“How It All Began”

It all started when my partner and I had a baby in 2014. The stress of being a first time mom to a newborn drove her back to a smoking habit. She had previously quit the day she found out she was having a child. After much research and consulting with vaping friends, I bought her a iStick 60 and a Nautilus Mini tank with 1.2 ohm coil heads. She owns and uses that set up to this day.

Along the way I discovered the online vaping community at My Vaporium dot net.  I had quit smoking back in the early 80’s but discovered that many vapers were vaping e-liquid at 0mg nicotine ratio. More out of curiosity than anything I purchased a RX200 and TF-V4 mini. Did a little more research and bought several bottles of various manufacturers strawberry custard flavor. I thought I find the best one then that would be my all day every day vape. 

This quickly developed into a hobby. I started buying mech mods and lots of different RDA’s, selling the ones that I didn’t like to buy the latest greatest thing of the week. My obsession with finding the “perfect custard” also quickly grew into a $300+ a month habit. I tried every premium strawberry custard out there. A few were “ok” but most were sickening sweet. I saw a few people like Fresh03 and Wayne on DIY or DIE were teaching others about DIYing their own juice. After watching way too many YouTube videos I invested a few hundred dollars and started on my own personal quest to make a better strawberry custard.

I initially made six different custard test batches. Named them Custard #1 through Custard #6. Eventually, after a bit of trial and error, throwing out test batches and starting over, two began to really stand out. Really stand out. I had finally made what I thought was the perfect custard. Rich, decadent and moist, Custard #1 became what we now know as Transcendence and Custard #3 became the custard base for Nirvana, Serenity, Clarity, and Enlightenment. One of the custards that “didn’t make the cut” became the base for Karma. 

I started giving friends some juice as I was swimming in test batches. Some of these batches had steeped for months while others were made that afternoon. People began to ask for flavors. My oldest son, Phil asked for a flavor that tasted like the creamsicle bar we used to get from the ice cream truck when he was young. Another friend asked for a sugar cookie vape. These became Orange Creamysicle and Snickerdoodle respectively. 

In July, at the gentle insistence of a few friends and family members, I started The Zen Vaper E-Liquids. Ten flavors quickly grew to the present fourteen flavors I currently offer. There are yet a few that are not quite ready for prime time, but stick around and you’ll soon see them cropping up on the site.