Steeping - Caps on or off?

[vaporiser]

Not sure what poll you're looking at but in the one you linked its 48-8 in favour of leaving the caps on.

To add to the reasons to keep your caps on the lighter flavour volatiles in your juice will evaporate quicker if you leave your caps off which will in turn mute the complexity of your mixes. If you're really desperate to 'speed steep' it then give it a hot water or rice bath, but your best bet is to just put it away in a dark space and forget about it.

Haha you're right.. guess I was only seeing what I wanted to see. Do these "speed steeps" really work? I made a liquid with about 10 different fruits and a hint of mint and vanilla. Steeped for just one week.. tastes like something I bought in a shop.. which is great of course. Maybe a slight chemical taste.. but it might be one of those things where if you're looking for bad things you're gonna see them

 

[bananas]

Haha you're right.. guess I was only seeing what I wanted to see. Do these "speed steeps" really work? I made a liquid with about 10 different fruits and a hint of mint and vanilla. Steeped for just one week.. tastes like something I bought in a shop.. which is great of course. Maybe a slight chemical taste.. but it might be one of those things where if you're looking for bad things you're gonna see them

Have never tried the speed steeping but have read from quite a few posters that it will speed it up but will be a slightly lower quality than if you were just to leave them to steep naturally. Heating stuff up will agitate the components of the mix so it seems scientifically sound that it will speed it up, but will also cause lighter components to evaporate.

The chemically taste that you talk about could be down to using too much concentrate either as a total percentage or a total amount, a lot of flavours will share chemicals that make up their flavour so if you over load on something you could create an undesired taste i.e if you accidentally overload on Butyric acid your juice is going to taste like puke. TPA actually list all the components that go into their flavours, if you're interested you can find them here https://shop.perfumersapprentice.com/specsheetlist.aspx

 

[yappycat]

I use a lot of TPA stuff - thanks for that link @bananas, I'm sure I'll find it useful...especially for avoiding the inadvertent creation of a 'juice de puke' lol

 

[vaporiser]

How do you work out how much concentrate to use? Should I never use a total of 20% concentrates?

 

[Greebo]

It all depends on the flavour manufacturer. Some concentrates are weaker than others. For instance when I started I used Totally Wicked & their concentrates usually required around 15 - 20%. Whereas Flavourart concentrates are very strong & I usually mix those around the 3% mark.

 

[vaporiser]

So do you initially decide not to go over 15-20 or 3% and then you list your concentrate ingredients afterwards.. e.g. 10% Banana, 5% Caramel, 3% Cream

 

[Greebo]

Basically yes but there are exceptions as some flavours can be really strong even from the same company. It's all trial & error at first. I always mix a sample amount of each flavour before I start combining them. Tis boring but it really helps me to get an understanding of their taste.

 

[bananas]

I think aiming for an overall flavour percentage is the wrong way to go about mixing, different recipes will call for different amounts of concentrate my most recent ones range from 8.5% up to 16.5%. Like Greebo says single flavour testing is the best way to go about it but if you want a shortcut head over to ELR flavour page (http://e-liquid-recipes.com/flavors) search for your flavour and sort by number of recipes to find the correct flavour and take the average mixing percentage.

If you've got time check out some recipes on http://diyordievaping.com Wayne goes into great detail about why he used certain flavours in the recipe, there is enough information there and on their youtube channel to increase your understanding 10 fold.

 

[Unclebilbo]

i agree with @bananas deciding on an overall percentage before you've made your mind up on what to mix and which flavour houses to get your concentrates from
is a bad idea, theres such a massive difference between them all.
mixing something from tfa that could total 10-15% compared to flavourart or inawera the same flavours could be just over half that or less.
the diyordie youtube channel would be a good place to start the beginner mixing and flavour talk vids are really informative.
and theres no substitute for researching flavours before you decide what to buy.
get on elr search for a recipe then click the ratings tab and have a look what people are using chances are the higher rated recipes will be using the
better flavourings and you can click each flavouring from there to see any flavour notes or do a seach.