Ylang Ylang

[Ehvam]

Anybody know what happened to the ylang ylang flavour? I ordered it a few months ago and grew to love it intensely for my "sit back and relax" moments. I checked with Totally Wicked and they have all the DF flavours except ylang.
Will they be getting it? anybody know when?

[Nick O'Teen]

We just bottled up a batch of Ylang-ylang flavour concentrates last week, and it should be shipping out to the US early next week. Then it's just a matter of waiting for them to pass customs and reach Florida. Premixed YY juice will follow.
Should definitely be in stock before the end of the month (and hopefully sooner.)

[Ehvam]

Awesome, looking forward to it.

[ella]

I've just received some DV Ylang Ylang flavouring and am thoroughly enjoying it. The scent is hypnotic and the taste is very smooth with a touch of tang.

[Nick O'Teen]

Glad you like it - if you like complex floral flavours, I can also recommend the Lotus Flower

[emonty]

Ylang Ylang is super!!! Ordered more because I love it. Also ordered the Lotus Flower. All DV so far are excellent!!!
My ultimate favorite is the French Tart: great flavor, good TH and massive plumes of vapor!!

[Ehvam]

I have a few questions.
I ordered the Ylang flavoring from TW and its just doesn't taste the way my old Ylang from DV tasted.
How best to mix it?
I usually like a mixture of VG and PG (50-50&#37. What percentage of ylang flavoring should I use? Should I cut out the PG? Its just not as fragrant and heady as when I bought it pre-mixed, but I do know the one I had from DV was all vg. So which way is best?
Secondly- is any real ylang ylang used in the flavoring? Or is it a synthetic flavoring made to smell/taste like Ylang ylang?

[Nick O'Teen]

The current premixed Ylang-ylang juice is PG-based, with a little extra VG for vapour, and the flavouring is mixed at 15%. But the old 'green bottle' DV juices were entirely VG-based, and the flavour was a little stronger (about 20%) to compensate for the lower throat hit.

So to recreate the old 'green bottle' flavour, use VG Platinum Ice and Aqueous Glycerine (or dilute your own,) and add 20% flavour concentrate:

33% VG PI
47% AG
20% flavour concentrate

should give you an 18mg/ml juice indistinguishable from the original

As for which way is "best" - whichever way you prefer Everyone's tastes are different, so don't be afraid to experiment - one size never fits all

I don't think there are any natural ylang-ylang derivatives in the concentrate (they're horribly expensive!) but they are predominantly nature-identical (same compounds, derived from other sources,) - it's a fairly standardized preparation for food and fragrance applications, though I don't have the paperwork (or Fenaroli's Handbook,) to hand here at home to consult the details.
It's not one we mix ourselves, though we do distil the volatiles out to remove some potential atomizer-gunging dry residue (sugars and atomizers don't mix well!)

[Ehvam]

Great! Thank you for that.
So I am wondering- would it be safe to actually vape real ylang ylang? I have a small vial of pure ylang ylang extract (thats how I got interested when I saw you had the flavor) and I was tempted to use it as a flavoring when I ran out of my green bottle juice.
I've tried to look on the web but I can't seem to find out if its toxic or not.

[Nick O'Teen]

Great! Thank you for that.
So I am wondering- would it be safe to actually vape real ylang ylang? I have a small vial of pure ylang ylang extract (thats how I got interested when I saw you had the flavor) and I was tempted to use it as a flavoring when I ran out of my green bottle juice.
I've tried to look on the web but I can't seem to find out if its toxic or not.

You probably have ylang-ylang essential oil or "absolute" (there is a fine distinction between EOs and absolutes, but for the sake of clarity I will here treat them as effectively synonymous,) and this is a slightly different sort of a thing to a flavour concentrate, though there's a lot of overlap, and absolutes/EOs are a vital part of most flavours (even where those oils are recreated using nature-identical blends, rather than natural extracts from the named source.)

Essential oils are (usually steam-) distilled from herbal materials, and are a complex mix of volatiles in ultra-concentrated form, representing an aspect (often a broad aspect,) of the flavour or scent of the flowers/leaves/fruits/nuts/roots/whatever.
Some essential oils taste exactly the same as the flavour imparted by the unrefined flowers/leaves; clove springs to mind - utterly distinctive, and if you mixed clove oil with dark sawdust in the right proportions, you would not be able to tell by taste alone that it wasn't simply ground cloves you were tasting. Some others represent rather distinctive subsets of the unrefined flavours - most fruit absolutes, for example, don't taste much like the fruits themselves. This is because so many of the flavour components are non-volatile (all the sugars, starches and proteins, for example!)

Such extracts are fine for perfumery applications - because they only contain the volatiles, they do generally smell identical to the source, but it is trickier when you're trying to make them taste the same.

Now, it's very true that sugars aren't volatile in ejuice either (so you can't just add concentrated fruit juice to your nicotine,) but if you mix pear absolute with PG, it smells like pears, but it doesn't taste much like pears at all (not the sort of pear flavour you'd want to vape anyway! I know - it's one I'm experimenting with ATM, and it's proving a bit of a challenge.) It tastes unpleasantly solventy, a lot like nail polish remover. The skill of building a realistic flavour, is to find volatile components to restore the missing qualities provided by the non-volatiles, and recreate the flavour of the original. It's an often difficult, sometimes infuriating, but always ultimately satisfying aspect of the job

I am not aware that any of the components in ylang-ylang absolute are significantly toxic, and it is approved for food applications. The oral LD50s for most essential oils, even in the more hazardous herb oils like dill or sage or lavendar (also approved for food use,) are typically 3-5ml per kg of body weight, so are of little relevance to a delivery system that could at best deliver a few nanolitres per puff (for a good overview of the toxicity issues, I can recommend this page)

I would advise not using more than a 1-2% solution max (and start off with 0.5% probably) - it's very strong stuff (as well as sometimes problematic to keep in solution in a glycol base.) And I'm afraid it's unlikely, on its own, to taste the same (or even as nice,) as our flavour concentrate.
But experiment, if you've a mind to - you may find that it modifies other flavours pleasingly (it could transform a plain coconut juice into something rather wonderful, I expect.)

Happy mixing!