Has anybody read this at Totally Wicked?
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Yes - I can state it as fact. I've seen their operation, and they've never made any secret of that, which is why the label says "Made in China under authority of Pillbox38". They specify (and pay a hefty premium for) a top quality formulation, bottled and labelled ready for sale. Unfortunately their suppliers have not lately been delivering the required quality.
TW take the high reputation of their product very seriously indeed, and are taking bold measures to resolve this situation in the very near future.
It is a difference, but I'm not sure exactly how significant a one. Part of the specifications for food flavourings is that they must be thermo-stable when cooked, and not produce toxic byproducts during cooking. If you use strawberry flavouring and boiling sugar to make boiled sweets, the flavouring is bound to be exposed to much more heat than an atomizer could inflict on it. Likewise many frying/grilling/roasting applications where charring of the product is not only possible, but specifically desirable.
I agree it wants further research, and I wish we had ultrasonic atomizers on the market (if only out of curiosity,) but we can only start from where we are now.
Yes, but the nicotine USP in the Platinum Ice is a lot less peppery than the (presumably reagent/industrial grade) nicotine in "regular" ejuice, mg for mg. There is a significant taste difference.
Nick, If the 36 mg unflavored is presumably supposed to be nic/PG, I've seen the distinct coloration in that myself. I'm familiar enough with the crude purification (likely acid/base exchanges) to know that they won't result in a clear product, and will also contain the range of tobacco alkaloids. Vacuum distillation, probably multiple are required to really clean things up. Anyway, the question.. should the red label nicotine be "essentially pure", I.E. up in the 99+ percent range? Seems to me some liberties are likely being taken with the purification.
Don't get me wrong, the 'elephant in the room' thread pushed vary hard for purer juices. I'm all for pharma grade nicotine.
The old thinking was though that they had purified to a significant level to keep most of the tobacco toxins out of the juice - and that is true. While keeping some of the tobacco flavor - a reasonable idea at the time, so early in the development of e-cigs. Experience tells us that people mostly quickly change their tastes to prefer pure coffee or chocolate or whatever rather than coffee plus tobacco. And there is the obvious benefit or even greater removal of toxins. And better taste, yes, I agree. Perhaps peppery is the wrong word, but nic is certainly a strong 'taste' (not in a bad way).
Any lab is easily able to get the concentration right. The problem must be at the dilution, mixing and bottling stage. And as most juices from China don't have this problem, it would indeed be wise to switch to a better one.
Most flavorings are volatile, that's a fair point; but looked at a bit wider to include additives such as citric acid, that will not always be true. And the dry residues do become ashed on the coil. This, along with whatever becomes of the lost nicotine is, i would say, the greater source of any toxins still to be found in the vapor (as opposed to the liquid).
"frying/grilling/roasting" - these methods of cooking food produce far more toxins than most people realise, dwarfing anything from an e-cig.
Don't get me wrong, the 'elephant in the room' thread pushed vary hard for purer juices. I'm all for pharma grade nicotine.
The old thinking was though that they had purified to a significant level to keep most of the tobacco toxins out of the juice - and that is true. While keeping some of the tobacco flavor - a reasonable idea at the time, so early in the development of e-cigs. Experience tells us that people mostly quickly change their tastes to prefer pure coffee or chocolate or whatever rather than coffee plus tobacco. And there is the obvious benefit of even greater removal of toxins. And better taste, yes, I agree. Perhaps peppery is the wrong word, but nic is certainly a strong 'taste' (not in a bad way).
Any lab is easily able to get the concentration right. The problem must be at the dilution, mixing and bottling stage. And as most juices from China don't have this problem, it would indeed be wise to switch to a better one.
Most flavorings are volatile, that's a fair point; but looked at a bit wider to include additives such as citric acid, that will not always be true. And the dry residues do become ashed on the coil. This, along with whatever becomes of the lost nicotine is, i would say, the greater source of any toxins still to be found in the vapor (as opposed to the liquid).
"frying/grilling/roasting" - these methods of cooking food produce far more toxins than most people realise, dwarfing anything from an e-cig.
This seems to be the main issue. TW has gone "off the map" in terms of sourcing their product. They state they went through over 30 manufacturers/suppliers before settling on their source:
This would suggest they aren't using Dekang, since it would seem reasonable they would have encountered the largest supplier's product early on in their search. As far as I know, all tests I've seen done by Dvap on Dekang liquid has been pretty much spot on for its nicotine content.
So, if this is the case, then it's a matter of a poor choice in a supplier; rather than some endemic practice by all Chinese manufacturers to ignore standards.
It should be - TW are certainly paying enough for it. But my personal opinion is that no, in practice the red label nicotine is essentially as typically indeterminable as any other industrial grade. TW paid extra to get the best grade available, but how do you define "best"?
That's why I quite quickly quit working with effectively unspecified products (some of the earlier DV juices were based on Chinese unflavoured,) and sourced some "proper" USP nicotine.
You can demand "best quality", or "purest" nicotine all you like, but without a verifiable quality standard baseline, you're entirely at the mercy of the suppliers' interpretations of these descriptions. And they have a vested interest in using the cheapest ingredients they can.
If you want the best quality, it has to be measured by reference to an established pharmacopoeia, or it's only a matter of time before you get ripped off by an unscrupulous supplier.
I won't work with any grade below USP/EP now. The certificate for the last batch I received was assayed at 99.8% nicotine, and was crystal clear (occasional subsequent pinking issues aside - an interesting phenomenon more topically relevant to other threads.)
It is indeed refined by multiple stages of vacuum distillation.
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No - absolutely no! I cannot hold with aiming to retain any tobacco flavours through the nicotine refinement process. The only possible result would be low-quality nicotine with TSNA levels far in excess even of those detected by the FDA in their recent hatchet job on SE juice. Find flavours to put back into the juice afterwards by all means, but if it's refined so poorly that it still tastes of tobacco then it really is only fit to use as insecticide.
I love fine cooking, but pharmacology is a science, not an art - if you want the product to have any credibility with the medicopolitical establishment, it has to be based on the purest drug-quality ingredients possible, not cooked up for flavour like a gourmet creation from a Michelin-starred restaurant.
All very true - and accepted by the regulators. Maybe they have an ignorant, oversimplistic and unscientific view of the relative risks (I think they probably do,) but if the industry sticks to these approved flavourings (like approved USP nicotine,) they'll be irrationally pacified. Really - that may be all the reassurance they need. They're pen-pushers and bean-counters - if they can tick the boxes, they'll be happy.
Show that you're using products that meet a defined set of safety criteria, and they'll breathe a sigh of relief, and be assured that we're probably not selling snake oil.
I have another result for red label 36 mg unflavored.
This bottle I ordered last week, and it arrived today in the 5 mL packaging.
Color: Golden Brown
Nicotine by titration: 30.8 mg/mL.
This bottle I ordered last week, and it arrived today in the 5 mL packaging.
Color: Golden Brown
Nicotine by titration: 30.8 mg/mL.
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I for one like the pepper taste that is in the Red Lable from TW. Some of their flavors just can not be matched IMO. Take Dekang's Red Cow it sucks compaired too TW's Redbull.
Not to say that Dekang does not make good flavors some of my favorites are made by them. I DO wish they had the pepper bite that TW liquid has tho.
I just hope the Nicotine levels get fixed in them, and you never know what other things they are cheaping out on. They could end up in the news with another FDA found this in the E-Liquid again. Maybe I'm just looking at it wrong, but you just never know if they will cheap out causing bigger problems than nicotine being lower than it should be.
Not to say that Dekang does not make good flavors some of my favorites are made by them. I DO wish they had the pepper bite that TW liquid has tho.
I just hope the Nicotine levels get fixed in them, and you never know what other things they are cheaping out on. They could end up in the news with another FDA found this in the E-Liquid again. Maybe I'm just looking at it wrong, but you just never know if they will cheap out causing bigger problems than nicotine being lower than it should be.
A sample of Totally Wicked Platinum Ice 54 mg mixing liquid was sent to me by mister, and it arrived today.
I completed the determination a few moments ago.
A moment for drama...
Scroll down...
Wait for it...
Color: Clear
Nicotine by titration: 53.9 mg/mL
Excellent job, TW.
I completed the determination a few moments ago.
A moment for drama...
Scroll down...
Wait for it...
Color: Clear
Nicotine by titration: 53.9 mg/mL
Excellent job, TW.
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Hmmm. You got me thinking.
I did a 1 drop test of "Smoke Plantation (very nice came in a dropper bottle) 24MG unflavored" on the tongue and DID IT EVER contain the peppery-kick. I cut it to almost 75% PG giving me 8MG juice to mix. (I was an ultra light smoker of about 1.5 packs a day.)
I just tried my new cheaper (by a few dollars) mist-stix.com 24mg unflavored (and much cheaper un-transparent white plastic dropper, "24mg" printed on a laser printer and cut out and taped to the side, otherwise unlabled) and seemed to give less of a peppery-kick than the smokeplantation stuff.
(Yes I am a () <paren...>, and a '"' <Quote> ..... and I do it wrong, but I dun' gotZ me IT certification, and no de-gree!!! BTW: Don't try to use extended ASCII chars as a password in Slackware Linux, you can't log in. Oh and while I am at it NEVER use WEP for your wireless encryption [Fios' default encryption] 5 min. crackable, PM me for info.)http://www.mist-stix.com/Default.asp
I did a 1 drop test of "Smoke Plantation (very nice came in a dropper bottle) 24MG unflavored" on the tongue and DID IT EVER contain the peppery-kick. I cut it to almost 75% PG giving me 8MG juice to mix. (I was an ultra light smoker of about 1.5 packs a day.)
I just tried my new cheaper (by a few dollars) mist-stix.com 24mg unflavored (and much cheaper un-transparent white plastic dropper, "24mg" printed on a laser printer and cut out and taped to the side, otherwise unlabled) and seemed to give less of a peppery-kick than the smokeplantation stuff.
(Yes I am a () <paren...>, and a '"' <Quote> ..... and I do it wrong, but I dun' gotZ me IT certification, and no de-gree!!! BTW: Don't try to use extended ASCII chars as a password in Slackware Linux, you can't log in. Oh and while I am at it NEVER use WEP for your wireless encryption [Fios' default encryption] 5 min. crackable, PM me for info.)http://www.mist-stix.com/Default.asp
WOW! That crap would kill me...
unless I just dropped the 30ml in a gallon of PG!
Then I could mix it... LOL!
Thanks very much DVap! You are doing so much for us all in building a foundation of understanding and of liquids we can trust.
It is good to know that the Platinum Ice is bang on. I will now treat it, diluted with PG to a particular level, as my standard for knowing how juice of that level should feel toward satisfying cravings.
I don't know why the Platinum Ice seemed very strong to me even after diluting it to 27mg. There may be other explanations, but my guess for now is that the flavorless liquid I've been treating as 36mg (only because that's how the seller represents it) may not be that. It does have a noticeable tint so it certainly is not pure. And perhaps even in more trusted liquids some flavorings and impurities also modify the delivered strength in ways other than dilution.
Oh, one other question DVap - did you try vaping some of the Platinum Ice diluted with PG to your preferred strength? Any subjective difference vs. what you're used to?
Lately, I've been vaping 6 mg in the evenings, and 10 mg during the day when I've only got limited opportunities for a quick vape, so I haven't much of a day to day frame of reference for higher strength vapes.
I did mix a small amount of PI down to 30 mg to mirror the 30 mg I mix for my fiancee, usually with the MFS 48 mg. I tried a couple vapes of it and to my senses, it is identical to the MFS 30 mg mix-down.. This is not surprising as both are PG/Nicotine, and both have been determined to pack full potency.
I make that about 0.29 mg/ml (assuming a UK gallon,) so I wouldn't mix it down much more, or you'll have to use scientific notation, and drink the stuff to get a buzz (I know, there's always gotta be one smartass. Sometimes I can't resist it
)But it comes with full instructions and a mixing chart if you do fancy something a little bit stronger
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I make that about 0.29 mg/ml (assuming a UK gallon,) so I wouldn't mix it down much more, or you'll have to use scientific notation, and drink the stuff to get a buzz (I know, there's always gotta be one smartass
But it comes with full instructions and a mixing chart if you do fancy something a little bit stronger
I make it about 0.36 mg/mL (assuming a UK gallon).
hmmmm... 0.29... 0.36... What's it about those numbers?
I'll bet the red label mess is all Nick's fault.
(For the humor impaired in our audience, FYI: that was definitely a joke)
Good new about the 54 = 53.9 mg/ml for Platinum Ice
Was thinking forum-wise that there could be a way of new readers
finding the highlights of any given thread.
Perhaps a list of links in the original post of to within the thread itself.
Could be the (voluntary) 'responsibility' of the original poster (sorry DVap),
e.g. in this thread the final methodology defined, the headline
results, the key points, new information brought up, things found out.
Wouldn't necessarily apply to more general threads, but an info-intense
one like this would benefit.
I feel sometimes that there's so many useful topics discussed within
popular threads that it's very difficult for people to find/see what's going on.
None of that was in any way criticism of anyone's posting(s)
just a feeling that lots of info is 'lost' (quite quickly).
Maybe there could be forum 'bonus points' for original posters who
keep their link-list up to date.
Was thinking forum-wise that there could be a way of new readers
finding the highlights of any given thread.
Perhaps a list of links in the original post of to within the thread itself.
Could be the (voluntary) 'responsibility' of the original poster (sorry DVap),
e.g. in this thread the final methodology defined, the headline
results, the key points, new information brought up, things found out.
Wouldn't necessarily apply to more general threads, but an info-intense
one like this would benefit.
I feel sometimes that there's so many useful topics discussed within
popular threads that it's very difficult for people to find/see what's going on.
None of that was in any way criticism of anyone's posting(s)
just a feeling that lots of info is 'lost' (quite quickly).
Maybe there could be forum 'bonus points' for original posters who
keep their link-list up to date.
I've actually considered posting a quick summary with link-backs to key posts on the nicotine detemination thread.
Exo, you're actually mistaken in assuming I started this thread.
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