Sweet Juice - Finally

[RyGuy]

So I tried just a drop of Stevia in a 5ml batch that I just made and it didn't really do much for the flavor, so I got curious and dropped a drop of pure Stevia on a 901 Atty and...... BLECH! It was a horrible taste, kinda like smoking Opium taste wise. It is not at all the taste I was expecting and I will not be using stevia in any future batches. Though a fantastic natural sweetener for beverages, it does not fair well in high-temp situations.

[Joliet]

Thanks for the feedback RyGuy. I just bought some from eBay. And after reading your testimonial, I am somewhat regretting it. Were these the same drops you used, in the link below? I Bought four of them. I noticed that Propylene Glycol was not an ingredient, unlike Capella's flavor drops.

Stevita Flavor Drops

Let us know if these are the ones you tried. Thanks

So I tried just a drop of Stevia in a 5ml batch that I just made and it didn't really do much for the flavor, so I got curious and dropped a drop of pure Stevia on a 901 Atty and...... BLECH! It was a horrible taste, kinda like smoking Opium taste wise. It is not at all the taste I was expecting and I will not be using stevia in any future batches. Though a fantastic natural sweetener for beverages, it does not fair well in high-temp situations.

[Jormugandr]

Why does everyone keep saying stevia isn't allowed to be marketed as a sweetener? I see commercials for Truvia almost every day and that's just a name-brand stevia. Do they add some extra additives to comply with some weird FDA loophole or something?

God, I wish someone would do something about lobbyists. It should be so freakin' illegal for chemical and pham companies to lobby and influence the FDA. The FDA is supposed to police them, not the other way around. And don't get me started on the REST of the government.

Ron Paul should just call in his internet army and storm the capital building.

[rave]

I posted this at the beginning of October:

"I purchased Stevita brand stevia drops. No other ingredients are listed on the bottle. It made everything taste like what a wet dog smells like. The amount I used was miniscule but it was enough to foul my atty to normal flavors. I had to rinse the atty repeatedly and then use a mint flavor to mask it."

It's really not worth the trouble of trying to get rid of the taste on your atty.

[Luv2CUSmile]

I have read and researched more on this and unfortunately can not find ANY type of sweetener that would be passable flavor wise or inhalant friendly... I figure if I need something with a bit more "sweet" add the closest flavor that is sweet w/o tampering w/ the flavor I am actually planning on vaping...
Until I get brave enough to try sugar dissolved in water and make my own syruppy sweetener and then dedicate one atty to it and see how I fair... Until I get brave enough to do that... I have loads of flavors and most I love just as is... The few that are a bit light on sweet I will mix w/ other liquids or use to pump up regular tobacco flavor...

[HippyGirl]

OK, I've got to chime in here...

I used to manufacture low carb bake mixes, so I used pure sucralose powder obtained directly from the manufacturer. As I had a kilo of it, I also made/sold liquid sucralose, so I have some experience with the product.

I looked at the site selling Splendex and saw they also sell a liquid product, but I could not find anywhere on the site where they list their ingredients.

If any of you have purchased the liquid, please understand that liquid sucralose can go bad QUICKLY if not properly preserved...even if refrigerated. While I understand that a lot of people prefer to avoid preservatives, some food products simply MUST be preserved.

So, if anyone starts seeing little "floaties" or something that looks like tiny pieces of fibers in the liquid sucralose...TOSS IT!

Get the powder and mix your own in very small amounts by adding a tiny bit at a time into a small amount of water (say a tablespoon or so)...you'll be much safer in the end.

Just my .02.

HG

[Kurt]

The sweetening effect from stevia is a molecule that contains this center:

http://upload.wikimedia.org/wikipedi...cb/Steviol.svg

From Wiki: Stevia - Wikipedia, the free encyclopedia

"Steviol is the basic building block of stevia's sweet glycosides: Stevioside and rebaudioside A are constructed by replacing the bottom hydrogen atom with glucose and the top hydrogen atom with two or three linked glucose groups, respectively."

This makes stevia a HUGE molecule compared to other juices we normally vape. Not good...wouldn't a clue as to the BP. Solid at RT, probably a range of BPs well above 600 C (VG=290 C)...certainly higher than table sugar, and we aren't vaping that. Possibly under the high atty heat it loses the sugars hanging off the top O, and you get an organic alcohol that probably would smell of wet dog, because that is a relatively common odor of alcohols of this size. If the sugar hanging off the bottom O comes off, you have the acid, which is gonna be foul too! Either way you get free sugar, which if it caramelizes might catalyze above the reactions.

I want sweet too. This ain't the way, IMHO.

[tokarev]

Why does everyone keep saying stevia isn't allowed to be marketed as a sweetener? I see commercials for Truvia almost every day and that's just a name-brand stevia. Do they add some extra additives to comply with some weird FDA loophole or something?

Truvia is made from an extract of stevia called erythritol, not from pure stevia. It HAS been approved for marketing as a "sugar substitute" aka "sweetener". Pure stevia has NOT been approved as a "sweetener" and can only be marketed legally as a "food additive". Do a web search on stevia and FDA. You'll quickly find the whole story. The Japanese have been using stevia as a sweetener since the 1970's, but we have only been hearing of it recently. Why do you think that is?

TT33

[Hookaddict]

I have to say stevia is great for beverages and foods but has that bitter plant taste in high concentrations thats why the powder version is better because most of them have low to no bitter taste compared to liquid, its in my coffee and tea everyday but e liquid no
you'll get that bitter taste vaping that

[Madame Psychosis]

Oooooh, sweet clove? Would this replicate the taste of the sugared papers I miss so much from Djarum Blacks?

On the stevia question...

Stevia (whole/extract) has indeed not been permitted for marketing as a sweetener by the FDA. Because it is "GRAS", Generally Recognized As Safe, it CAN be sold as a "dietary supplement", which leads to some of the funny wording you see on packages at health food stores ("as a dietary supplement, take two drops per 2 oz of liquid..." and whatnot).

The standards for a food vs. for a supplement are entirely different in the eyes of the FDA, thanks to the 1994 act that deregulated the whole supplement/vitamin/OTC industry.
Probably the only good reason for this is that stevia, being an herb, has a lot of different compounds we don't fully understand yet. Truvia is an extract of (I think) the rebaudosides, just one of the compounds in stevia, and one that was thoroughly tested for toxicity etc. (Erythritol is a commonly used sugar alcohol in low-carb sweets and has been added for bulk and to round out the sweet flavor. It is not a stevia product.)

To play FDA's-advocate... While whole stevia herb/extract has been used for a long time in other countries, it's a general truism that tradition doesn't necessarily make safety.
(After all, long-time tradition does NOT equal total and utter safety in all dosages and forms of use. This applies to a lot of herbal supplements -- we don't fully understand whether or how they work, what drugs they interact with, what the active compounds might be, etc. I mean, think about the long history of tobacco use. I'm not equating tobacco with stevia by ANY, ANY means, but it is the most outstanding example of how science had to overcome tradition because of a health threat. Then there are things like St John's Wort, which turns out to cause serious problems if you're taking a prescription antidepressant. And so on.)

Do I avoid stevia because of this? Nah. I do see the FDA's point of view, but I've always been a little too eager to try things for myself.

I like stevia, sucralose, aspartame, etc. and since I'm a PubMed.org junkie, I have checked out the toxicity studies. There's a lot of misinformation out there, but my general conclusion is that they're all pretty safe in moderate quantities unless you're personally intolerant to them.