Aging Juice / Juice Darkening

[SingedVapor]

Ok so i'm sitting here looking at my 6 bottles of juice I have been working on these past two days. I just started diy and ITS SO MUCH FUN anyway... I'm noticing some of my liquids are clear, some are turning a nice golden colour. I was curious as to what I should be expecting. Does colour define the readiness of the juice? I'm not sure how to actually word what I'm asking per-say, but that's the best I have. Any advice to a noob DIY'er would be much appreciated.

 

[Wingsfan0310]

I get what your saying. Color change doesn't necessarily equate to taste change. Different flavors will change color more than others as time goes by.

I'm in the minority here, but I think for the most part steeping is overated. I always taste my juice after mixing, that way you know if the taste changes for the better, worse, or not at all. I'm a shake and vape kind of guy. Most of my mixes taste good to me right from the start. Good luck with your DIY!

Cheers,
Steve

 

[Heabob]

I find some of my mixes are better after changing color, and some never change colors, but YMMV.

I got some Blue Moo from MBV when I first started Vaping and it was clear, tasted terrible, very bitter.

Put it up in my cabinet and forgot about it for at least 2 weeks.

Organizing things later on I found it, and it had changed to light yellow, tried it again, and then tasted very good.

Sometimes steeping helps IMO.

 

[Abe_Katz]

Hi, SingedVapor. I've been doing DIY for most of my juices for well over a year. In my experience the "steeping" requirements (I put that in quotes as I prefer to call it aging--as in like a wine) vary from juice to juice. Also depending on the flavoring used, and the presence of any artificial colors in the flavoring agents (for example I have a Banana Cream flavor that I make that contains a small amount of yellow food coloring) will effect whether or not the color of the liquid will change over time.

Over all, however, any juice containing nicotine will darken (to varying degrees) depending on how much oxygen and sunlight it is exposed to. Also juices sometimes darken while being vaped.

I'll use an example. My menthol juice almost never darkens unless I happen to leave a bottle of it in the car for extended periods of time. The tropical Florida sun, and the heat of the car being parked into said sun seem to darken it. It should be noted that the menthol only juice is vapable immediately. However, I do try to avoid doing that. On the other hand I have a RY4 type juice that darkens over the course of time and needs to be aged at least a week to even be vapable.

Over all I would say that taste of the juice is a better indicator of the vapability of the recipe in question than the color of the juice. For this reason I strongly suggest that anyone who wants to DIY invest in a drip atty.

 

[FrogmanDave]

I'm in the minority here, but I think for the most part steeping is overated. I always taste my juice after mixing, that way you know if the taste changes for the better, worse, or not at all. I'm a shake and vape kind of guy. Most of my mixes taste good to me right from the start. Good luck with your DIY!

Cheers,
Steve

I agree with Wingsfan. I am one who thinks steeping is overrated with the exception of some tobacco and maybe coffee flavors (the stronger mixes with less flavoring). You will notice that some juices react to the nicotine over time. We notice in our store that mixes with caramel darken slightly while others darken quite a bit. One notable example is our Vanilla Cupcake from TFA. It turns very, very dark over time. We (and our customers) haven't noticed any flavor change, just the color change. It does look weird on the shelf. The zero nicotine is clear as water but anything with nicotine is dark.