DIY e-liquid: base, nic shot and concentrate
Almost every vaper in Britain has already mixed a bottle, whether they think of it that way or not. Adding a nic shot to a shortfill is mixing, and it is the doorway most people walk through without noticing. Everything else in DIY e-liquid is the same operation with more of the decisions handed back to you.
The country has an unusually strong home mixing scene as a result, with several established suppliers of bases, nicotine and concentrates. The vocabulary can look forbidding from outside, but the underlying arithmetic is simple.
What DIY e-liquid actually involves
Three ingredients account for nearly everything. A base made of vegetable glycerine and propylene glycol, nicotine if you want it, and one or more flavour concentrates. That is the whole list for the great majority of recipes.
The base sets the physical behaviour of the liquid. A higher VG proportion makes it thicker and produces more vapour, which suits sub ohm tanks. More PG makes it thinner, carries flavour more sharply and gives a firmer throat sensation, which suits tight mouth to lung gear. Ratios such as 70/30 and 50/50 describe that split.
Nicotine arrives as a shot rather than as raw concentrate for most people. Flavour concentrates are highly concentrated aroma compounds, unusable on their own and dosed as a percentage of the finished bottle.
Get those three right and the recipe works. Everything beyond that, the steeping, the multi flavour blends, the cooling agents, is refinement on top of a working mix.
The easy entry point: shortfills and nic shots
The simplest form of DIY e-liquid is the one the whole UK retail system is built around. A shortfill is a bottle of nicotine free liquid, deliberately underfilled to leave headroom, and a nic shot is a 10 ml bottle of nicotine base at 18 or 20 mg.
The standard arrangements are worth memorising. A 50 ml shortfill in a 60 ml bottle takes one 10 ml shot at 18 mg and lands at roughly 3 mg. A 100 ml shortfill in a 120 ml bottle takes two shots for the same result. Half a shot in a 50 ml gives you roughly 1.5 mg.
Mixing it is unglamorous. Remove the caps from both bottles, squeeze the shot into the shortfill, replace the cap and shake for a minute or so. Most shots are 50/50 or high VG matched to the shortfill, so the ratio barely moves.
One point often missed: the finished bottle is usually ready straight away because the flavour was already made and steeped by the manufacturer. That is what separates this from mixing a recipe from scratch, where time is an ingredient.
Mixing a recipe from scratch
Building from base upwards gives you control over the ratio, the nicotine and the flavour dose, and it is where the category gets genuinely interesting. The method is straightforward but it needs measuring.
Work by weight rather than by drops if you can. Kitchen scales accurate to a hundredth of a gram remove the single largest source of error in home mixing, because concentrate drop sizes vary wildly between bottles and nozzles.
Percentages are the language of recipes. A typical single flavour mix might run 10 to 20 percent concentrate depending on the family, with fruit often at the lower end and bakery at the higher. Cooling agents, where used, are dosed in fractions of a percent.
Nicotine is the one to handle with respect. Keep it away from skin, store it out of reach and out of sunlight, label everything, and never guess a quantity. An online calculator from any of the established UK mixing suppliers will do the arithmetic for you and is worth using every time.
Choosing concentrates by flavour family
Different families behave differently, and knowing which one you are working with saves a lot of wasted base.
Fruit concentrates are the friendliest starting point. They are usually dosed at the lower end of the range, they steep quickly, and a single flavour mix can be genuinely good. Our guide to the fruit e-liquid shelf covers the sub families worth exploring.
Bakery and cream concentrates need higher percentages and much more patience, as the dessert e-liquid guide sets out. They also stack, so a two or three flavour blend is often the point, and the interaction is what produces the finished profile.
Tobacco concentrates are the specialists’ corner and the least forgiving. They are potent, they turn bitter when overdosed and they need weeks rather than days; the tobacco e-liquid profiles guide explains what the different styles are aiming at.
Cooling agents are technically not flavours at all, and they are the easiest thing in the whole discipline to overdo. Add them last, in tiny increments, to a sample rather than to the batch.
Steeping: the ingredient you cannot rush
Steeping is simply time. A freshly mixed bottle often tastes thin, harsh or oddly chemical, and the same bottle a fortnight later tastes like the recipe it was meant to be.
The rough guide is a few days for a simple fruit, one to two weeks for a blended fruit, and two to four weeks for anything built on custard, cream, bakery or tobacco. Warmth and agitation speed it up modestly; nothing speeds it up dramatically despite the folklore.
The practical consequence is scheduling rather than technique. Mix a batch before you need it, keep a bottle steeping while you vape the last one, and never judge a new recipe on the day it was made.
The mistakes that waste the most liquid
Mixing 100 ml of an untested recipe is the classic one. Test at 10 or 20 ml, live with it for the steep, then scale up only what works. Nobody has ever regretted a small first batch.
Over flavouring is the second. More concentrate does not mean more flavour past a certain point, it means muddle and often bitterness, and the tendency is worst with people arriving from heavily sweetened bar liquids.
The third is failing to keep notes. Every batch should have its recipe, its date and its ratio written down, because the good mix you cannot reproduce is more frustrating than the bad one you can. A notebook or a spreadsheet is enough.
Frequently asked questions
Do I need nicotine to mix my own liquid?
No. A nicotine free mix is just base and concentrate, and it is the safest way to learn the process before introducing anything stronger.
How many nic shots go into a 100 ml shortfill?
Two 10 ml shots at 18 mg, in a 120 ml bottle, which gives roughly 3 mg. A 50 ml in a 60 ml bottle takes one shot for the same strength.
What percentage of concentrate should I use?
Commonly 10 to 20 percent, with fruit at the lower end and bakery or cream at the higher end. The concentrate maker’s guidance is the best starting point.
How long should a mix steep?
A few days for simple fruit, two to four weeks for custard, cream, bakery or tobacco. Time is the only reliable method.
Should I mix by weight or by volume?
By weight, using scales accurate to a hundredth of a gram. Drop counting introduces errors because drop size varies between bottles and nozzles.
Where to start with DIY e-liquid
The sensible first step is not a recipe at all. Mix a shortfill and a nic shot, notice that nothing dramatic happened, and the mystique falls away immediately.
The second step is a single fruit concentrate at the dose its maker recommends, in a 20 ml batch, with the date on the label. Let it sit a week, taste it, write down what you think, and adjust once. That loop, mix small and take notes, is the entire discipline in miniature.
From there the direction is yours. DIY e-liquid lets you set a ratio your kit actually likes, put the cooling exactly where you want it, and rebuild a profile no longer stocked anywhere. It takes patience and a set of scales rather than skill, and the first batch that comes out right tends to be the last time you look at a shelf the same way.
Editorial content for adult readers only. Vaping products usually contain nicotine, a substance that causes addiction. Not for sale to under-18s in the United Kingdom. This article is not a buying recommendation.