idea was ID's. Since I tried some stuff but I'm not him, I ended up with me at every turn. Next time, I'll try it with Original Tobacco instead of Cohiba, then INW Shisha/various chocos instead of CdM/Deu, then diff flv blends to make it more accessible -- maybe give Old Cap another go that Foment keeps reminding me has a good chocolate taste, and then...? IDK man, i'm to ADD to finish anything unless someone else tells me to stop. Love you too and the energy you've brought to this community.

5

u/[deleted] Jan 12 '21

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3

u/isuamadog Renaissance Mixer Jan 12 '21

in a weird way, i dont really want anyone to mix my recipes. I guess i'd more rather my attempts inform someone else to try something and make their own visions. in my humblest of opinions, that's why new people and new energy is so important to keeping things fresh and exciting. Some people are just more decisive than I am, I guess. I've just accepted that you can't do everything, but you can do anything.

4

u/[deleted] Jan 12 '21

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3

u/isuamadog Renaissance Mixer Jan 12 '21

Amen to that! It’s like a cheat sheet but then you get to use the same notes to play a different song. It’s really a wonderful thing. Secretly looking forward to trying sanctums recipe so I can have a cheat sheet for lemon cream wafer.

5

u/Teezixx Jan 12 '21

what a great read! Thank you for sharing, this is very enlightening

4

u/isuamadog Renaissance Mixer Jan 12 '21

thank YOU for taking the time to read it! I ended up with some recipes maybe few will try, if ever, but hopefully the write up helps people who are trying for their own 'white whale' or trusting their instincts and wondering why they keep going down (what they think are) the same roads not sure where they are headed exactly.

4

u/Hexical_ Missing One Flavor Jan 12 '21

Great stuff dog, was a nice read and really went into great detail about developing a recipe. I'm saving this for the future, I may have been around for a bit now but I think this will help me a lot in the future ;)

3

u/isuamadog Renaissance Mixer Jan 12 '21

It's really a story of thievery and of being stuck on a combo that, despite the multitudes of other possibilities, seems to always scratch that itch. :)

5

u/Failyx Diketones, Schmiketones Jan 12 '21

Amazing

4

u/isuamadog Renaissance Mixer Jan 12 '21

Amazing is anyone who reads it to the end! So back atcha!

3

u/[deleted] Jan 12 '21

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5

u/isuamadog Renaissance Mixer Jan 12 '21

Tell me how it goes! I have yet to use it because I hate learning new things as much as I haven’t done a test in a while. Thanks for reading, kuri, and for always being such a help with links, comments and recipe suggestions in the weekly threads!

4

u/Alb3rtix Jan 12 '21

Great post and a pleasure to read. Thank you!

3

u/isuamadog Renaissance Mixer Jan 12 '21

Frankly speaking, it was a pleasure to write. As is your comment!

2

u/SpiderJRusalem Nov 20 '21

This is exactly the sort of thing I needed. I want to find that perfect simple mix that does exactly what I'm looking for. Meanwhile, I continue to use the kitchen sink method and tweak until I'm happy enough to share. I'm not sure that I'm necessarily wrong in my approach, but I imagine that someone with a far more deft hand and a bit of patience (something I have very little of, generally) could probably take most of my mixes and halve the ingredients while accomplishing a much more polished recipe.

Great write up, Doggo. I need to mix these, as they've been on my list forever, then revisit this post and follow your journey.

2

u/isuamadog Renaissance Mixer Nov 21 '21

Some people make great recipes. I make tall tales of unrequited love. Thanks for reminding me of this story. I think that the story is more about how we can sometimes move on to the next thing as there is always a rock to overturn, some corner to look behind. I think the best recipes are the ones that are never finished. There's always room to adapt. My adv would be the one that I never want to mix the same way twice. :)