Podcast (independentjo-audio): Download (Duration: 42:28 — 20.8MB)
Make your own ejuice. Today we talk about what it takes to create your own electronic cigarette juice.
First thing you should know when reading this is that we in the ecig community like to refer to using an electronic cigarette as “vaping”. We refer to smoking a cigarette as “smoking”. The main reason for this is because of all the bullshit the government and tobacco companies are trying to push into law. They do not like the idea of electronic cigarettes because it is cheaper and much more healthy than regular cigarettes. Tobacco companies are not set up to sell electronic devices they are established in producing tobacco products. It is very similar to the push back car manufacturers had (and in most cases still do have) against the electric car. Making the change actually changes most of your business and assets. It costs a lot to make the change in both manufacturing and marketing.
So lets dive into what is in ejuice and how we go about mixing this stuff up.
What ingredients you will need:
Flavors or essential oils
PG – Propylene Glycol
VG – Vegetable Glycerin
Nicotine optional
eJuice or eliquid calculator
That’s basically all you need to make your juice. There are only four main ingredients.
When you start buying juice you will see figures like these: 20/80, 30/70, 50/50, 70/30, 80/20
Most mixes of juice have about 10% flavoring and 10% nicotine. That means you have about 80% of stuff you need to add as filler. That 80% of filler will be you PG and your VG.
What exactly are PG and VG?
PG – Propylene Glycol is a thin and tasteless organic liquid that is usually used as a food preservative. PG burns quickly and hot. With ecigs this means that it will give you a harsh throat hit feeling like you would get from a real cigarette. Kind of a burning feeling in your throat. If you get a bad or allergic feeling from vaping, it is usually due to PG.
VG – Vegetable Glycerin is essentially vegetable oils or a more fine extraction of vegetable oils. Click the link to read more about the extraction process. VG is very thick and very sweet. VG is what produces the most vapor to fill your lungs.
PG is used mostly as a thinning agent and in my opinion is overused by ejuice manufacturers. The reason they like to use a lot of PG (in most castes) is because it is very cheap. They try and substitute the sweet flavor of VG with flavoring. I personally do not like a lot of PG. The only reason I use it is to thin out the VG which is very thick. I have thought about using alcohol instead but have not tried it YET!
VG is my favorite ingredient because I like the feeling of having a lot of “smoke” vapor in my lungs.
That about wraps it up for what PG and VG are for. Now we dive into flavors.
There are thousands of different flavors available for purchase. I try to only use flavors that come from natural and organic essential oils / extracts. So you get the flavor of whatever they extracted the oil from. Sometimes they have to mix multiple extracts from different sources to get the desired taste. I want what I am vaping to be as healthy as possible. A great place to purchase pure organic essential oils is from Kettle Care Inc. Just let them know you will be vaping this stuff and the CEO Lynn Wallingford will hook you up with the best stuff for it. I would also like to state that Kettle Care Inc. is a family company so I am promoting them 
They make “in my opinion” the absolute best organic body care products in the world.
They also make flavors that taste just like you favorite traditional cigarette. You can find Camel, Marlboro, Menthol, etc etc. at almost any ejuice selling site. I used a Camel tobacco flavor for about the first two weeks of quitting smoking and then found out I like fruit flavors better. As a “hard core man” I thought to myself that I would never vape that pussy fruity stuff but now that is all I like to vape.
Okay enough about flavors. The next ingredient is nicotine.
Nicotine, as most people know, is that addictive substance that is in cigarettes. Nicotine is actually an alkaloid found in nightshade plants like tobacco. A fun fact: nicotine inhibits chromatin-modifying enzymes (class I and II histone deacetylases) which increases the ability of cocaine to cause an addiction. Maybe its not the cocaine that is actually addictive? I wouldn’t know.
Okay so the nicotine you get for vaping is actually a plant extract. This is usually extracted from tobacco but can also be extracted from other nightshade plants. Usually you will not be dealing with straight nicotine. Instead you buy your base PG or VG with nicotine already in it. I purchase both so that I can get different variations of mixes. You will have to figure out what works best for you with the ejuice calculators. I recommend purchasing your base products from Vapure. Vapure is not a sponsor, I just know that their product is 100% made in the USA (including the nicotine). They also sell starter kits which is how I got started.
Now that you have all the supplies you need it is time to start mixing. To do this we found a couple of programs which are listed here:
eJuice Me Up is my wife’s favorite calculator but is a little more advanced. He has tons of options but is only available for Windows. Us Mac users out there are shit out of luck.
There is a basic calculator out on the iPhone app store called eJuice. This does okay but has limited in options.
My favorite calculator out there is Ahlusion. It is middle ground as far as all the tweaking you can do but it does a damned good job at getting the job done for me. Holly is the true ejuicing genius.
Another we found was from eliquid calculator. I did not have the patience to try and figure this one out but maybe it will work great for you.
Hopefully that is enough to get you started. You can find more calculators online by searching “ejuice calculator”.
The DIY kit I keep mention in the video can be purchased from Vapure. Here is a direct link to their DIY kit.
To build the entire kit I have in the video you need to get the DIY kit from Vapure and then get about 10 bottles of flavor extract from Kettle Care.
Leave us some comments and questions if you have any.
