nic juice shelf life
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Generally it is said that nic juice lasts 2 years before it starts to degrade, according to vendors and the expiration dates on some of my bottles.
Its best to keep good track of what you will use, you get it! I stocked up about a year and a half ago during the 1st real FDA scare with A LOT of juice, and sadly a lot of what I have will expire within a year or less, some within a few months. I didnt do the calculations like you just did. Best not to go overboard and make the same mistake I did, but to calculate and buy a year or 2 supply or less, no more than that. I sometimes wonder seriously if I would try to vape the expired juice though after it expires... ugh maybe.
I don't know how you tell if PG or VG has gone bad but what I've read about nic all it does is lose some of it's potency. So if you have 60mg it may actually only be 58mg after the expiration date.
Flavorings not only lose their flavor but they can have a taste/smell anywhere from a Pine tree to vinegar. I recently had some go bad and it had a strong vinegar smell so I tossed it.
Flavorings not only lose their flavor but they can have a taste/smell anywhere from a Pine tree to vinegar. I recently had some go bad and it had a strong vinegar smell so I tossed it.
Expiration is a pretty generic term, and some stuff will be just fine even after 2 years. Not that I recommend using it after that long, but pharmaceutical rules say that nothing is allowed to have an expiration of less than two years. It's very possible that nicotine in PG will last longer than that, and to a lesser extent nicotine in VG. Nicotine itself isn't going to ever go bad, just oxidize and decompose slowly over time.
True. My dad was a pharmacist and said most drugs are effective long past their stated expiration dates and that many manufacturers will go with the shortest exp. allowed simply to sell more.... people will toss the so-called "expired" product and buy new.
Seems to me oxiding or decomposing is the very definition of going bad for simple molecules like nicotine.
As was correctly stated, and with important info included, flavors can and often do "go bad", meaning they will hydrolyze (react with water) or otherwise decompose. Many flavors, like fruits, are esters, and will hydrolyze to organic alcohols (funky smell, like sweat) and organic acids (vinegar or cheesy smell, even similar to vomit). So I make all my DIYs fresh and just enough to last me a few weeks, then make more as needed. I do not keep flavored juices for the long term...even if the bottle is unopened from the vendor and fridge-stored, it might turn after 6 months.
Unflavored PG or VG nic-juice is another story. Nic will oxidize with O2 that is ambient in the liquid. You can tell this happens when the juice yellows or turns brown, as nic-oxides are brown in color. But O2 is only slightly soluble in PG or VG, and so there is very little O2 present in an unopened bottle. So if it is unopened, once the trace amount of O2 has reacted with the far larger quantity of nic, that's it, reaction over. As was stated above, you might lose a few % to oxidation.
However, I store my unflavored nic-juice in glass bottles in the freezer. PG or VG does not freeze or expand, so I fill my storage bottles almost to the rim. The vast majority of my unflavored nic is VG-only, which becomes very thick, like rubber cement if there is no water present. Two things cause O2 present to react with nic: liquid mobility (how much do the nic and O2 molecules move around and bump into each other) and temperature. Cold will slow all reactions. It will also keep, however remotely unlikely, mold or bacteria from growing in it. But truthfully, very few things grow in PG or VG, and nic itself will kill most invaders.
So I fully expect my 35-100 mg unflavored nic-stash to be ~100% fresh indefinitely in this environment.
The glass bottles are used because nic over time can actually eat into plastic, depending on the type of plastic. Thus older plastic bottles of unflavored can take on a plastic taste in the vapor. Not something I want!
BTW, I'm a Ph.D. chemist, and have been in the field for 30 years. That said, no one here has stored unflavored nic-juice for 10 years at these conditions, so it is possible I am wrong, but its not at all likely, based on the chemistry of the materials. I do know that pure free-base nic, when stored completely sealed from moisture and O2, is virtually unchanged after 10 years.
This thread may be of interest:
http://www.e-cigarette-forum.com/forum/myfreedomsmokes/43742-smoke-juice-storage-tips.html
Its long, but describes how I process my bulk unflavored for long term storage and safe usage.
Thanks Kurt, the way I was responding was in that most people think of something 'going bad' as being usable, i.e. spoiled milk. Going from 24mg/ml -> 23.5mg/ml because of oxidization over a period of time is not really 'going bad' by colloquial definition, and is still going to be usable.
Kurt & Nikhil - excellent posts on this subject. I'm saving this thread so that I can refer others to it, and refer back to it myself. Thank you!
Freeze it undiluted. If you have 100mg pg or 100mg vg, put it in smaller colored bottles with euro droppers. I use 30ml amber euro bottles. Fill as full as possible. Put on dropper. Wipe bottle with alcohol. Put some padding around it in another plastic container (just in case it would break or leak...remember that this stuff is toxic). And freeze. When you need to make some flavored, remove one of the bottles, let warm to room temperature, remove cap and extract some with a syringe through the dropper part. It's safer this way. Read through Kurt's thread as I'm sure I'm leaving out a few details. Very informative.
Read this thread for more info-
http://www.e-cigarette-forum.com/fo...ttle-help-freezing-nic-juice.html#post2126610
http://www.e-cigarette-forum.com/fo...ttle-help-freezing-nic-juice.html#post2126610
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