Sweeteners - Ethyl Maltol vs Sucralose vs Stevia (Powdered)

@Caribou : can you please explain this to the droves of juice makers that are churning out one craptacular candy coated concoction after another?

You talk of complexity and sophistication - would like to get a point of reference by sampling some of your selections...

Seems like the major trends just keep pandering to the sensibilities of a toddler's tastes. All penny whistles and moonpies plus temper tantrums about diacetyl.

 

@asiaexpat , thank v much ... I bought some contact lens grade saline, the pharmacist didn't recommend the irrigation grade when I indicated I might consume it orally. Have as yet drawn a blank on distilled water supplier, where did you get yours ?

And also for sharing your other tips ... What is TFA?

@Caribou , thanks for sharing. Is that your writing personally, or a share from reddit ? Either way, I guess must be similar as what your thoughts are.

What I decided to do is to try out the ingredients for myself, which is how I cook too. I may eventually reach the same conclusions, and voice of experience is very useful, but same as with cooking I don't know what something tastes like to me from someone else's experience. Also happy without the added complication of sweetener, as one less step, if it works out like that.

@Darth Vaper , those are great questions ! Looking forward to reading the answers ...

@all, my chemipan order arrived today, have pg, VG, stevia, menthol, few flavours, some glass bottles and sodium meta bisulphate for sterilising which I couldn't find anywhere else in Thailand ... Paid agreed order to delivery only a couple of days with their "local courier", only 100thb for heavy box, considerably cheaper than EMS which might have been nearly 700thb ... Everything neatly packed, no breakages or spillages. TY chemipan.

 

This is not my article, it's a reddit post from an experienced mixer I just read a few days ago that confirms what I had guessed reading info here and there.
I'm just a beginner, when he starts talking about profile, base notes etc... I'm already lost there. For the moment I have a dozen flavours, I mix 2 or 3 together and if it's good I'm like "**** yeah this is good, let's adjust a bit the % and make more". That sums up my mixing skills!
So when an experienced guy tells me to not care about sweeteners and additives, it's good news for my lazy bum.
And yes it seems that most DIYers can't go back to commercial juices, they pretty much all complain about their overall sweetness and prefer their own creations. I haven't tasted many commercial juices but lately i vaped some old Vapor Mist juices I had left and even though I found them delicious 6 months ago, now I think they are too sweet.

It's from reddit, I'm nowhere near competent enough to write something like that! XD
What you decided to do is probably the good way to do it but you'll soon see there are tons of variables and millions of combinations so it's good to take shortcuts. Like if I read some well known guy advising to mix a flavour at x%, I'm not going to try x-1,x+1,x+2,x+3 etc.

 

@Caribou ... Thanks. My fridge now has salad compartment dedicated to litres of pg and VG, and have some flavours knocking around too. So, I'm ready to start creating.

I'm going to use 50/50 pg/VG to start with for mixing.

Stevia I sampled a few grains of, and it's very sweet, taste very much like regular sugar. So will mix up with the 50/50 to give me a sweetener to work with.

I quite like sweet stuff. My own taste analysis of my last premium juice purchase is watermelon, mint and sweetener, probably stevia. It's a little toothpastey, but that I actually quite like it, certainly better than the cheap juices which are fairly one dimensional, with often muted flavours.

Chemipan flavours - the mango smells great, as does bubble gum, not sure yet about chicken or smoke for vaping, but, I will experiment, and as I cook too, probably not much will go to waste ...

Thanks for the reddit link, I will study and factor that into my DIY juice creations.