So sweetness is a vital aspect in DIY recipes. Most vapers enjoy their e-liquids to be sweet. Some like it extremely sweet, packed with vibrant flavors. And others like a touch of sweetness, where something too overly sweet makes them sick. Some don't like their e-liquids sweet at all, but we're going to forget about them for a second in this article. For the most part, the majority of vapers like their e-liquids with some sweetness. In terms of sales, some of the bestselling e-liquid on the market is jam packed with sweetness, and there's a reason behind it. Especially in the US, sugar and sweetness is in almost everything we consume. Even the milk we drink is loaded with processed sugars. Soda and soft drinks, all completely loaded with sugar, dominate the shelves of every convenient store and super market. Candy and snacks are a multi-billion dollar market in the US alone. Sugar and sweetness is everywhere. So it only makes sense to see it in our e-liquids as well. But there are ways to do it wrong, and there are ways to do it correctly. Just dumping sweetener into your e-liquids might suffice for some. But for others, the sweetness needs to be warranted. This article will go over how to sweeten your liquids inherently, before any kind of external sweetener is needed.
Inherently
So what do I mean when I say "inherent sweetness". It's simple. Take an apple for example. A real apple. When you take a bite you're hit with a nice snappy bite, some acidity, that delicious apple flavor coming from the "pulp" of the apple, and then of course, that bright sweetness. That sweetness is inherent, its built into the flavor of the apple. If you were to dump some sugar on that apple, that's adding external sweetness. The same works with flavorings and recipes. Flavorings have all of their own sweetness built into their flavors. In the same vein, take FA Fuji Apple. This is an apple flavoring that closely matches the flavor from true, Fuji apples. But also it captures the same kind of bright sweetness an apple carries. FA Fuji has a sweetness that's bright, up front, and sits above the entirety of the flavor, much like a true apple does. It's inherent sweetness isn't overpowering, and it doesn't linger. But this doesn't mean that any recipe with FA Fuji in it will carry the same type of sweetness. That sweetness of the flavoring does carry over, but the addition of other flavorings impact its ability to shine in the same way it does in the flavoring by itself. You can easily take FA Fuji, place it in a recipe, and completely close out its inherent sweetness. If that's what you're going for that’s great, but if not and you want that FA Fuji's inherent sweetness to come out in your recipe, some tweaking is necessary.
Tweaks
So let's give an example of a recipe that doesn't have the sweetness we want. We'll take...
FA Fuji - 0.5%
FA Pear - 2%
FA Fresh Cream - 1%
CAP Vanilla Whipped Cream - 3%
FA Caramel - 1%
This recipe is supposed to model an apple and pear on some fresh whipped cream. The type of sweetness I'm looking for is bright, much like the sweetness that comes inherently in FA Fuji by itself. Unfortunately, in this recipe, the Fuji is a bit hidden underneath the creams. This doesn't all the full vibrancy of the sweetness to come through. We can try to remedy the situation by increasing FA Fuji to 1%. It's better, but now the balance of Pear and Apple seem to be off, and the sweetness is still a bit subdued. What do we do? Well the next logical step is to add flavorings that have a much stronger inherent sweetness to help push that profile through. FA Lime Cold Pressed has a very vibrant, almost sharp sweetness inherently. Using this will give us the sweetness we want, but also introduce its lime flavor. In this recipe, that lime flavor works because it pushes both the apple and pear. They all share the same sort of aromas. So the recipe...
FA Fuji - 1%
FA Pear - 2.5%
FA LIME COLD PRESSED - 0.25%
FA Fresh Cream - 1%
CAP Vanilla Whipped Cream - 3%
FA Caramel - 1%
Works much better. Increasing both the Fuji and Pear give us more of the inherent sweetness of both those flavorings, which was what we were looking for. That small touch of lime also boosts that inherent sweetness of those flavorings, while also lifting those flavor profiles a bit more. And the creams offer a nice soft foundation for the entire recipe, which makes for a very pleasing vape. This is the kind of tweaking that is necessary to nail your recipes down in a way you want them. Using your palate to help put the pieces together. And using your NOTES to help speed up the flavor identifying process. Remember, much of the battle in mixing is understand your flavorings. So the more you work with your flavorings, the more problem solving you'll be able to do…also more quickly.
External Sweetness
Lastly, I want to quickly touch on external sweetness. This basically just means adding sweetener, or more specifically Sucralose. Sucralose is a sweetener that increases the overall sweetness of the recipe. If we weren't satisfied with the sweetness in the recipe above, we could easily add in CAP Super Sweet, or TFA Sweetener, to help supplement the lack of inherent sweetness. I personally believe you should make your recipe as sweet as you need INHERENTLY before adding in any type of external sweetness. Mainly because dumping sucralose into your recipe can hide many of the subtle flavorings going on, and kill the complexity of your recipe. The recipe above is quite delicate, and there's a lot of subtle notes within it. Just adding 0.5% CAP Super Sweet will cover those subtleties up and create a more "linear" profile. This is why opting for inherent sweetness with this recipe was more beneficial. It keeps those delicate notes, but still gives us the result we wanted. But…if you're one of those who are searching for that "off the shelf commercial" flavor, adding a lot of external sweetness is necessary. Commercial e-liquid has upwards of 2% of CAP Super Sweet, or a whopping 5% of TFA Sweetener. If you're a sugar head and love your e-liquids bold, simple, vibrant, and insanely sweet, feel free to add as much external sweetness you need.
