# Flavour concentrate: a beginner's guide > What a flavour concentrate is, the families to know, how to read the maker's mixing percentage and where it fits into a UK DIY recipe. A small amber bottle, a few millilitres of intensely scented liquid, and a whole e-liquid built around it. That bottle intrigues as much as it intimidates the day you open your first mixing kit. Push it too far and everything saturates, hold back too much and the taste disappears into the base. Between families, recommended ranges and resting times, a first **flavour concentrate** is hard to place. Here are the bearings that make the rest straightforward. ## What a flavour concentrate actually is A **flavour concentrate** is a heavily dosed aromatic compound made to be diluted into a neutral base before it is vaped. It is never vaped neat: its strength makes it unusable as it comes, and its whole value lies in that controlled dilution. UK shops sell it mostly in 10 ml and 30 ml bottles fitted with a fine dropper tip. Its job is simple to state. In a DIY recipe the base carries the volume and the vapour, a nicotine shot carries any nicotine, and the concentrate carries the taste. It is the only part of the build that decides what you actually perceive in the mouth. The same bottle can produce a restrained liquid or a saturated one depending on the proportion you keep. That is why two mixers can reach opposite verdicts on an identical reference without either of them being wrong about it. ## The main families of flavour concentrate Before choosing a bottle it helps to know which territory you are stepping into. Makers sort their catalogues into a handful of families that share a dosing logic and a way of behaving over time. Fruits cover the bright, lively notes, usually ready quickly and forgiving to dose. Dessert profiles built on vanilla, biscuit or custard generally ask for more patience before they give up their roundness. Menthol and koolada need a careful hand, since they mask the rest of a recipe fast, and tobacco profiles are the slowest family of all to settle. Each family calls for its own percentage and its own resting time, which is the whole subject of our guide to [flavour concentrate percentage](/uk/flavour-concentrate-percentage/). Treating them all alike is the single most common reason a first batch disappoints its maker. ## Reading the mixing percentage on the bottle The point beginners skip most often is printed on the label. Every maker states a recommended dilution range, and checking it is the first reflex to acquire, well before any arithmetic. That range is expressed as a percentage of the final volume, and UK catalogues sit noticeably higher than newcomers expect. Vampire Vape advises mixing its own concentrates at 15 to 20 per cent, and Vapable suggests test batches of Capella concentrates around 15 per cent. General UK mixing guides put the workable span at roughly 5 to 20 per cent depending on strength and family. The differentiating point to hold on to is that this span is a boundary, not an average to aim at. Starting at the low end and climbing batch after batch wastes far less than the reverse, because an over-dosed **flavour concentrate** is difficult to walk back once the bottle is mixed and shaken. Percentages also do not travel between brands. A 20 per cent instruction from one house tells you nothing about the right figure for another, so read the bottle actually in front of you rather than a number you remember from a forum thread. ## Concentrate, base and steeping: the full chain A bottle never works alone. What you taste depends on a chain of three links, and that chain has to be planned as a whole from the moment you start measuring. The first link is the base, the mix of propylene glycol and vegetable glycerine that carries the flavour. A PG-heavy ratio renders notes more sharply, a VG-heavy ratio rounds them off and builds vapour volume instead. The second link is the dosing, meaning the proportion of **flavour concentrate** you settle on. The third is steeping, the resting period during which the aromatic molecules bind to the base, a mechanism covered in our guide to [steeping e-liquid](/uk/steeping-e-liquid/). Nicotine sits outside that chain in the UK. Retail nicotine bottles here are capped at 20 mg/ml and 10 ml, so mixers who want nicotine add an unflavoured nicotine shot to a nicotine-free short fill or to their own base. The arithmetic never changes: multiply the shot volume by its strength to get the milligrams involved, then divide by the finished volume in millilitres. Handling deserves as much care as the recipe itself. Concentrates are strong liquids, so wear gloves when you decant, keep every bottle out of reach of children and pets, and store the lot away from light with the caps firmly closed. ## Getting your bearings among concentrate brands The concentrate market is crowded, and knowing roughly who does what saves picking a first bottle at random. A handful of names come back constantly on UK shelves and in mixing threads. Some houses built their reputation on clean, easy fruits, others on rich desserts or on worked tobacco profiles. Capella, FlavourArt, Inawera and The Perfumer's Apprentice sit among the historic references of DIY mixing, each with its own signature and its own stated ranges. The useful reflex is less about hunting for one best brand than about identifying the house that excels in the family you are after. A successful fruit from a given maker predicts nothing whatsoever about the quality of its custards. Testing the same flavour from two brands, at identical percentage and identical resting time, is one of the fastest ways to understand what formulation really changes. It is also how you start reading your own palate rather than someone else's product listing. One more distinction is worth making early. Some bottles carry a single note, while others are complete recipes blended by the maker and sold in the UK as one shots, a difference we set out in our comparison of [single flavour concentrates and one shots](/uk/single-flavour-vs-one-shot/). Knowing which of the two you are holding changes both the percentage you reach for and the way you judge the result. A single note invites you to build around it, whereas a blended bottle is meant to be used as it stands, without additions. ## Common questions about flavour concentrates ### Does a flavour concentrate keep for long? Yes, provided you store it away from light and heat with the cap closed. An opened bottle holds its qualities for months, though fruit families tend to fade faster than tobaccos or desserts. ### Can you vape a flavour concentrate on its own? No. A concentrate is not designed to be vaped neat: it lacks the carrier a device needs, and its intensity makes it unusable alone. It always has to be diluted into a base first. ### Do you need a different concentrate for each nicotine strength? No, the concentrate is independent of nicotine. You adjust the nicotine shot separately, without changing the flavour bottle or the percentage you have settled on. ### Why does my mix taste different after a few days? That is ordinary steeping. The molecules carry on binding to the base after mixing, which shifts what you perceive across the first days in the bottle. ### Can a food flavouring replace a vape concentrate? No. Food flavourings are not formulated to be vaporised. Only concentrates made specifically for vaping belong in a DIY e-liquid. ## Choosing your first flavour concentrate: the essentials A **flavour concentrate** is not a magic ingredient but a technical part whose result depends on percentage, base and resting time. Starting with a single fruit, respecting the range printed by the maker and writing down every attempt is enough to make quick progress. That habit of bottle, proportion and patience is the common ground of the whole workshop, whatever flavour you happen to be chasing. The rest of the [concentrates section](/uk/category/concentrates/) works through the same decisions in more detail. 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.