Chemical analysis would be very expensive, and I do not have the means in my lab to carry it out. But there are several red flags here for something that should not be vaped.
1. Water insolubility. Oils are bad for the lungs, as they are not expelled well. Water-insolubility that increases with time indicates some chemical/biochemical reaction is taking place.
2. Solids. Never a good sign, although some tobacco extracts do have particulate. It looks like the tobacco flavoring here is from mastication, which will give lots of vegetable matter to the flavoring. Bad on a couple levels. One, solids are not a good thing, hard on coils, etc. Two vegetable matter can over time rot, which is another way of saying that some organism is eating it and using it to grow. I do not know if this is the case here, but it looks like it might be, given the visual details of the residues.
3. Nauseating taste. Besides being really unpleasant to vape, there are at least two sources of this. One, a flavoring, often an ester, has hydrolyzed, producing and organic acid (sour, pukey taste) and an organic alcohol (often "wet dog" funky taste, think unwashed crotch). I have seen this happen with some fruit juices several years ago, but not heard of this since. Two, rot products, which are waste products of the organisms eating the vegetable material. Tobacco absolute is generally used in extremely low quantities as a juice flavoring. Even TFA's tobacco absolute blend is too strong for me above about 1%, but it is nice at very low concentrations. If serious dilution does not improve the taste, my guess is this is a rot product, from vegetable decomposition.
As always, it is considered best to complain first to the vendor. They can rectify this, ECF cannot. Any decent vendor would want to know if a product they are selling is offensive, and would want to fix the situation.
I am aware of Catskills previous issues, both with flavoring issues and nic accuracy issues. I personally was involved with some nic titrating studies of some infamous juices, but the flavoring was so strong it was affecting the pH too much to get accurate readings. Other methods to analyze nic levels were not available to me. All I could say was what the lower limit of nic was, but I did not detect anything dangerous in this respect. There was also a foaming issue, but this turned out to most likely be from limonene, the most common lemon-lime flavor compound, and that juice was in fact lemon-lime. Ridiculously strong in flavoring, offensively so, but again, not something considered dangerous. Other juices were also extremely high in flavoring, but were actually quite nice when diluted.
I will not say Catskills should be boycotted, but there are 100s of excellent juice vendors out there, with far better reputations and product consistency. The blindness issue may or may not be an issue, if he has other employees doing processing, but if THEY are getting things this wrong, it is a serious issue.
Bottom line, I personally would never vape a juice that looks and acts this way, regardless of the taste. Nor would I personally buy from them again. I would write it off as a learning experience, toss the juice, and use the bottles for DIY. If they did not replace the purchase, that is, which is the first thing to explore here.
1. Water insolubility. Oils are bad for the lungs, as they are not expelled well. Water-insolubility that increases with time indicates some chemical/biochemical reaction is taking place.
2. Solids. Never a good sign, although some tobacco extracts do have particulate. It looks like the tobacco flavoring here is from mastication, which will give lots of vegetable matter to the flavoring. Bad on a couple levels. One, solids are not a good thing, hard on coils, etc. Two vegetable matter can over time rot, which is another way of saying that some organism is eating it and using it to grow. I do not know if this is the case here, but it looks like it might be, given the visual details of the residues.
3. Nauseating taste. Besides being really unpleasant to vape, there are at least two sources of this. One, a flavoring, often an ester, has hydrolyzed, producing and organic acid (sour, pukey taste) and an organic alcohol (often "wet dog" funky taste, think unwashed crotch). I have seen this happen with some fruit juices several years ago, but not heard of this since. Two, rot products, which are waste products of the organisms eating the vegetable material. Tobacco absolute is generally used in extremely low quantities as a juice flavoring. Even TFA's tobacco absolute blend is too strong for me above about 1%, but it is nice at very low concentrations. If serious dilution does not improve the taste, my guess is this is a rot product, from vegetable decomposition.
As always, it is considered best to complain first to the vendor. They can rectify this, ECF cannot. Any decent vendor would want to know if a product they are selling is offensive, and would want to fix the situation.
I am aware of Catskills previous issues, both with flavoring issues and nic accuracy issues. I personally was involved with some nic titrating studies of some infamous juices, but the flavoring was so strong it was affecting the pH too much to get accurate readings. Other methods to analyze nic levels were not available to me. All I could say was what the lower limit of nic was, but I did not detect anything dangerous in this respect. There was also a foaming issue, but this turned out to most likely be from limonene, the most common lemon-lime flavor compound, and that juice was in fact lemon-lime. Ridiculously strong in flavoring, offensively so, but again, not something considered dangerous. Other juices were also extremely high in flavoring, but were actually quite nice when diluted.
I will not say Catskills should be boycotted, but there are 100s of excellent juice vendors out there, with far better reputations and product consistency. The blindness issue may or may not be an issue, if he has other employees doing processing, but if THEY are getting things this wrong, it is a serious issue.
Bottom line, I personally would never vape a juice that looks and acts this way, regardless of the taste. Nor would I personally buy from them again. I would write it off as a learning experience, toss the juice, and use the bottles for DIY. If they did not replace the purchase, that is, which is the first thing to explore here.
