My first 100% VG cuban cigar concentrate

I don't smoke anymore, and I love vaping, but I must admit I miss the taste of a good cigar. So I've tried making a cigar-flavored e-liquid and I found something that's somewhat convincing. Here's what I did:

I crushed a Quintero Londres cigar and stuffed the powder inside a 100 ml bottle. Then I filled up the bottle with PGA (about 30 ml) and let it sit on the radiator for 3 days. At that point, the PGA had turned a blackish brown color.

I filtered out the coarse material, then refiltered the alcohol through a regular coffee filter, then through a microfilter paper. Finally, I boiled off the alcohol vigorously in big bubbles, in 2 or 3 minutes, and stopped right before boiling it off completely and getting a burnt tarry deposit at the bottom of the bottle. I tried simmering and evaporating the alcohol, but that took forever and the taste went off. Boiling quickly seems to preserve the taste better.

Finally, I added 10 ml of glycerine, let it simmer in boiling water for 10 minutes until the juice turned almost black, pulled it inside a syringe and quickly forced it through microfilter paper while it was still liquid to get ride of the last particulates. That left me with around 8 ml of golden honey-colored, VERY pungent juice. In fact, it's so pungent that it smells of tobacco 3 feet around the bottle with the cap on!

Right now I'm letting it rest for a week, to let the flavors develop. Also, the juice will decant some more, to get rid of the very fine stuff that's managed to pass through the microfilter paper. Still, I tried adding 5 drops in 1 ml of expresso coffee-flavored juice, to have a go at it, and the Londres' taste is definitely there. Unfortunately, as I expected, it doesn't give off any of the subtle fragrances that are created when tobacco burns, but it's better than nothing for an ex-smoker I guess. At least it reminds me of a cigar

 

Thanks. I've tried a few drops of it raw on an atomizer, and bizarrely it tastes a lot weaker than the cigar it came from when it's smoked. It smells like a Cohiba factory (yes, I've visited one ) but the power of the taste when vaped doesn't match. Still tastes cigar-y though, but very leafy or grassy compared to real smoke.

I think next time I'll make it twice as concentrated (i.e. 4 ml of final juice per Londres-sized cigar). Also, I reckon using PG would help liven up the taste, but I won't do that myself as I'm intolerant to the stuff. Worth a try if you're not though.

Another thing I'd like to try - just to evaluate the taste - is try to capture the taste of fresh smoke in the alcohol instead of that of the unburnt cigar. But that kind of defeats the purpose of vaping really.

All that just confirms what I already knew, which is that the hardest flavor to emulate in e-juice is the taste of tobacco...