diacetyl-free?

[meems]

Watermelon for sure..kicks my behind..I use about 10-15%. That said, watermelon in TPA is fine.

 

[Pheisty]

Watermelon for sure..kicks my behind..I use about 10-15%. That said, watermelon in TPA is fine.

Interesting. It's a good thing I don't like watermelon! Any others that you've tried?

I pretty much stick to coffees, vanillas, creams, marshmallows, etc. I have yet to try a fruity vape that I like, unfortunately.

 

[washvap]

Well, I believe that you don't have anything to worry about then. Since you focus on tobacco flavors. Which don't contain diacetyl most of the time. This thread is aimed more for people that vape other flavors besides tobacco.

Thanks for your input though.

I haven't got any weird cough or anything (except that I have a cold and all the horrible symptoms that go along with it excepting the sore throat, the cough - just a bit at times -, and the phlegm, and I believe the ecigs instead of analogs are responsible for these partly good things), just a bit of rash at times when I go to bed, but it goes away quickly and I can't even say it's PG-related, it could be just about anything really. I don't vape many flavours in fact: Prime 15 and Torque 56 by Halo, Flue Cured and just a bit of 555 (because it tastes like honey and a lot of honey can be sickening) by Dekang, and then my own Tuscan Reserve with Bitter Wizard (FA) and my Cloud9 Flue Cured (very much unlike Dekang's). My only problem is with Prime 15 disappearing too fast (and it isn't even cheap). Maybe there's still diacetyl around, but I guess I haven't met it. Maybe when I was trying those sickening (vanillin, yuk!) Hangsen liquids?

 

[meems]

Interesting. It's a good thing I don't like watermelon! Any others that you've tried?

I pretty much stick to coffees, vanillas, creams, marshmallows, etc. I have yet to try a fruity vape that I like, unfortunately.

The jury is still out on the cantaloupe...they both have that "rind" added in that makes it just incredible, but unfortunately, I think that might be what bothers me. I vape very low nic, night time zero, I find fruits give me a much better th. Hmmm, I did notice the cocoa I made made me cough too, that was a fa base. I only vaped that as a here there & yonder, never as an all day so not sure if I would have had the same end result. Maybe it's just something in their base? Not sure...have been leaning towards staying with TPA's, I seem to do fine on that. I have a decent supply of fa though, I'm sure I'll revisit again to test the waters eventually.

 

[Fernand]

@Meems, can you estimate how much flavoring you use? Average drops are around 0.040 ml each. So if you use 20 drop in a 10 ml bottle of juice that's 0.040 * 20 = 0.8 ml then divide by total milliliters, 10 for a 10 ml bottle, giving 0.08 i.e. 8% . If you just squirsh flavoring in, try to estimate what percentage of the bottle is flavoring.

@Pheisty, a fruity one that I like is a Black Currant. My standard recipe is, for 10 ml - all VG except for a few drops of water/alcohol + Nicotine in VG (I'm using say 10 mg/ml now). Frankly I'm not sold on alcohol, it's a bit harsh, water at 5-10% is fine.

8 drops black currant
2 drops liquid amber
2 drops concord grape
1 drop oba oba
1 drop citrus mix
1 drop sweetener (PA)
1 drop MTS wizard

Another I like is a Lemony Wine. My wife says it's perfumey,
I don't think so, again for 10 ml

8 drops concord grape
4 drops citrus mix
2 drops liquid amber
2 drops pear (this is very light and optional)
2 drops PA sweetener

My favorite all day vape is still Maple Surple:

8 drops maple
2 drops vanilla tahiti (it's an almondy vanilla)
3 drops oba oba
2-3 drops PA sweetener
1 drop MTS wizard
and optionally
1 drop cookie
1 drop fresh cream

All flavors are FlavourArt's except the sucralose sweetener (from PA, that ecigexpress sells as well). All are under 8% total flavoring, and none include diketones. I find MTS Wizard, Liquid Amber and Oba Oba to be important flavor fillers. MTS is like the Maggi of vape, Liquid Amber is a rich sour note, Oba Oba is a complex sweet vanillaey note. But of course you improvise with what you got.

 

[Jorge22]

Precisely, you've been adding too much flavour to your liquids. If you pay close attention to FA's indications, you'll see they'll give you very low percentages for their flavours. People I know, vendors included, may say adding 3% of a tobacco flavour is merely enough to hide the PG/VG tastes a bit (even so, they probably wouldn't go over 10% for FA), but I do well with their percentages apart from the fact that most of their tobaccos (with the nice exception of their Tuscan Reserve with just a bit of Bitter Wizard) taste like hay, as so many do, namely TPA's which, to add up, tend to give you a dry throat. I understand, of course, a cigarette is a cigarette and contains loads of things, all burning at very high temperatures, plus paper and so forth and I understand a tobacco leave that's not cured won't taste at all like that; in fact, I'm not really looking for anything that tastes like tobacco anymore. But even so... hay (or whatever each may consider)?

 

[Pheisty]

Thanks for the recipes, Fernand! I did order the MTS Vape Wizard, and am really excited to try it on some of my tobacco liquids that I just find to be a bit too...well..."too". I know that it isn't a miracle-worker or anything like that, but it'll be fun to see what the MTS does to them.

 

[meems]

The vape wizard has concerns of it's own...read an article on that a bit back.

@fernand, I don't do drops, I do MLs, I start w my base then add % of flavoring to that.

 

[Jorge22]

You also have the FA Vape Wizard. Is it the same? And you do have the Bitter Wizard if you wish to unsweeten something a bit.

 

[Fernand]

The vape wizard has concerns of it's own...read an article on that a bit back.

@fernand, I don't do drops, I do MLs, I start w my base then add % of flavoring to that.

@meems, don't keep up the suspense! So how many mLs of flavoring do you use to how much base?

@Jorge, precisely. I like the flavor of a freshly opened pack, not a burned tobacco. I used to add Tobacco Absolute (in micro micro amounts - it's very strong) to imitate tobacco better, but now I just go for fantasy. It's fascinating that FA's creations actually do suggest an idealized form of their target tobaccos, like the Latakia, the Virginia and Perique. Yes, MTS and Vape Wizard are the same.

I don't find a VG base to have any flavor to mask, there's just the sweetness and the nicotine itself. I've enjoyed vaping unflavored VG w/ nicotine. With 3-7% flavorings I can turn it into just about anything, so 1-2% seems unnecessarily light. If you plug your nose, all flavor but the most brutal is gone. I don't pretend to understand all the factors. Like I had a Lorann Chocolate that you could detect through a brick wall, and even under 1% would devastate any mix you added it to.

@meems, exactly WHAT concerns are there about the MTS Vape Wizard? where can I find the article? Before the diketones issue came up, every skilled flavorist was using traces of them in just about every flavor. Thank heaven for change. But concentration is relevant. One drop in 10 mL is 0.4 %, a dilution over 200:1.

 

[meems]

I answered way earlier..10-15% Fa more like 10..

here's the vape wizard info..

ClearStream Protocol - FlavourArt - The Flavors tailors

 

[meems]

Looks like the links are no longer available?

The summary was..in comparison to cigarettes..

tobacco flavoring tests which showed harm reduction in the 80-90 percent range, and then hit the one for MTS. 4 percent reduction. So while it's still better for you than the cigarette, it's considerably worse for you than other additives.

 

[Fernand]

I'm familiar with those tests, and I wouldn't take any "decrease in cell viability" seriously, because the way they were getting vapor was done by techs who had no idea what they were doing. The number of "puffs" they were using exceeds what the e-cig can deliver. They were not paying attention to whether the vapor was OK. It was more likely to burn the cartridges and create a filler smoke than anything else. I understand they are being redone, and this is why the links are not working.

 

[meems]

I hope you are correct on that!

 

[Pheisty]

I hope you are correct on that!

I for one trust Fernand. Follow some of his posts. If he's vaping it, I'm not afraid to.

 

[Fernand]

Read FA's own Clear Stream page. They are redesigning the tests.

 

[Pega]

Read FA's own Clear Stream page. They are redesigning the tests.

Some new test version results have been published. Some of them still showing toxicity...This seems to be feeding the concerns that have been growing in me over the past few weeks...

edit: nevermind, those were still the old test results...

does anybody have the Dr. Romagna report saved on their pc? link is down, gonna drop flavourart a note.

 

[mke67]

The company in WA is ecigexpress.com. Good experience with them, and they carry what you need. Including 60 mg/ml nicotine in VG.

Smoking is worse than I thought as far as immediate damage to genetic material is concerned. Too many people are dying of cancer all around me. It's no longer even the most remote option.

Vaping offers a lot of choices. I'm no longer at the "MUST have it this way" stage. I like heavy flavoring but I consider all flavoring suspect, so easy does it. I sure don't see the need for stuff that turned out to have a severe toxicity, like buttery-flavorings.

I don't find PG worth the dry throat/upset stomach/leg cramps/sleepiness. These are not very serious side effects, but I find I don't have such reactions to VG.

I bought some nicotine in PG, and fortunately only one bottle. You're not likely to need adding PG to a blend, so I would suggest getting your Nic in 100% VG, a get a small bottle of PG and a big bottle of VG. There are cheap places to get VG and PG, like Lotioncrafters, but maybe it's easier to get everything in one place. Flavors in small bottles until you find stuff you are SURE to continue loving. I like the little bottles of FA flavoring ecigexpress sells. Check the FA web site and don't get any of the "unsuitable for vaping" ones. You can mix your own, AND you can use use some of your premixes in your blends. I've never tried it, but they say a bit of alcohol in the mix gives an added throat hit. It's all highly entertaining.

I'd like to thank washvap for this thread, and you for just making the daunting choices of juices much smaller for me.

Since I already mix my own juice, and had started the practice of cutting down higher mg. juices, due to "fund constriction," I will be now be doing the "vg/nic-juice/5% formula."

For me, during my mix-down phase I got use to the lower nic level, 10%, and lesser taste, so much so, that when "funds expanded" again, and I attempted to vape 36mg. I almost choked to death.

You can get use to lower levels all around in, if I may borrow Pbusardos words, VTF, (Vaper, Throat Hit and Flavor.)

Cheers to all the others in the various threads who have contributed to this topic; from skepticism, to flavor sites, to info sites.

Thanks ALL!!!

 

[Kemosabe]

im disappointed to hear vanilla lumped in with the problem flavor(s).
i thought only buttery flavors were bad. i dont want to give up my vanilla flavoring...or Bounty Hunter.

edit: ok, it looks like my vanilla swirl flavoring is safe. but im still worried about BH. im sure Nite Lite Vapor has been asked if their product contains diacetyl.......id really like to know.

If you are interested, this is a deeper topic than it seems. There are several other compounds that are used as Diacetyl substitutes, and they too have been associated with the "popcorn lung" disease.

Safety and Health Topics: WORKER ALERT - Diacetyl and Substitutes

Hazard Communication Guidance for Diacetyl and Food Flavorings Containing Diacetyl

Most juice makers have no idea what the flavorings they buy contain. Moreover, they are not terribly interested, as it's "beyond their expertise". Of course they mean no harm, but they seem unwilling to risk shelving some of their best-selling flavors. Most flavoring makers don't know what exactly the bulk flavors they purchase contain. And so on, up the supply ladder. Doing detailed analysis on every batch would get very expensive. It's a complicated story that involves many layers of chemists and wholesalers and a lot of trade secrets.

The best advice you can get is this: it's a mistake to look for vendors who do or don't. ANY flavoring that is rich and buttery, vanillaey and creamy, is very very likely to contain one or more of these compounds. The smart thing is to avoid them, and also to generally keep flavoring to a low level, as we know very little about the effects of inhaling food flavoring. The common practice of pouring 20% or more flavorings into an e-liquid base is asking for trouble, and completely unnecessary, as the taste buds gradually compensate for a high or low level. It's contrary to the mercantile "more is better" concept, but in practice smaller amounts of flavoring, below 5%, work very nicely in e-liquids.

 

[Fernand]

No, it's not Vanilla, per se. It's a type of sweet blend that people make, that's vanillaey and creamy, like say a Vanilla Custard (famous offender). Vanillin and related compounds have never been associated with problems, it's just that if it's a real creamy vanillaey blend, or say a rich pastry, then it's time to ask yourself what's making it so rich and buttery. Some rich/creamy fruit flavors have also been mentioned by OSHA as likely to contain one or more of the diketones.

Flavour Art has marked some of their flavors, like Panettone cake, that could not be made without these elements, as "This flavor contains Diacetyl and/or related diketones. Not suitable for vaping", take a look.