For Those Sensitive to PG...what do you do?

[BethAnn]

For those veterans out there who are sensitive to PG....what mix of vg/pg do you vape and what delivery system does your juice do best. I seriously think I'm one who is sensitive to pg and need to change something. My juice vendor has 80 vg/ 20 distilled water. Has anyone ever vaped that?....Would appreciate your thoughts and opinions. Thanks

 

[Xaiver]

Let me start by saying that I'm not sensitive to PG. I do DIY all of my liquids though, so I may be able to offer you some advice on how to handle it.

There are a couple major reasons that we use PG in our blends. It's much less viscous than VG, which allows it to wick faster. This is the problem that most people have when they switch to VG-only, VG itself is thick...my shampoo is thinner than VG. It also carries flavor better, VG tends to mute the flavor a bit, but gives off thicker vapor.

Your best bet, if you're willing to get your hands dirty, is to order your favorite flavor in 100% VG, and then add 2-3 drops of either Distilled Water or Pure Grain alcohol (everclear/vodka). You may need to add more to achieve the results that you want, but the water will thin it down, and I believe that PGA adds a bit of kick to it.

If you're hard up, or you don't want to buy a gallon of distilled water for a few drops, you can make it yourself... It's fairly time consuming though. Distilled water is just any water that's gone through a distilling process. That is to say, it's been evaporated, cooled and collected in a sterile environment. Since you only need a few drops, theoretically, you could use a tea kettle with a rigged up vent and cooling system to drip it into some sort of container. This might not be something you're interested in, but it's good to know how it's done.

-X

 

[rolygate]

Vendors of VG liquids have generally thinned them down to a usable viscosity. If you buy VG base though, it may well come at the original viscosity and be far too thick to use. As it needs thinning by about 20%, you must order it much stronger than your designed end result.

If you think you have an intolerance to either PG or VG then try buying unflavored base from two different vendors (so if one has an issue, at least you have a comparison). Decant 2ml into a 5ml dropper bottle, and take it close to the final nic strength you want by adding distilled water, if required. The easiest way to get distilled water if you can't buy it locally (it's battery water from a gas station, by the way) is to scrape the ice off the inside of your freezer - this is distilled water.

Vape some by dripping it directly on to a clean atomizer. You should be able to taste the raw material strongly, although every base tastes different and has different characteristics. Now you know what the unflavored material tastes like, add a few drops of a simple flavor to mask that taste. You are aiming for the minimum. As 1ml is about 22 drops from an average dropper, and you have 2ml, then adding 3 drops of (say) caramel will be about 7%. That should be enough to mask the original flavor, but try it - it could need more, depending on the strength of the flavoring. Some people can get away with less.

When you have a satisfactory minimum-flavor liquid, make a lot of it, and use it exclusively. You'll know in 4 days if it is problematic or not. If not, then add more/other flavors. If you have any issues you'll know what did it.

It's not a bad idea to add a couple percent of PG even to all-VG mixes, the powerful bactericidal and virucidal properties can't do any harm. After stage 1 in the above process, it's easy to find out if this causes any problems for you.

Note
Every '100% VG' e-liquid has been thinned down about 20% either with distilled water or flavorings. DW is the normal material. Therefore 100% VG is of course a misnomer. Watch out that the flavorings were probably based around either PG or alcohol, maybe you don't want that.

There might be some thick VG finished e-liquids out there, they won't work too well in regular carto tanks most likely - you'd need more/bigger feeder holes.