Steeping worked at last?

[oldhippydude]

The colour change is caused by the oxidation of the nic base. I've bought juice in the past 0mg and 6mg. The 0mg juice was almost colourless whilst the 6mg was a deep amber colour.

i believe this^^^^^
I mix my juices into coloured glass, and give them a good shake, no whisking air in, no large air spaces, no breathing no heat or bright light
Even after four or five months my mixes are clear. The only juices that darken are the ones I decant into plastic for taking out of the house if they sit about for a week or two they begin to darken.
I believe many people conflate two different processes the colour change and the flavour change that are not necesarily related as much as they think.

If we think darker juices taste better though, then they will taste better and we will think the lighter juices are not so good.

If folk want dark juice it can be achieved very quickly, whisk in lots of air, heat it up, leave the cap off and leave it in a sunny, south facing window, job done. There are videos on youtube with folk showing off how quickly they can "steep" their juices using colour change as the proof of the effectiveness of their methods. To me forced oxidation is nicotine abuse.

 

[zouzounaki]

I don’t really understand how steeping works. All the ingredients apart from nic can sit in a bottle themselves and apparently not change. And even certain flavour concentrates require to sit for a while when you just mix them with nic liquid on their own. I think this is probably because the concentrate has more than one flavour molecule mixed, ie it’s a blend. But I don’t know for sure.

So my experiments with the nic salt have concluded that these flavours don’t steep with salt, and neither do more complex mixes. They just don’t, my experience tells me that they are the same on the day you mix them as they are a month or two months later.

I can also say that I believe for sure that stronger nic solutions develop faster than weaker ones. I’ve tested this out.

I’ve never mixed 0 nic liquid, because vaping without nic in it doesn’t really appeal to me. So I don’t know whether steeping makes a difference there.

 

[oldhippydude]

I don’t really understand how steeping works..

Nobody does, so we can believe what we want. As long as we believe strong enough we will always prove ourselves right.

 

[zouzounaki]

If folk want dark juice it can be achieved very quickly, whisk in lots of air, heat it up, leave the cap off and leave it in a sunny, south facing window, job done. There are videos on youtube with folk showing off how quickly they can "steep" their juices using colour change as the proof of the effectiveness of their methods. To me forced oxidation is nicotine abuse.

I mix about half my liquids in brown and blue glass bottles, and the colour changes the same way it does in the plastic ones. The timescale might be different, but they still change. The only thing that stops the colour change is salt nic, in my experience. Bare in mind I’ve never mixed a 0 nic liquid.

I get your point about the possibility of conflating colour change with development of flavour and have questioned whether I am doing this myself, but at this point I’m convinced it’s not this.

FA butterscotch is a good example. At a certain point this concentrate changes very noticeably over night from a mild butterscotch caramel flavour to a very rich and smooth flavour that reminds me of a dime bar. This coincides exactly with the time that it changes colour from light pissy yellow to a rich orange caramel colour. I’ve repeated this and concluded it can’t be coincidence, and have also mixed this flavour in recipes with nic salt and never detected the rich, smooth butterscotch flavour come through at all.

I’m going to mix a 36mg batch of butterscotch with salt nic tomorrow and try a small sample every day for 2 weeks, to test this out further.

 

[zouzounaki]

Another good example is atmos labs black vanilla. This actually tastes bad until a couple of weeks, and continues to improve with time, and coincides with it darkening, until it’s almost opaque and tastes fantastic even at low concentrations. I’ll mix a salt batch of this as well and see what happens.

 

[oldhippydude]

I mix about half my liquids in brown and blue glass bottles, and the colour changes the same way it does in the plastic ones. The timescale might be different, but they still change. The only thing that stops the colour change is salt nic, in my experience. Bare in mind I’ve never mixed a 0 nic liquid.

I get your point about the possibility of conflating colour change with development of flavour and have questioned whether I am doing this myself, but at this point I’m convinced it’s not this.

FA butterscotch is a good example. At a certain point this concentrate changes very noticeably over night from a mild butterscotch caramel flavour to a very rich and smooth flavour that reminds me of a dime bar. This coincides exactly with the time that it changes colour from light pissy yellow to a rich orange caramel colour. I’ve repeated this and concluded it can’t be coincidence, and have also mixed this flavour in recipes with nic salt and never detected the rich, smooth butterscotch flavour come through at all.

I’m going to mix a 36mg batch of butterscotch with salt nic tomorrow and try a small sample every day for 2 weeks, to test this out further.

My experience is primarily with baccy flavours, fruit flavours, a few booze flavours and one or two others.
I do not exclude the possibility that some other flavours may take part in colour changing reactions on top of the nic oxidation.

 

[zouzounaki]

I have a strong suspicion that the nic oxidation itself plays a role in the development of certain flavours. Even some baccy flavours, although I tend to agree with you that they don’t need to steep in the way that a lot of people think they do. Mainly ry4 types need to sit in my experience.

 

[oldhippydude]

I have a strong suspicion that the nic oxidation itself plays a role in the development of certain flavours. Even some baccy flavours, although I tend to agree with you that they don’t need to steep in the way that a lot of people think they do. Mainly ry4 types need to sit in my experience.

In the days when I was closely monitoring how my mixes developed (long gone now) I could tell that my flavours improved over the first few days. Beyond a week I personally could not discern any improvement who knows, perhaps if I had allowed more oxidation things would have been different. I no longer care. I can knock up a big batch of juice that I prefer to fags, or to most juices I have bought, in 10 min. That is all I require these days and I will happily vape it at a few minutes or a few months old.

I do sincerely believe that there is a lot of voodoo involved in mixing and steeping. Whether you are right or I am, or neither of us are right as long as we believe our juices will taste better.

 

[the_atomic_fart]

The only thing that stops the colour change is salt nic, in my experience. Bare in mind I’ve never mixed a 0 nic liquid.

Then you really need to make a few 0mg juices as a controls. Otherwise you can't draw any valid conclusions. [emoji1]

 

[zouzounaki]

In the days when I was closely monitoring how my mixes developed (long gone now) I could tell that my flavours improved over the first few days. Beyond a week I personally could not discern any improvement who knows, perhaps if I had allowed more oxidation things would have been different. I no longer care. I can knock up a big batch of juice that I prefer to fags, or to most juices I have bought, in 10 min. That is all I require these days and I will happily vape it at a few minutes or a few months old.

I do sincerely believe that there is a lot of voodoo involved in mixing and steeping. Whether you are right or I am, or neither of us are right as long as we believe our juices will taste better.

I would agree with this about most of the flavours I use as well. In my experience there are only a few that change for the better over a longer period (especially the butterscotch and vanillas which I use quite a bit, and cookie. I mix all of these with tobaccos) most to me are good after a few days or even less. There shouldn’t really be more to it than the liquid being left long enough to be well mixed. The flavours already taste like they are supposed to before we even mix them. I also think there is a lot of voodoo involved.