Steeping

[Chegs]

Single flavour mixes I'll just use a frother to thoroughly stir the juices so I can vape it straight from mixing, complex flavours need time for the flavours to mingle so steeping is required even if frothed. As the flavours need to mingle, if I then added the flavour to the nicotine/PG/VG (which also have a taste)they wouldn't mingle as well unless steeped.

posted from a DIY juice cloud

 

[spikeyvic]

Steep in the base mix. There is certainly some chemistry going on and molecule bonding is the reasonable bet, either that or perverse goblin magic - i'm 50/50 on which it is.

A simple raspberry that I mix is a colourless concentrate which goes into my colourless base, I don't froth it, heat it I just give it a shake after mixing and put it away in a dark place, at this point it's colourless. Over the next couple of weeks it'll take on a rich light golden yellow hue and the flavour will settle and become richer. This colour is the product of steeping (aging really) and is a chemical reaction of some sort.

However the idea of pre-mix/pre-steep your flavour concentrates has merit, see google for milkstone, but you'd still have to steep once it's mixed into a base.

TL;DR:

because

 

[Colonelboom]

Essentially the flavours need time to bond with the diluents used but there are other things at play too. Certain flavour types need much longer than others to not only bond fully but also the depth of flavour to develop, typically these are creams and custard types and while a little heat will speed up the process it is not a way to bypass steeping altogether - the best thing here is time.

Personally I batch steep everything for at least 14 days before bottling and in the process of bottling also introduce fresh air to the equation which causes oxidisation and further enhances flavours, this is known as breathing and most people try to breathe their juices far too long (tops off in a cupboard for a week or two just introduces a contamination risk)

 

[scrumpox]

Essentially the flavours need time to bond with the diluents used but there are other things at play too. Certain flavour types need much longer than others to not only bond fully but also the depth of flavour to develop, typically these are creams and custard types and while a little heat will speed up the process it is not a way to bypass steeping altogether - the best thing here is time.

Personally I batch steep everything for at least 14 days before bottling and in the process of bottling also introduce fresh air to the equation which causes oxidisation and further enhances flavours, this is known as breathing and most people try to breathe their juices far too long (tops off in a cupboard for a week or two just introduces a contamination risk)

This is what I'm getting at, though the difference between steeping and breathing is interesting. Leaving bottles open to the air never sounded wise to me, for the reason you've given.

So if we have a single flavour concentrate, say apple, the process is just bonding the flavour with the diluents. Steep it for x days.
Where you're mixing flavour concentrates, say apple, plus blackberry and pastry, the flavours need to develop depth before adding to the diluents - so we might steep the flavour concentrates before making up the final fluid, particularly if developing a juice from scratch.

I guess in a maufacturing situation, the nic is coming in last as you'll be making various nic strengths of the same flavour - or do you make it at the highest nic and dilute it down?

 

[Colonelboom]

This is what I'm getting at, though the difference between steeping and breathing is interesting. Leaving bottles open to the air never sounded wise to me, for the reason you've given.

So if we have a single flavour concentrate, say apple, the process is just bonding the flavour with the diluents. Steep it for x days.
Where you're mixing flavour concentrates, say apple, plus blackberry and pastry, the flavours need to develop depth before adding to the diluents - so we might steep the flavour concentrates before making up the final fluid, particularly if developing a juice from scratch.

I guess in a maufacturing situation, the nic is coming in last as you'll be making various nic strengths of the same flavour - or do you make it at the highest nic and dilute it down?

Fruit + fruit (+fruit +fruit +fruit if you like) are usually pretty quick to steep but it does sometimes depend on the flavour manufacturer. I have used some that are not massively different 24 hours after mixing that 7 days but others that might take 4 days before they taste 'right'. Pastry is an odd one again and I would put that in the same category as creams for needing at the very least 4 days to fully develop.

Realistically though it is the difficult thing to work out and why quite often developing new flavours takes forever as you do need to steep for a week on each revision to be certain that steeping isn't affecting the finished flavour.

Mixing wise, I make up 5 litre containers of the flavourings I use as one giant concentrate, all I need to do then is make up my VG and PG ratio with nic for each batch and then the specified percentage of whatever concentrate I mix from - getting the concentrate right in the first place takes most of the work but in terms of production the finished juice isn't all that hard (that would be bottling and labelling)

 

[scrumpox]

So are you going by smell when you're getting the concentrate right, Leigh? I assume that you don't vape a concentrate?

 

[twoeyedbob]

Id imagine the concentrate is made like you would normally do a mix...only without the last step of adding vg/pg...and on a larger scale.

Wouldnt imagine anyone mixes by smell...

 

[Colonelboom]

So are you going by smell when you're getting the concentrate right, Leigh? I assume that you don't vape a concentrate?

No, the concentrate is made up just using the same ratios of the much smaller mixes that are created during testing. Whichever of the flavour I decide on gets ramped up from a 30 or 50ml bottle to 500ml to make sure it scales right (and gives me enough juice to use as an ADV for a while to keep checking how it ages)

If there is no significant difference (as I would expect anyway, ratios are ratios regardless of volume) then I go ahead and make 5litres or more of the concentrate up and from there I just have to add to the diluents at whatever ratio is required.

 

[VaperCaper]

So are you going by smell when you're getting the concentrate right, Leigh? I assume that you don't vape a concentrate?

You don't ever go by 'smell'

While I do do that with food often, e-liquid flavours are made from chemical flavourings and the smell isn't very indicative of what's going on, your sense of smell is tuned to pickup natural cues.

I make liquids the same way leigh does. I play about with flavours and come up with a recipe, and run several revisions at low quantities (typically 30ml) until I'm happyish.

then I multiply the mix up to 250ml or so and test that and tweak it as required, at this point I send out samples to some of my testers.

finally when I have a recipe I'm happy with I make up several litres of flavouring. That gets left for a day before I use it so it's all well mixed.

to make finished liquids I then mix in x% flavour x% nicotine x% VG x% PG according to the recipe. If it's a very large mix then I measure by weight, if it's a smaller mix I use measuring cylinders and measure by volume.



Steeping is a chemical reaction between nicotine and flavouring*. Nicotine is very reactive and it alters the flavours in a mix over time. Some take less time, some take more time. Usually steeping is done by about 2 weeks. So we steep the whole batch for 10 days and then bottle so by the time it gets to the customer it's almost always 2 weeks old.

you can speed up steeping and increase the speed of the reaction using heat or UV light or mixing it with lots more oxygen (air)

* There is more going on in steeping, things like the various things in a liquid mixing thoroughly evenly, some of the flavours used develop and 'age' on their own without the help of nicotine, but they are a smaller portion of what's going on.

 

[VaperCaper]

Whichever of the flavour I decide on gets ramped up from a 30 or 50ml bottle to 500ml to make sure it scales right [...]
If there is no significant difference (as I would expect anyway, ratios are ratios regardless of volume)

the only reason for it to go wrong at this point is if you stuffed up the measurements somewhere making the initial testers.

It's why I use 30ml bottles as initial mixes. Frequently these end up binned, but, if you made a 10ml tester and your flavour total % is at say 25% in total you need 2.5ml of flavour for a 10ml bottle.
If your flavour is made of say 8 or 9 (some of mine are closer to 15) other flavours then you need to accurately measure really tiny amounts of stuff, which is really hard to do.

Whereas if you are mixing up a 30ml bottle of the stuff to start with then typically the smallest thing you need to measure is 0.1ml which is easy to get right with a 1ml syringe.