skeptical about steeping to improve flavor

[feivel]

i DO NOT speak from experience, but i wonder if its the placebo effect.

steeping does not seem logical to me.
pg and vg are not volatile (prone to evaporation), and they are inert (dont react with oxygen and other)
perhaps the flavor is volatile, i doubt it, but even if it were, leaving the bottle open would just reduce the flavor.

i dont know much about nicotine but i dont think its reaction with the air or evap would do much to improve the flavor.

i have even seen people describe steeping by leaving the top on and just putting the juice in a dark place for a day or so.
well the envelope it spent a number of days in getting to your house was pretty dark, so this doesnt make much sense to me

i hope i havent offended anyone. the reason im even writing this is because i hold out the hope that maybe there IS something (non-placebic) to steeping.

thanks

 

[Dusty_D]

Try it. It definitely works. It's more about flavour blending. The best analogy I could use here, is it's like marinating meat. Sure you can cook it right away, but marinating it overnight or for a week would mean the flavours would infuse right into it.

I do not steep with the bottle open.

 

[swedishfish]

I find that flavor is somewhat enhanced with some juice if it steeps. That's even true for my DIY juice. I don't do anything special, just throw it in a box.

Only way to know is to try it. Does the flavor of the juice seem to improve the longer you have it?

 

[swedishfish]

I just know my Vapor Bomb peach is pretty good as soon as I get it. By the time I get to the second bottle, it's pretty great.

 

[Jim Bob]

You can toss some stuff into the pot and "call it soup" but more time will make it better as flavors begin to blend- exactly what steeping can sometimes do , great thing is , that it's your juice so you get to decide what to do with it

 

[Hoosier]

Steeping is not a magic bullet. (It is not leaving the cap off either and I have no idea when that thought took hold in ECF, but it seems to be canon now.) It is just allowing time for entropy to be reached or all reactions to finish.

Mix type 1 portland cement, sand, gravel and water and mix. In a hundred years the chemicals are still reacting, technically hydrating. Not a perfect example, but it is known that some reactions can take longer than others.

I steep some of my mixes. Just the ones that need it. I know which one need it because of experience.

As far as I know the term steeping was used to bring to mind a tea bag in a cup of water. It takes time, or a steep, for the flavoring in the tea to get out.

When letting juice breathe got combined with steeping and using the same term for two different things, I started staying out of the discussions. I have one mix that needs to breathe a bit before it is right, but it is the only mix I make that it has ever helped. I notice a tinny or coppery tone in my tobacco mixes when they have had too much air, but they almost always need steeping to taste right to me.

Do what works for you.

 

[feivel]

i guess ill just have to wait and see from experience
thank you all for answering

 

[VpnDrgn]

I agree that air is not a factor, maybe not even darkness, but time definitely is for some juices.
Some flavors are volatile because they use an alcohol base.

Two of the flavors in my last batch were cinnabun and cappuccino, after mixing, the flavor and
smell were definitely there, but after a week, it was so much deeper and stronger. I didn't
leave the top off, and they sat on the stand next to my recliner. The cappuccino is actually
a little too strong, I'll prolly have to dilute it a little when I have enough space in the bottle.

Some flavors change in other ways over time. One of my favorites is absinthe, after mixing it
taste a little like cough syrup, but after a week or so that goes away.

 

[Tracker II]

Mix type 1 portland cement, sand, gravel and water and mix. In a hundred years the chemicals are still reacting, technically hydrating.

Whew, that recipe must wreak havoc on a carto!

 

[Hoosier]

Whew, that recipe must wreak havoc on a carto!

Makes for a nice tight draw.

 

[CarbonThief]

I agree with the above replies, it works and allows the flavor to more fully permeate the mixture. There is also possibly the molecular imprinting affect on the surroudning PG/VG, similar to additives in gasoline which are diluted beyond Avogadro's number/principle. The idea here is that at this dilution, the additive no longer exists (relatively) in almost any given quality of gasoline, however the overall mixture is different in how it burns hence the theory that some sort of molecular imprinting occurs.

Not to mention that flavors are indeed volatile, some acids or bases, and many are aromatics. So certainly reactions are taking place.

Just my thought on this intersting topic.

Carbon

 

[ZenSilk]

I have had the luck of having a control to base my steeping experience off of. I got a bottle of 5 layer in 10ml 18mg. This is a flavor that is part of a sample pack, and this size/nicotine content/flavor combo is popular as well. When I got the bottle I smoked it immediately and it was amazing, exactly as described. I bought a 30ml bottle of the exact same flavor only in 12mg and when it got to me it smelled simply of butterscotch with a very slight banana hint - completely different than the previous smaller bottle. I discovered that another member had the same smell with a fresh bottle of 5 layer, so I let it sit with the cap open for around 4 days (smelling it each day until it was good to go). Around the 3rd day the caramel essentially burst through, then the vanilla on the fourth day. By the 5th day it was almost exactly as the first bottle tasted.

There were obvious aroma anomalies that balanced out drastically over time.

 

[denali_41]

i got a 30ml bottle of vanilla from LF,,you just can't go wrong with vanilla right ?? wrong
new bottle and the taste was horrible.WTF ?? so i set it on top of baseboard heater with tip and cap off for three days

now thats the stuff

 

[sh_]

Interesting about 3+ days with the cap off. I usually let only 24hrs cap off for my DIY Tabacco juices. After 24hrs I just put the cap back on and let it sit in the closed other 5 to 6 days. Usually I open the bottle for a few minutes to take 3 or 4 drops from it and put the cap back on. (wondering if the process of removing the cap for just a few minutes will also interfere in the steep process but... anyway...)

Botton line, Steep really works. Even more if you have a juice that has more smell than taste, let it sit for 1 week and you will notice the difference.

Thats specially true for vanilla, caramel and DIY using sweetener.

 

[ChrispyCritter]

I think with the cap off is more like letting it breathe like wine (this also probably would age it faster but doing anything fast probably has a cost) and with the cap on it's more like aging..steeping is really aging it..it depends on the juice a lot some are great nice and fresh others taste better after some aging..I'm sure when it ages because a lot of the juices contain sugar they ferment and that could add or take away from the flavor. There is probably no 1 way to age or for how long as it depends on the person and the juice..also things like tempature,climate and weather can change things a bit.