DIY E-Liquid: How to Make DIY Vape Juice

Making your own vape juice used to be a fairly common next step for experienced vapers. Buy some PG, VG, flavour concentrates and nicotine, find a calculator, make a few experimental bottles and eventually discover that the recipe you were most excited about tastes inexplicably like air freshener.

The basic idea hasn’t changed, but DIY e-liquid in the UK looks quite different today.

Consumer nicotine liquids are now limited to a maximum strength of 20mg/ml and a maximum bottle size of 10ml. That means the old approach of buying a large bottle of very high-strength nicotine base — which you’ll still see in some ancient DIY vape juice guides — isn’t applicable to the modern UK consumer market.

There are also several different levels of “DIY”. You can make an e-liquid completely from scratch using PG, VG and flavour concentrates, or you can take the much simpler route of buying a nicotine-free shortfill and adding however much nicotine you actually want.

This guide covers both approaches, along with the calculations, equipment and safety points worth understanding before you start.

Why Make Your Own Vape Juice?

DIY e-liquid appeals to different people for different reasons.

You Can Control the Flavour

Traditional DIY mixing gives you almost complete control over the flavour profile. You can adjust the strength of an individual concentrate, combine several flavours or build something that simply isn’t available as a commercial e-liquid.

This is also where DIY can become a hobby in its own right. Building a convincing strawberry cheesecake or fruit-and-ice recipe usually involves a little more than pouring strawberry, cheesecake and menthol into a bottle and hoping they sort themselves out.

You Can Choose Your PG/VG Ratio

Mixing your own base allows you to tailor the viscosity and vaping characteristics to your device.

A 50VG/50PG mixture is commonly suited to MTL pods and other lower-powered devices, while a 70VG/30PG blend is more typical for higher-powered RDL and DTL equipment.

If you’re unsure what those numbers mean, our guide to PG and VG explains the differences in detail.

You Can Choose Your Nicotine Strength

DIY mixing also lets you choose a strength between the standard options sold in finished e-liquid.

If 3mg feels stronger than you need but zero nicotine isn’t quite right, for example, there’s nothing inherently magical about the numbers printed on commercial bottles. With accurate measurements, you can make an intermediate strength.

It Can Reduce the Cost of E-Liquid

Buying PG, VG and concentrates in larger quantities can make the cost per ml lower than buying small bottles of finished vape juice.

Whether that saving is worthwhile depends on how much you vape and how deeply you get into the hobby. A drawer containing 38 flavour concentrates you’ve used once each has a way of changing the economics.

Three Ways to Make DIY Vape Juice

It helps to think of DIY mixing as having three levels.

The Easiest DIY E-Liquid: Shortfills and Nic Shots

If your main reason for looking into DIY vape juice is to choose your own nicotine strength, you don’t actually need to start mixing flavour concentrates.

A shortfill e-liquid has already been professionally mixed and flavoured. It contains no nicotine and is deliberately supplied with empty space in the bottle.

A common example is 50ml of e-liquid in a 60ml bottle. The unused 10ml gives you room to add one nicotine shot.

Simply ELiquid’s nicotine shots contain 10ml of 1.8% (18mg/ml) nicotine solution and are designed specifically for this purpose.

How a Full Nic Shot Makes 3mg E-Liquid

Suppose you have:

• 50ml of 0mg shortfill e-liquid
• One 10ml nic shot at 18mg/ml

The nic shot contains:

After adding it to the 50ml shortfill, you have 60ml of liquid in total.

That’s why one full 18mg nic shot added to a standard 50ml shortfill produces 60ml of 3mg e-liquid.

You Don’t Have to Add the Entire Nic Shot

This is where shortfills become a little more DIY than they first appear.

If 3mg is more nicotine than you want, you can use less than a full nic shot.

There is one bit of maths worth understanding, though: using half of the nicotine doesn’t automatically produce exactly half the final nicotine strength unless the final liquid volume stays the same.

What Happens If You Add Half a Nic Shot?

Start again with 50ml of nicotine-free shortfill and an 18mg/ml nic shot.

Half of the shot is 5ml, containing:

If you add that 5ml and nothing else, you now have 55ml of e-liquid rather than 60ml.

So half a nic shot makes roughly 1.6mg/ml in this example, not exactly 1.5mg/ml.

If you wanted an exact 1.5mg/ml while still filling the bottle to 60ml, you could use 5ml of the 18mg nic shot plus 5ml of compatible nicotine-free base.

How to Calculate Nicotine Strength

For simple nic-shot mixing, the basic calculation is:

For example, 7ml of an 18mg/ml nic shot contains:

If those 7ml are added to 50ml of shortfill, the final volume is 57ml:

You certainly don’t need to do this calculation every time you buy e-liquid, but understanding it is useful if you want something other than the standard 3mg result.

What Do You Need for Full DIY E-Liquid?

If you want to make vape juice from scratch rather than modifying a shortfill, you’ll need to source a dedicated DIY mixing range. Simply ELiquid currently carries finished e-liquid, shortfills and nic shots rather than a full selection of DIY flavour concentrates and base ingredients.

A basic mixing setup normally includes:

• PG: The thinner carrier liquid. It also acts as an effective solvent for flavour concentrates and produces more throat hit.
• VG: The thicker carrier responsible for denser vapour and a smoother-feeling inhale.
• E-liquid flavour concentrates: Either individual flavours or a premixed “one-shot” concentrate.
• Nicotine shots: Optional if you want nicotine in the finished liquid.
• Empty bottles: Preferably labelled with the recipe, date and nicotine strength.
• Accurate measuring equipment: Syringes, graduated pipettes or a suitable digital scale.
• Disposable gloves: Particularly important whenever nicotine liquid is being handled.

Use Ingredients Intended for E-Liquid Mixing

One of the most important improvements you can make over old DIY guides is to be much more selective about ingredients.

Don’t raid the baking cupboard because something says “strawberry flavouring” on the bottle.

Use flavour concentrates specifically sold by reputable suppliers for DIY e-liquid mixing, and follow the manufacturer’s recommended concentration range.

Avoid improvising with:

• Essential oils
• Oil-based flavourings
• Cooking oils
• Syrups
• Sugar
• Food colouring
• Random food flavourings with unknown ingredients

The fact that something is suitable for eating doesn’t automatically mean it belongs in an e-liquid that will be aerosolised and inhaled.

What Grade of PG and VG Should You Use?

Choose high-purity PG and VG specifically supplied for pharmaceutical, e-liquid or equivalent high-purity applications, with clear specifications from a reputable seller.

You may see designations such as USP or Ph. Eur./EP used to describe purity standards.

Those standards are useful indications of chemical purity, but they shouldn’t be interpreted as a guarantee that an ingredient has been proven completely safe to inhale. They simply give you much more confidence about what is actually in the bottle than buying an unknown industrial product.

One-Shot Concentrates vs Individual Flavours

If you want to move beyond shortfills without immediately becoming an amateur flavour chemist, a one-shot concentrate is the easiest place to start.

One-Shot Concentrates

A one-shot is a complete flavour recipe that has already been blended into a concentrate.

The manufacturer might recommend, for example, using the concentrate at a certain percentage of the finished bottle. You supply the PG/VG base and optional nicotine, but the flavour balancing has already been done for you.

It’s DIY, but with significantly fewer opportunities to accidentally create “Blueberry Custard with Unexpected Furniture Polish.”

Individual Concentrates

Full DIY mixing uses separate flavours.

A fruit recipe might contain a primary strawberry, a second strawberry concentrate for depth, a small amount of raspberry to sharpen the fruit and perhaps a cooling agent or sweetener.

This gives you much more creative control, but it also means each ingredient needs to be measured accurately and adjusted through testing.

How to Make DIY Vape Juice

The precise recipe will vary, but a sensible general workflow looks like this:

1. Choose your final bottle size. Small test batches waste much less liquid when you’re developing a new recipe.
2. Choose your PG/VG ratio. Match it to your vaping device.
3. Choose your nicotine strength. If you’re using nicotine, calculate the required quantity accurately before you start.
4. Choose your flavour concentration. Follow the flavour manufacturer’s recommendations rather than guessing.
5. Use a reputable e-liquid calculator. Enter your final volume, PG/VG ratio, nicotine strength and flavour percentages.
6. Measure each ingredient accurately. Don’t estimate by eye.
7. Close the bottle and mix thoroughly.
8. Label it immediately. Include the flavour, date, nicotine strength and preferably the recipe.
9. Test cautiously. Start with a small amount rather than filling a large tank with an untested experiment.

Measure in Millilitres or by Weight — Not “Drops”

Older DIY guides often give recipes in drops. It’s an appealingly simple idea, but it isn’t especially accurate.

Drop size changes with:

• The shape of the bottle tip
• The viscosity of the liquid
• Temperature
• How hard you squeeze

Twenty drops from one bottle may not equal twenty drops from another.

Measuring liquids in millilitres with appropriate syringes or graduated equipment is much more repeatable.

Experienced DIY mixers also frequently work by weight using a digital scale. That can be convenient and creates less washing up, although you need the correct density information for each ingredient rather than assuming that every gram equals exactly one millilitre.

Use an E-Liquid Calculator

There’s little benefit in doing a complicated multi-ingredient recipe manually when dedicated calculators can do the arithmetic for you.

A good DIY calculator allows you to enter:

• Desired batch size
• Target nicotine strength
• Nicotine-shot or nicotine-base strength
• Desired PG/VG ratio
• Each flavour concentrate percentage

It then tells you how much of every ingredient to use.

Check your inputs carefully before mixing. A calculator is very good at arithmetic and completely incapable of noticing that you accidentally typed 18 where you meant 1.8.

How Much Flavouring Should You Use?

There is no universal DIY e-liquid flavour percentage.

Some concentrates are designed to be used at relatively high percentages. Others are extremely strong and may only need a small amount.

Start with the flavour manufacturer’s recommended range and make a small test batch before adjusting it.

More flavouring also doesn’t always mean more flavour. An over-concentrated recipe can become muddy, harsh or strangely muted.

Does DIY E-Liquid Need to Steep?

Sometimes.

“Steeping” is the vaping term for allowing a freshly mixed e-liquid to rest while its ingredients blend and the flavour changes.

Simple fruit and menthol-style recipes can often taste perfectly good shortly after mixing. Creams, custards, bakeries, tobaccos and other complex recipes may change more noticeably over several days or longer.

There’s no universal steeping period. Try the liquid when it’s fresh, make a note and try it again later. If it improves, you’ve learned something useful about that particular recipe.

Write Every DIY Recipe Down

This piece of advice from the old-school DIY era remains completely valid.

Record every recipe — including the bad ones.

Write down:

• Exact flavour concentrates
• Percentages
• PG/VG ratio
• Nicotine strength
• Date mixed
• How it tasted when fresh
• How it changed with time

If you create something fantastic, you want to be able to reproduce it. If you create something that tastes like a scented candle having a nervous breakdown, you want to know how not to reproduce it.

DIY E-Liquid and Nicotine Safety

This is the part of DIY mixing that deserves more care than many older guides gave it.

Nicotine-containing e-liquid should be treated as something you measure deliberately, clean up promptly and keep securely away from children and pets.

Current UK rules restrict consumer nicotine-containing refill bottles to a maximum of 10ml and nicotine concentration to a maximum of 20mg/ml. Nicotine-containing products must also use child-resistant, tamper-evident packaging. UK government guidance explains the current requirements here.

Those limits mean that many recipes in very old UK DIY guides involving 36mg, 60mg or 100mg/ml bulk nicotine no longer reflect nicotine products legally sold to ordinary consumers.

Don’t Vape Nicotine Shots on Their Own

A nic shot is an ingredient rather than a finished vape juice.

It’s unflavoured and comparatively strong because it is designed to be diluted in nicotine-free e-liquid. Simply ELiquid’s own nic-shot instructions specifically advise against vaping nicotine shots by themselves.

Add the calculated amount to your shortfill or DIY mixture, shake thoroughly and make sure the finished liquid is properly mixed before filling your vape.

Do You Need to Test the Nicotine Strength?

Older DIY guides sometimes recommended that every home mixer buy a chemical nicotine-testing kit.

For a modern UK vaper using compliant 18mg or 20mg nic shots from a reputable manufacturer, that isn’t normally the first piece of equipment we’d suggest.

The more practical priorities are:

• Buy nicotine from a reputable source.
• Check the strength on the bottle.
• Measure the amount accurately.
• Use a calculator where necessary.
• Label your finished mixture.

If you lose track of how much nicotine you’ve added to a homemade batch, don’t guess. Discarding an uncertain bottle is considerably cheaper than discovering that your mental arithmetic was wrong by vaping it.

DIY E-Liquid Mistakes to Avoid

Starting with a Huge Batch

Your first experimental recipe doesn’t need to be 500ml.

Make a small test batch. If it’s excellent, scaling it up is easy. If it’s awful, you’ve wasted much less.

Changing Several Ingredients at Once

If a recipe is nearly right, adjust one thing at a time. Otherwise, you won’t know which change made it better or worse.

Assuming More Flavour Is Always Better

Over-flavouring is a surprisingly effective way of making an e-liquid taste weaker, harsher or less distinct.

Using the Wrong PG/VG Ratio

A very thick high-VG recipe may struggle to wick in a small MTL pod. A very thin high-PG mixture may be unsuitable for a large coil designed around thicker e-liquid.

Design the recipe for the device you intend to use.

Mixing Without Labels

A row of identical clear bottles becomes surprisingly mysterious after a week.

At minimum, label the flavour, nicotine strength and mixing date.

Guessing Nicotine Quantities

Nicotine is the one ingredient where “that looks about right” should never enter the process.

Measure it.

Is DIY Vape Juice Worth It?

That depends on what you want from it.

Full DIY mixing makes sense if:

• You enjoy experimenting with flavours.
• You want complete control over your recipe.
• You use enough e-liquid for bulk mixing to save worthwhile money.
• You want unusual PG/VG ratios or nicotine strengths.

It probably isn’t worth the trouble if:

• You simply want a reliable bottle of e-liquid that tastes good.
• You don’t enjoy measuring and recording recipes.
• You only use a small amount of vape juice.
• You don’t want to keep a collection of mixing ingredients and equipment.

For many people, shortfills provide the best compromise. Someone else has already done the difficult flavour development, but you still get control over whether the finished vape contains 0mg, approximately 1.5–1.6mg, 3mg or another carefully calculated strength.

DIY E-Liquid: The Simple Route vs the Full Route

If you want to experiment with DIY vape juice, there’s no requirement to jump straight into multi-flavour recipes.

The simple route is to buy a shortfill and customise its nicotine level with some or all of an 18mg nic shot.

The middle route is to buy a one-shot flavour concentrate and add your own PG, VG and optional nicotine.

The full DIY route is to develop recipes from individual concentrates and control every part of the finished e-liquid yourself.

All three can reasonably be described as DIY. The difference is simply how much of the formulation you want to take responsibility for.

If all you really want is a bigger bottle with control over the nicotine, starting with our shortfill e-liquid range and adding the appropriate amount of nicotine is considerably easier than turning your kitchen into a small flavour laboratory.

Frequently Asked Questions

What is DIY e-liquid?

DIY e-liquid is vape juice that you mix or customise yourself. Full DIY recipes combine PG, VG, flavour concentrates and optional nicotine, while a simpler form of DIY involves adding nicotine to a premixed shortfill.

Is DIY vape juice cheaper?

It can be, particularly if you vape a lot and buy base ingredients and concentrates efficiently. The initial cost of bottles, measuring equipment and multiple flavour concentrates can reduce the saving for occasional mixers.

What ingredients are in DIY vape juice?

A typical recipe contains PG, VG, e-liquid flavour concentrates and optional nicotine. You don’t need to use both PG and VG separately if you buy a premixed base with the ratio you want.

Can I use normal food flavouring to make vape juice?

Don’t assume that a food flavouring is suitable simply because it can be eaten. Use concentrates specifically supplied for e-liquid mixing by reputable sellers and check their recommended usage instructions. Oils, essential oils, syrups, sugars and food colouring shouldn’t be improvised into vape juice.

Can I use a shortfill as DIY e-liquid?

Yes. A shortfill has already been flavoured and mixed but contains no nicotine, so you can customise the nicotine level yourself. It’s essentially DIY e-liquid with the difficult flavour-development work already done.

Do I have to add a full nicotine shot to a shortfill?

No. You can add less if you prefer a lower nicotine strength. Remember that using half a shot doesn’t produce exactly half of 3mg unless you also replace the missing liquid volume. Adding 5ml of an 18mg shot to 50ml of shortfill produces about 55ml at 1.64mg/ml.

How do I make a 50ml shortfill 3mg?

Add one full 10ml 18mg/ml nicotine shot to 50ml of nicotine-free e-liquid. The finished 60ml contains 180mg of nicotine, giving a concentration of 3mg/ml.

How do I make a 100ml shortfill 3mg?

If the bottle contains 100ml of nicotine-free e-liquid with 20ml of spare capacity, adding two 10ml 18mg/ml nic shots creates 120ml of finished liquid at 3mg/ml.

What happens if I add one nic shot to 100ml of shortfill?

One 10ml 18mg/ml shot added to 100ml of liquid produces 110ml containing 180mg of nicotine. The resulting strength is approximately 1.64mg/ml.

Can I vape a nic shot by itself?

No. Nicotine shots are concentrated, unflavoured mixing ingredients designed to be diluted into shortfill or other nicotine-free e-liquid rather than used as standalone vape juice.

What PG/VG ratio should I use for DIY vape juice?

50VG/50PG is a common choice for MTL pods and other lower-powered devices. Around 70VG/30PG is common for higher-output RDL and DTL equipment. Your coil manufacturer’s recommendations should take priority over a general rule.

Does DIY e-liquid need to steep?

Not always. Simple fruit or menthol recipes may taste good almost immediately, while creams, custards, bakeries and other complex flavours can change considerably after resting. Test the recipe at different intervals rather than assuming every liquid needs a fixed steeping time.

How long does homemade vape juice last?

That depends on the individual ingredients, storage and formulation. Keep DIY e-liquid tightly closed in a cool, dark place and follow the storage and expiry guidance supplied with your ingredients. If a mixture changes unexpectedly in appearance, smell or performance, don’t use it simply because an arbitrary number of months hasn’t passed yet.