E-juice is a lot like a fine wine. Wine Whiskey or fine cheese.
The key is in the maturation. Most people call it steeping but Im going to come up with my own terms here.
And hope the rest copy me.
Your average e-juice vendor is interested in only one thing. How to get your nicotine into your system. The fact that nicotine is one of the most powerful poisons known to man makes them feel less guilty about what chemicals are used in the prepration of your e-juice.
Till very very recently e-cig meant only one thing a 510 Carto. At the end of a cig look alike.
But that has changed and is changing at a very rapid pace. As AVPs go from a few watts to 20 watts, 30, 50, and now even 100 watts. All that power means you can now burn a lot more juice a lot faster producing a lot more vapour. The key is better designed tanks. That change the complete vaping experience.
There has been a move away from e-cig as a delivery system for nicotine. To E-cig as a gastronomic delight.
It is gastronomic because its just like food. Your tongue is involved your nose and sense of smell is involved. Except you dont need to worry about the callories.
I see this fad only growing no matter what the Govt does about Nicotine. They can not ban the sale of PG/VG and flavors. Even if they wanted to. And the pleasure one gets from vaping other than the potential health benefits mean its only going to grow with time. I predict in the future you wont take injections or swallow pills you will just take a flavored vapor.
And so the key going forward is going to be taste and aroma. We will got from the common single flavors. To more and more complex flavors. The ground work has already been done for us in the art and development of molecular gastronomy.
We dont even have to figure this one out.
So in summary what your supposed to get from what you've read so far is that good flavors and natural flavors take time to mature. In most cases.
The easy way to get taste on the spot is to just flood the PG with heavy smelling and tasting chemicals.
Want your flavours to pop no problem just add Malic acid. Want this taste ass that chemical.
It will fool people. Just so long as they dont taste anything better.
If everybody is selling 90% PG juices with strong flavors. That is what everybody will use, compare and bench mark against.
But the human brain is smarter than we give it credit for it figures out things on a subconscious level.
Like that flavor has 2 MG more nic and I like it better. Not sure why. It just tastes better.
Likewise you just have to exp. good juice an no matter what your brain tells you. You will know its better.
We are drawn towards natural tasting, thick velvet smooth clouds. You just need to exp it once. On the right gear to know it.
Most famous companies will not even tell you what % of PG and VG they use. They consider it a trade secret. Chk the Hallo Web site. its one of the costliest Juices out there. They wont tell you the ratio. And they wont even tell you what they put in it.
It could be chemicals. It could be Alkaloids which I suspect.
Ill be open and tell you that VG is what gives you the smoothness. VG is what gives you the thickness. And VG is what gives you the thick thick clouds.
So why not all just use VG.
The reason is simple. It does not blend well with anything. It wont blend with nicotine. It wont blend with flavors.
And the biggest draw back is that it has a strong taste of its own. Which is it tastes like sugar / sweet. The synthic stuff while not being so sweet. Is drier but does have a taste. Some say its almost like Petroleum Jelly.
So this is not a route that can be used by a big manufacturer. The amount of flavor you need to add to over come the base taste is sometimes double. What you would need to use with PG. And flavor is the costliest part off any juice. Not the PG or VG or the Nicotine. Its the flavor that costs the most.
So it makes no business sense to use VG. Unless your doing a Boutique line. Where volume sales are never the objective.
Blending is an art form. Many times you are trying to blend things that do not dissolve into each other. So you then use a substitute. Say X does not blend with Y. But X blends with Z and Z blends with Y. So you take that route.
Other times the only way to make it happen is with time.
If you take VG. I have seen at least 10 different types or thickness. Most time the only thing that is different is the amount of water in the VG. Water blends with VG. And is cheap. You hear that poping with some juices most times its water in the juice boiling off. Like water in hot oil. The thicker the VG. The harder it is for the Flavor to blend. The thinner it is the easier.
As you know I have a fetish for thick juice. So flavor blending was always going to be a problem.
This is some of the steps we use to get it to blend.
First we mix in a particular order.
Next we nuke the juice in the microwave. (As only glass ware is used its easy). I would not microwave anything in a plastic container. You also have to factor in what the base is before you heat it. Temp should not exceed 70-80c.
Next its put into an Industrial Ultrasonic cleaner. Not the piddly shitty ones you see on ebay for cleaning jewelry.
This is run for 1 hour. After this. The glass container is put in the sun. Sun charging is a topic in itself. But I do it because that is how granny used to make pickle.
The bottles are shaken at least 2-3 times a day.
You do this for a month and then the flavor starts to blend. The longer you do it. The better it blends.
As you would have figured out here. Warmth and temp play a critical role. This is because when you heat up VG it becomes thin for some time. In this thin state flavors have a better chance of blending. When it cools it goes back to thick.
Before shiping a juice we bring it to a level that I am ok with smoking it. It has to pass the would I smoke that as is.
If the answer is yes it ships.
Once I pick a bottle to smoke I normally put it beside my laptop vent which blows hot air. So the bottle is always warm. From time to time I give it a shake. This is how I speed steep and ensure I get the best flavor.
Some juices just have to be left getting their daily work out till the flavor matures.
There are many juices which are ready to vape right away. There are some that are mild and get very strong after 4-5 weeks.
But all flavors mature with time. They constantly evolve. Even as the temps change in your tank they are evolving.
Some grow stronger in flavor with time. Some waker. Doing silly stuff like adding a lot of water will totally kill the flavor. Try not to add more than 10% of water anyway.
Unless you are using a carto in a tank you do not need to think about thinning down the liquid.
A regular carto will soak up pure VG no problem just warm up the VG.
The rarest flavor in my collection is a 10 year old Tobacco Absolute.
To give you an idea of how strong it is.
You take 10 ML of pure VG. You add a drop. Nothing happens. The drop remains the same shape. Even if you shake. Its so thick. You warm up the juice and give it a shake. It now turns dark brown. You then take 1 drop of this and add it to any flavor and you will get the flavor or tobacco. It is the strongest flavor I have every used. It tastes like a fine old wisey to me. And no there are no plans to sell this. This is for my own use and to share with friends.
Fresh batches are being prepared. With both Andhra leaf and Mysore leaf. And since this is 2014. The filtration process will be much better and high tech compared to what my 10 year old batch went thru.
This is the kind of stuff that I think Hangsen adds in their tobacco flavors at under 0.5% to get that tobacco note.
After which other stuff is added.
We may develop some Tobacco Lines to which this will be added. Just for flavor. It contains nicotine all the alkaloids and flavor.
Did you know there are flavors that are used very common which cost over 4 Lakhs a KG. Rose is one such flavor. The costliest one is about 28 Lakh per Kg.
We will be offering natural Rose flavored vape in the health line. Price will be Rs 1500/- for 7 ML. Too many flavors to mention in this post. All will be natural or nature identical. In this line flavor will be second. And getting the natural oils to be absorbed will the primary goal. Cant make any medical claims but google is your friend.