Finetuning my next blend

[Jimi D.]

Jimi D.,

Please check this link. It will only take 1 minute. Read the definition for E-juice on this page. It gives their list of ingredients.

Her's the link: Learn

Thanks,

Pete

I stand corrected. I guess my taste buds are too sensitive, and I pick up the vinegar taste. I owe you an apology..

 

[pinellaspete]

Apology accepted! Let's play nice. I'm sorry I got short with you also.

Pete

 

[pinellaspete]

Jimi D. you really do need to start playing with the acids. Perhaps something went wrong with your first test. I and many other people are having great results using them.

I only use vinegar if it is a tobacco flavor mix. I use citric or malic acid if I have other flavors in the mix. Perhaps you might try some citric or malic acid next time.

Wish you the best of luck!

Pete

 

[Jimi D.]

Sounds good, Thanks.

 

[Tona Aspsusa]

I had the same problems with the vinegar. I added more flavor to the mix, and the vinegar taste came back after a few days.

Do you mean that initially there was no hint of vinegar (or acidity) in the taste, but a few days later there was?

So in theory I wind up wasting more flavor. Which can get a bit expensive. I will continue to use vape wizard, when I actually need it. Try this: make up a batch without the vinegar, and add 1% of Bavarian cream.. Keep us posted.

Don't have any Bavarian Cream (or any other creamy/desserty flavour). Or Vape Wizard - though I am contemplating maybe buying that, but from the description it sounds more like it would do the opposite of what I now would need (I don't get any acidity, and it is extremely mellow and "thick", just a tad sweet and "empty").

 

[Tona Aspsusa]

If you make the e liquid at 7 ph, it will taste like pure water.

I am pretty sure this isn't the case - but you were probably joking?

I am still dithering about what to do with the main blend - I seem to be having a "tastebud-crisis" wrt sweetness, so I figured it would be better to wait until that is over before I go mucking around with it anymore.

But I can offer a small update on this:

I did make another, less theoretical, juice yesterday too. Starting with the slops from my first blend I did:
~1.2 ml of the old blend
~0.5 ml PGA (washing out the old bottle)
2 ml of my first extraction (details here)
3 ml 13mg/ml unflavoured 85/15 PG/VG
4 drops of 5% orangeflavoured 10mg/ml 65/35 PG/VG juice
1 drop 5% vinegar
1 drop EM (in PG)

As I wrote I felt it was nice, but a bit weak on the orange-notes and far too thin in viscosity.
So I added:
1 ml slightly thinned VG,
1 ml 13mg/ml nic,
1 ml 17% First Extraction in 50/50 PG/VG, and
0.2ml 5% orange at 10mg/ml 65/35 PG/VG (this incidentally turned out to be 6 drops, so now I know that my plastic bottles delivers 30 drops/ml at 65/35 PG/VG at a temperature of around 22 degrees Celsius )

As this is a "slops bottle" and I had been vaping quite a bit from it, I have no idea exactly how much was left of the original ~7 ml (which is in itself a very very approximate calculation of how much I had) - for some unfathaomable reason I have also chosen to use an opaque plastic bottle for this [shakes head].

Anyway, the result is raaather nice.
Still a light and mellow vape, but the orange is now noticeable (though I probably wouldn't identify it as orange, it is more like when you use dried bitter orange zest as a spice in spice cakes or mulled wine*) and the consistency is much better.

Interestingly enough it is rather different in a 2 ohm carto (Kanger this time) than in my eGo-T: Much more tobacco-y in the eGo, and much "juicier" and more mellow in the carto. This might in part be because the eGo-T previously had a rather heavy tobacco-coffee in it, but after nearly two full tanks that shouldn't really be affecting it that much anymore.

I don't think this slops-bottle is "finished" as it is now, but I can't really decide in what direction to take it next. When I vape it in a carto I sometimes feel it would be a good idea to beef up the "dry tobacco" (maybe add some of my second extraction, or play with a drop or two of some FA tobacco), but when I vape it in the eGo-T I'm thinking more of adding some subtle hint of "warm" or "round" - chocolate, vanilla, or maybe some of that nice Hangsen D'doff concentrate...



*Ahaa! Trying to find an English expression for what in Swedish is called "pomerans-skal" and a common spice in glögg and gingerbread among other things, led me from Bitter orange to something called Neroli, which I have seen here and there in listings of flavours/scents, but have never had an inkling to what it was. It sounds very interesting as a small addition to lots of things - both food and vape-able. Flavourart has a PG-based Neroli flavour, hmmm - my wish-list just grew a bit longer again. Sigh.

 

[Tona Aspsusa]

I am still dithering about what to do with the main blend - I seem to be having a "tastebud-crisis" wrt sweetness, so I figured it would be better to wait until that is over before I go mucking around with it anymore.

I couldn't really wait, so I did already on Monday evening add 3 more drops of the vinegar to the 8.8ml (about -ish)of the main blend that was left after my initial sampling. Which would bring the total amount of vinegar to about 4-5 drops for 10ml.

Yesterday, Thursday, I sampled it again, the worst of the tastebud-crises having passed.
MUCH better. Still too weak on flavour, but that annoying sugar-y over-sweetness was almost totally gone.

What makes finetuning this difficult is that to me it tastes rather different in a carto (my preferred vaping mode) and dripped. When dripped this over-sweetness is much more noticeable. In a carto again it is very very mellow and smooth, but I am starting to realise that blends containing my tobacco-extractions are not very carto-friendly.

Now I should sit down and calculate how much more of the extraction to add - I started with 10% and it is too little. My previous attempt was 15% and that was a bit heavy - OTOH I didn't have any vinegar in that blend.
As I have sampled quite a bit from this bottle already, I also need to take that into account in some way:
If I wanted to up it to 15% I would add 0.5ml IF I was still working towards a total volume of 10ml. But what I have now is more like 8 ml, of which 0.8ml is my extract. If I want 15% I should then add 8x0.05ml = 0.4ml.

On the vinegar in general:
Now when I have tasted/felt what it does I am pretty sure there's quite alot of some acidulant in Hangsen's flavour concentrates.
When I rotate between vaping juice I have made from Hangsen concentrate, this mix, my slops-bottle mix, and some tobacco mixes of mine with no vinegar at all* there's this quality of mouthfeel, "juicyness" if you will, that is absent in my no-vinegar mixes, is there a little bit in my slops-mix (which included 1 drp/7ml, and also orange flavouring), a bit more now in my "main blend" and in spades in the Hangsen-mix.

*One big exception to this is the very plain mint I mixed - it definitely has this "juicy" character, and *I* didn't add any vinegar or other acid to it. I do have some real peppermint EO, and I am very tempted to mix up a batch with that just to compare. I am starting to suspect that my mint-flavouring is also acidulated. Or maybe this mouthfeel is just a characteristic of mint?