Placebo effect - or do I have something interesting here?

[Tona Aspsusa]

I have chronicled my first steps in extracting in this thread.

Now when I have been using my extractions in various mixes for about two weeks I am really starting to wonder about those elusive WTAs.

My first extraction was very little tobacco steeped in
20 ml PGA, 10 ml DW and 2 ml VG
I screwed up a bit when filtering, spilled a lot, then boiled off some alcohol in the microwave. It is rather weak and doesn't smell much. Has a very mellow, pleasant quality when added to a vape, but not that much taste.

My second extraction was five times as much tobacco steeped in
10 ml PGA, 20 ml DW and 30 ml PG.
This one has lots of scent (smells wonderful - prunes in cognac-sauce) and taste (like a rather harsh unfiltered cigarette, much drier than the smell would lead you to believe).


I've mostly been vaping juices mixed with the second one - between 30 and 10 percent extract to a PG/VG blend with around 12mg/ml nic. Quite nice, but "heavy".

The first one I mostly just tried out, mixed it in a no-nic 50/50 base to ~16%, been dripping that now and then. There's just something very *nice* about it.

While thinking about how to improve on my blends with extract Nr2, I started vaping a bit more of the Nr1 a few days ago. And yesterday I mixed it up in an improvised mix. And started vaping that "slops mix" right away (the proper mix is steeping).

And something weird has happened: my consumtion of analogs has gone through the floor the days when I am mostly vaping mixes with this Nr1.

At first, when I found the weak Nr1 so very *nice*, I figured it was just a placebo effect. But now I am not so sure anymore.
There is a clear difference between the Nr1 and the Nr2 - and it certainly isn't how much nic I add, all the mixes with Nr1 I have made so far are lower in nic than how I have mixed Nr2. (I treated Nr1 like a jokey experiment, it came out "weak" in smell and taste, whereas Nr2 looks and feels much more substantial.)

Something seems to be going on with this almost accidental first extraction - and now I wonder how I will be able to replicate it

 

[Tona Aspsusa]

So, I am thinking about setting up a small experiment with different solvents to try to get to the bottom of how I got this "nice something".

On re-reading some old threads it seems to me that PG is probably not getting anything but colour and maybe some flavour (& fantastic scent!) out of the tobacco, so I thought I'd set it up like this:

On a tray I would have a few identical small glassmugs (these hold about 40-70 ml, so they are just a bit bigger than shot glasses). In every mug would be the tobacco contents of one of my weird Indonesian cigarillos.
Mug 1: 96% Ethanol
Mug 2: 60% Ethanol (ie 60% vodka)
Mug 3: Water
Mug 4: VG (slightly warmed initially)
Mug 5: Aquaeous Glycerine (85% VG)

These mugs would be allowed to steep (covered with clingfilm) for 1-2 days before filtering.

Anything I haven't thought of that would make a good addition to this experiment?

Concentrating the extracts would probably be a bit of a chore; I am guessing that at least the alcohol and water extractions (mugs 1-3) would need to be reduced a bit to be useful in any way. But heating/boiling might be enough, if not even just letting them stand in a shallow dish.

 

[Tona Aspsusa]

So day before yesterday I did this:

On a tray I would have a few identical small glassmugs (these hold about 40-70 ml, so they are just a bit bigger than shot glasses). In every mug would be the tobacco contents of one of my weird Indonesian cigarillos.
Mug 1: 96% Ethanol
Mug 2: 60% Ethanol (ie 60% vodka)
Mug 3: Water
Mug 4: VG (slightly warmed initially)
Mug 5: Aquaeous Glycerine (85% VG)

Initially I placed the tray on top of a radiator for a few hours - a cosy 35-38 degrees Celsius.
Then the tray stood for approx. 36 hours in the coldish room temperature (the cold snap in combination with our very draughty windows means it is 17-19 degrees inside now, brrr).

I just placed it back on top of the radiator to warm up my small glass mugs before trying to filter the extracts in some way.

And this is where it will become difficult:
As I had placed the contents of one cigarillo in each glass mug I realised I was almost out of pure VG!
So I very carefully squeezed out the very last of my bottle, and then matched the volume for the other liquids.
The very last of my VG was very little, only 14 ml.

If I place a coffee filter in a funnel I will probably not get anything at all, so I think I will glove up and try to use a filter as a squeezing bag. My SO suggested I pre-wet the filters so they won't absorb all the moisture - this would introduce some extra water into the mix, but I think I can live with that. I am hoping to get around 5ml out of each.

I just took some bad pics of the tray:

One interesting thing about this was the colour of the liquids after about 1-2 hours: The 96% ethanol and the pure VG were yellowish, while the 60% ethanol and the aqueous (damn! someone tell me how to spell this!) glycerine were distinctly reddish. The pure water is/was almost impossible to tell, as the tobacco was evenly distributed in the liquid (whereas it floats to the top on the VG and sinks in the alcohol).
This colour difference still holds after nearly 48h, but is less extreme now.

 

[Tona Aspsusa]

Oh dear, I am *so* not a person that is made for lab work or other things that require dexterity and precision.

After lots of spillage (those precious few drops!) and cursing I managed to get the liquid out of the mugs and into glasses:

Unfortunately quite a few pieces of tobacco slipped through somehow (for the first one I know why, not only did I have some on my gloves but the pre-soaked coffee filter ripped. For the other ones I have no idea - those particles are much smaller, more like dust so I guess a coffee filter just isn't very fine pored). I will try the cotton wool in syringe method next so I can get rid of as much as I possible can.

As you can perhaps see above, the colour differences I described noticing after only a few hours are very noticeable now.

The glycerines:

As usual these were absolute pest to work with. And of course I started with them, before I had any idea of how to do it properly.
The pure VG (on the right) has a very very faint smell, tobbaco-y but nothing spicy or yummy. The Aq. Glycerine (on the left) has almost the same smell, but stronger and more pleasant.

The spirits:

From left to right here we have 96%, 60% and plain distilled water. The spirits have (of course) an over-powering smell of alcohol - when I dip my nose in the 60% glass I get a small association of "hospital", the 96% is just overpowering plain alcohol.
The water is the most interesting smell-wise: it smells like Lipton tea with a very small little addition of tobacco, with maybe just maybe a little bit of "spice" (ie cigar or pipe rather than blonde cigarettes).

Now, what to do next?

The VG, the Aq. Glyc. and the water I think might be usable as they are, so they will go into bottles via a filtering syringe.
The spirits are another matter. They badly need to have at least some alcohol evaporated. The question is just whether to try to do it directly, or whether to dilute them with a bit of water first.

 

[Tona Aspsusa]

OK, now I have processed the glycerines and the water - unremarkable, filtered nicely through some cotton wool in a syringe. Got 4ml of the VG, and around 8-9 ml of the Aq. glyr. and water based extractions. They are now resting in their own small bottles.

But then we come to the alcohols, and now it gets very weird. Remember the 96% (aka PGA) above that was almost as clearly yellow as the VG, and smelled strongly of just alcohol?
When it was put through the cottonwool syringe it changed to cloudy, almost opaque. AND the strong smell of alcohol almost totally disappeared, and it started to smell of tobacco (quite nicely).

WTF is going on here? Where did the alcohol go, and where did the cloudyness come from???
Anyone have any guesses here?

As I had anticipated problems with getting at least some of the alcohol out of the extract I had planned to mix half of it with some more water, and let half of it evaporate away as it was. And to further complicate things I had decided to divide each part once more, letting one part evaporate naturally and one part get a little boil in the micro wave oven.
So I took my 8ml and divided it into 2 bowls and 2 shot glasses. Into one shot glass and one bowl I squirted 2ml distilled water each. One interesting thing happened: the parts with added water homogenized nicely (still a bit cloudy though), but the bowl and glass with only the PGA-extract started leaving marks on the sides of the vessels, and no amount of tilting or gentle shaking could get them to become even (the amount, 2ml each, may just have been too small).

Then I got distracted by the election coverage (we have a new president), and these bowls and glasses just stood there for about three hours. When I looked at them again, the alcohol only bowl was totally dry with a strong aroma of tobacco and some brown-yellow stains. The alcohol+water bowl still had a little bit of moisture, and an even yellow-light brown stain covering the area where the liquid had been. The shot glasses both still held moisture (the pga only one had been covered).

Evaporation was clearly not a problem any more. Getting *anything* out of this experimental mug OTOH...
So I combined all four vessels, and used about 7 ml of water to try to get some of those light-brown tobacco-smelling stains out of the bowls. The result is 5.8 ml still opaque, still very yellow, liquid in a bottle.

I still have the 60% alcohol to deal with. It will be very interesting to see how it comes out the other end of the cotton wool syringe. I now know that evaporation is not a problem - probably because it is insanely dry here due to the cold spell (RH is <24%, and no amount of wet towels on radiators will push it upwards - draught from windows plus a 30-40 degree temperature differential between outside and inside = very very very dry air).

 

[Tona Aspsusa]

I got the last one, the 60% alcohol, done too. I had about 10ml, added 6 ml water and let it stand in a bowl for a few hours. Bottled it when I had around 8 ml left.

Here is my collection of bottles from my experiment: