What are concentrates?

Concentrates are the flavours that go into your e-liquid, they come as concentrated food grade flavours, hence the name. We have a large variety of flavours from some of the best brands in the industry, including our own brand.

Starter-Kits_Strawberry-Kit-Large_Concentrates

Choosing the right flavour concentrate

It is important when choosing flavours to mix with you think what you would enjoy most, are you more into fruity flavours, do you favour desert flavours like custards and tarts? By choosing what you already enjoy in your day to day it makes the concept of choosing flavours much easier. Percentages As a rule of thumb you should never go over around 20% flavouring in you mix to stop it becoming too harsh, this isn’t a hard rule though you find some recipes call for 24% in some cases, don’t be afraid to experiment. We recommend starting at 10 – 15% and going from there, add more if it’s too weak but you cannot take away once it’s in.

Additives

Additives are concentrates that are meant to be used in very low percentages to compliment the overall recipe; these include sweeteners (such as ethyl maltol, sweetener & super sweet) and coolants (such as menthol, WS-23, & Koolada) They boost and compliment mixes; at high percentages they can ruin a liquid by spoiling the flavour or causing harshness in the throat, making it unvapable.

Getting to grips with concentrates

    • Mix small batches first – but not too small. We tend to experiment with 10ml batches. More is wasteful, but less makes it harder to measure ingredients accurately and consistently. Also 10ml makes it easy to work out percentages (eg. 1ml=10%).
    • Less is often more. As a general rule, we find that the simplest recipes tend to be the best. A liquid with two or three different flavours is much easier to get right and reproduce consistently than one with more.
    • Smell the concentrates before experimenting. If a flavour smells strong or harsh you’ll probably need less in your mix. If it smells weak start with more.
    • Pay attention to the starting percentage recommendations on our product pages. If you are blending 2 flavours you could start with half of the recommended percentage of each.
    • You can pre-dilute flavours with PG before mixing. For example, if you have a very strong flavour that you use a lot you could mix 1 part of the concentrate to 4 parts PG, for a concentrate 1/5th of the strength. This can make the flavour easier to blend with others.
    • Starting out with concentrates from the same manufacturer can make things easier at first, as they will often need a similar amount of dilution.