All of the 24 mg DIY WTA that was put up for sale earlier this week is "new and improved".
Since the term "new and improved" is generally over-used and abused, I'll summarize in as much as I can what is new and improved about this stuff. Actually, some of these items represent "new and improved" while others represent what has always been the case.
1. The process by which it is made has been tweaked to allow the production time for any single batch, beginning to end, to occur much more quickly.
2. The amount of WTA produced during any single batch is now greater than in the past. Combine these first two points and the result is more WTA and faster WTA.
3. The amount of chemical manipulation required to get from a pile of tobacco to a vial of purified WTA has been minimized. This is an item on which I spend a lot of thought. While the process is currently "set", this is something that I will always be attempting to simplify further.
4. I've placed a number of time constraints on the processing steps. This simply means that the amount of time that the in-process material is permitted to remain at a certain stage of processing is capped. The reason for this limitation is to minimize the time that the alkaloids are permitted to remain in contact with the processing chemicals, thus minimizing potential undesirable by-products.
5. As always, the fate of any processing chemical is carefully evaluated. A good number of the processing steps exist solely to assure that the final product is WTA and only WTA. A lot more WTA could be made a lot quicker if these steps were skipped. The result would, however, be a WTA product that I could not endorse.
6. Each batch is evaluated for concentration via titrametric determination. This is just a fancy way to say that when the purified alkaloids are diluted down to their intended concentration, that concentration has been verified.
In addition to all of the above, I am currently working with Jerry to establish appropriate testing protocols. Since Jerry will ultimately be footing the bill for these tests, the back and forth is a bit of a negotiation process between me throwing out overkill and Jerry tempering my enthusiasm for overkill with the notion of establishing effective and meaningful testing, all without breaking the bank.
Some of these tests should be necessary only when a new batch of source tobacco is being introduced, some of these tests should be necessary to evaluate the process as a whole, and some of these tests should be necessary to evaluate each finished batch. From my experience in the testing industry, I'm quite aware that you can spend a lot of money and get surprising little for your expense if you don't choose your testing firm carefully.
I would categorize the testing as I envision it as follows:
1. Tests to be performed once on the purified alkaloids from each new tobacco batch. Any particular tobacco batch will be quite large and be used for many alkaloid batches. Thus, this represents testing to be done whenever a new bale, crate, etc of bulk tobacco is received.
a. GC/GCMS - What's in it? How does the alkaloid profile look? Is the alkaloid profile fairly consistent between one tobacco batch and the next? Are there nasty things present that we don't want? Are the TSNA's low? While careful selection of tobacco should result in a minimal TNSA content, customers would probably rather have it proven than taking a vendor at their word.
The reason that this test would only be performed once on new tobacco batches is that the processing steps should do nothing to change these results since they are tobacco dependent. As such, this testing tells us about the tobacco being used.
2. Tests to be performed once on the process itself, or any time the process is significantly modified.
a. Heavy metals - Not like we gave a damn about this back when we were smoking, but does the process eliminate heavy metals from the alkaloid product?
b. Residual solvent - Does the process effectively remove all residual processing solvent? Again, the process is designed to do just that, but again, would you rather take someone's word for it, or have it proven?
The reason that these tests would only be performed once is that the process is a standard process with the same things being done every time. We want to assure ourselves that these process steps effectively eliminate certain undesirables. Also, if we make significant changes/improvements to the process, we want to assure ourselves that these changes don't have unintended consequences.
3. Tests to be performed on each alkaloid batch produced.
a. Alkaloid concentration. Does the finished liquid contain the alkaloids at the stated concentration? Typically, the alkaloids will be mixed down into the base (VG, PG, or some combination of the two) at some large volume and then individually bottled. Testing the alkaloid concentration once mixed down to the large volume assures that what ends up in the bottles is at the intended concentration.
The reason that this test would be performed on all WTA liquids pre-bottling is simple: Box Elder anyone?
