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Comment by rfrank | Hacker News Reader

it's crazy how expensive some juices are, especially when a lot are pretty simple flavor profiles with lots of sweeteners and colorings added in.

once i found some diy recipes that i enjoyed, i made a pair of 120ml, and the cost savings from those two bottles alone covered all the ingredients and equipment (beakers, stirring rods, scale, bottles, etc). diy is especially worthwhile if your device guzzles juice like my geekvape griffin tank does.

diy or die on youtube is a great resource, here's one of the recipes i make regularly: https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=QlI8CvT8SCA

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I'm a cheap bastard, so I just buy Chinese liquid. 50ml for 11 bucks.

If you're buying domestic juice you pay a premium for nothing special, from what I can tell. Also, the chances of it being made in a proper factory are basically nil. It's often someone else's DIY garage juice at a 10000% markup.

Yeah, I'd agree on the markup part for sure. From my experience the quality difference between "premium" and cheap juice is small but noticeable. These days I only buy juicse with flavors that are tough to work with, coffee and chocolate in particular.

I haven't kept up with the new FDA guidelines since starting DIY about a year ago, but from what I remember a lot of the little garage brands are going to be in trouble. My buddy used to work at Apollo out in Concord and I know they take their juice seriously. I think it's shitty, but it's not because the line is dirty haha. Molecule Labs out in Benicia has a pretty cool facility as well.

If they had established flavors before the guidelines were put into place, they will be fine for now - just no new flavors. Unfortunately the hamstringing of innovation will eventually lead to their demise.

For sure, I take it they're able to start making new flavors again upon meeting the guidelines? Seems like it'll just force people to outsource manufacturing to somewhere like Molecule or just fold, which is a shame. It's been a lot of fun watching the industry explode over the last few years.

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