Smoke Juice Storage Tips

[renderwerks]

As for the wife factor, if you are in a winter climate now, like we are on the East Coast, you can probably store it in the garage or even outside in a water-tight container while it is cold, and work on her come the Spring thaw.

It's a tough job, but someone has to live here in SoCal. We've been experiencing an unusual (even for us) warm spell. It has been in the mid 70's for over a week now.

I can pitch the outdoor freezer with the concerns of a liter of 60mg juice in the household freezer; or how I've taken over the butter area of the fridge door with juice bottles...

Interesting you mention molecular sieves. I was discussing with another chemist on BigJim's board the possibility of molecular sieves to soak up water in juices for storage, but they wouldn't dry the juice beyond its eutectic anyway.

Yes, in some of our systems, we use activated alumina and siliporite. We alternately pressurize and vacuum the sieve bed to load it up with molecules then flush it. Never thought about using a sieve to soak up water - our stuff is so hygroscopic.

Cryogenic freezing would be beyond cool...literally! If we could only afford the N2 and cryo-fridge! Imagine pulling up a blue bottle from a lit-up freezer tube, like the dino eggs in Jurassic Park, complete with machanical movie servo sounds! Complete and utter overkill, but so sci-fi cool!!

Liquid Nitrogen... so much fun. We do all kinds of stuff with it. Some LIN, an aluminum baseball bat and a potato... Best potato launcher you have ever seen! We even make ice cream with it as a coolant. Makes ice cream in about 30 seconds!

Funny you mention Jurassic Park. I used to be a designer for Fleetwood motorhomes and I was the designer for the "Mobile Command Center" that was seen in the second movie. Even got to drive it a few times.

 

[Kurt]

I've made ice cream with LIN for my chemistry classes. Yeah, about 30 sec and its some of the best ice cream you've had. I dare the students to let me pour it on their hands...the LIN, not the ice cream...that would be weird. Having a hard time picturing the spud gun...we used to make those with hair spray and a pipe.

Freezer IMHO is optimal, but just the fridge should be quite good too in the meantime. Keeping the bottles in a big tupperware container should solve the safety concerns.

 

[instantinlaw]

Hi Kurt,
I read in another thread that you say that freezing has barely any expansion and that the liquid does not completely freeze. I have a couple of questions that I hope you won't mind answering.

1. Have you actually frozen any high nic liquid?
2. What happens to it in the freezer?
3. Do I need to do anything special to the glass bottle before I put it in the freezer? I don't wan't the glass to break or anything.

I have a 500ml botle of 100mg that I bought from Chris about 2 weeks ago. I'm still working on another 120ml bottle of 100mg so the 500ml can go into long term storage.

Btw, I.m posting here instead of the other thread so I can stay updated on this thread.

Thanks for any advice you can give.

 

[Kurt]

Hi Kurt,
I read in another thread that you say that freezing has barely any expansion and that the liquid does not completely freeze. I have a couple of questions that I hope you won't mind answering.

1. Have you actually frozen any high nic liquid?
2. What happens to it in the freezer?
3. Do I need to do anything special to the glass bottle before I put it in the freezer? I don't wan't the glass to break or anything.

I have a 500ml botle of 100mg that I bought from Chris about 2 weeks ago. I'm still working on another 120ml bottle of 100mg so the 500ml can go into long term storage.

Btw, I.m posting here instead of the other thread so I can stay updated on this thread.

Thanks for any advice you can give.

I tested a 12 mg VG unflavored juice I made from 35 mg VTvapor VG unflavored and pure VG to dilute it. I do know that Adam (VTvapor) has some water in his unflavored juice. I filled to about 75% volume a 10 mL plastic dropper bottle with this 12 mg juice, and marked the liquid level on the side with a pen, and put it in the freezer upright so if it froze I would be able to compare the new volume by the pen mark. I wanted some head room air because expansion would cause some pressure release upon opening, and of course expansion would put the level higher than the marked line. Neither happened, nor did the juice freeze solid. The juice was just thicker because of cold.

I am now testing one of the 50 mL bottles of MFS 100 mg VG juice I filled, which has about 3 mL head room to be on the safe side. It is now in my freezer upright in a container with paper towels in case of 8-o. With it is a plastic bottle of pure VG for comparison. I'll report back in several hours with the results. Hopefully it won't be 8-o.

I will say however that the rest of the processed MFS 100 mg VG, along with the rest of my unflavored reserves (35 mg VG VTvapor, TW 36 and 54 mg PG), are in a sealed container in 30 - 50 mL bottles in my coldroom, which is probably about 30 deg F now, and goes down to about 20 deg F these nights. No issues at all, just thicker flow, no crystals forming, no expansion I can tell. I think my freezer is about 10 deg F, but it might be colder...I don't have a freezer thermometer. Some freezers get colder, like SubZero's are very cold, down to -10 deg F. Can't say what they will do.

I would not recommend putting your whole bottle in the freezer. It might be fine, depending on the results of the above experiment, but if it is not, and breaks, that will be a multi-level heartache, and very dangerous and difficult to clean up. At the very least, the bottle should be in its own clean container to collect a spill. I put mine in 50 mL bottles so I only access a small portion of the juice at any given moment...and this stuff is so strong that I may end up transferring the contents of whatever currently-used 50 mL bottle into smaller ones, and put most back in the cold. I have 6 mL green glass eurodropper bottles, and I figure one of those filled with 100 mg will last me weeks of DIY.

I also should mention to those interested in this storage/usage system that 100 mg juice is a whole new ballgame in toxicity. 36 mg on you is little problem, but I do not want to get any of this stuff on my skin at all. Sure the VG does keep it from absorbing as much as pure nic, but that will strongly depend on the skin texture it is in contact with too. Most commonly a drip will get on the backs of the fingers and hand, very soft and absorbent skin. Not likely to be fatal, but you might get pretty sick. The eurodropper inserts allow syringe access and a no-spill assurance, without the dangers of drip-contact that glass droppers always have. Alcohol in a juice will evaporate and actually force juice out of a glass dropper or pipette. Syringes eliminate this to a much greater extent and make the DIY process much more convenient, accurate and fast.

One more thing: I may have mentioned this earlier, but I would not do long term storage of high-nic unflavored juice in plastic dropper bottles. Nic can dissolve some plastics by leaching the plasticizers from the plastic. If you notice a plastic taste in some high-nic juices you've had at room temp for a while, this is was has happened. Had to toss some 24 mg unflavored I had bought back in Sept because of this. Males especially should not ingest plasticizers...they attack the reproductive system. 8-o

People can do what they like, but I think there really should be a healthy fear and respect of these very high nic juices, and I know of only a handful of people here actually trained in handling dangerous liquids. This method I believe will ensure maximum safety, ease of use, and very long term storage and preservation of potency, all of which add up to piece of mind.

I give a blow by blow of how I processed this MFS 100 mg VG juice here:

http://www.e-cigarette-forum.com/fo...smoke-juice-new-years-celabration-sale-5.html post #43.

 

[Kurt]

Ok, the 50 mL glass bottle of 100 mg VG has been in the freezer for about 8 hours. No sign of expansion, and the liquid did not freeze solid, although it is as thick as rubber cement! The bubble still moves very slowly, and no crystalization or cloudiness was observed. I would guess the temperature is maybe around 15 deg F, but I do not know for sure, and I can't measure it at present. Wiki gives the FP of glycerin to be 64 deg F...maybe its a typo in the page, since that would mean all my VG I have for mixing should be frozen in the house, cuz I keep it at 62 F.

Regardless, it seems my freezer is fine for storage.

 

[instantinlaw]

I found this on Propylene Glycol based Heat-Transfer Fluids
It would appear that it would be safe to store in the freezer if the nic is in a pg based solution even if there were some water in it. I bought mine from MFS with a pg base. I don't know about vg based liquid though. Please let me know how your experiment goes

 

[instantinlaw]

& thanks Kurt for your help.

 

[Kurt]

I found this on Propylene Glycol based Heat-Transfer Fluids
It would appear that it would be safe to store in the freezer if the nic is in a pg based solution even if there were some water in it. I bought mine from MFS with a pg base. I don't know about vg based liquid though. Please let me know how your experiment goes

The last sentence does remind me of a point I've made in the past, and that is if you store in the freezer, and want to use the liquid, bring it up to room temp before opening. Otherwise water will probably frost onto its surface. Eventually everything would melt of course, but the liquid has absorbed some water.

For my VG juice, I believe the experiment was a success, that is the liquid did not freeze solid, and more importantly did not expand. I don't know what your PG liquid would do. The main issue is expansion. If it freezes solid without expansion you should be fine as long as you thaw it and shake it up before opening. If there is water present or maybe alcohol that Chris has added, the liquid may separate as it freezes, and would need to be remixed. I saw no separation or cloudiness with my VG liquid at the temp of my freezer, so I believe I am good to go.

Thanks for posting that PG info. It may come in handy for others here.

 

[instantinlaw]

I guess I should ask Chris what he puts into the 100mg juice. I'm guessing if it's 100% pg or even pg/alcohol I won't run into any problems either. Thanks again.

 

[Kurt]

I found this on Propylene Glycol based Heat-Transfer Fluids
It would appear that it would be safe to store in the freezer if the nic is in a pg based solution even if there were some water in it. I bought mine from MFS with a pg base. I don't know about vg based liquid though. Please let me know how your experiment goes

The last sentence does remind me of a point I've made in the past, and that is if you store in the freezer, and want to use the liquid, bring it up to room temp before opening. Otherwise water will probably frost onto its surface. Eventually everything would melt of course, but the liquid has absorbed some water.

For my VG juice, I believe the experiment was a success, that is the liquid did not freeze solid, and more importantly did not expand. I don't know what your PG liquid would do. The main issue is expansion. If it freezes solid without expansion you should be fine as long as you thaw it and shake it up before opening. If there is water present or maybe alcohol that Chris has added, the liquid may separate as it freezes, and would need to be remixed. I saw no separation or cloudiness with my VG liquid at the temp of my freezer, so I believe I am good to go.

Thanks for posting that PG info. It may come in handy for others here.

For your PG liquid, I would do what I did with my initial test: put some it in a 10 mL plastic dropper bottle, mark the liquid level, and put the bottle upright in the freezer overnight or for about 8 hours. If it didn't expand as determined by where the liquid level is after freezer, or opening the bottle doesn't expel air, which would also happen with expansion of the liquid, then you are probably ok. I would test this myself, but my only PG juices are TW 36 and 54 mg, and I think they add some alcohol to it, and perhaps water. You might contact Chris and ask him if the vehicle of his PG unflavored is pure PG or has some alcohol added, which will lower the FP of the liquid. Good luck!

 

[instantinlaw]

I will do so. Thanks!

 

[Kurt]

Here is the final procedure I used for processing 500 mL of 100 mg unflavored VG juice from MFS. It was in a thread from the New Years sale, and so was getting buried, and I wanted to bump it into this sticky so more could see how I did it.

Here it is:

Just finished processing my 0.5 L of 100 mg VG. Yep, it did have that slight insecticide smell, somewhat sweet and pungent and a bit fishy. That's how nic smells to me, always has. Good!

Color: almost none. Very clear. Unless you put pure VG next to it, it looks like pure VG, just very slightly yellow. Again good!

What follows is a bit long, but 100 mg juice is very dangerous, so I want people to know how I processed the juice for usage and long term storage safely. I will not respond to or entertain "don't worry about it" comments, because in my opinion those people are idiots and ripe for an early Darwin award. Spilling a bunch of this juice accidentally is in fact a serious hazmat disaster. Spilling a bunch of it on you, as in 100 mL or so, is possibly fatal unless you happen to have a syringe of atropine handy, which I don't have, and I doubt anyone else here does either, and can phone 911. All procedures were done on a clean smooth kitchen table, which was on a smooth linoleum floor, which, unlike carpet, can be washed if needed.

Suited up: hands in nitrile gloves, and long sleeve sweatshirt with rubber bands on the wrists to make sure all skin was covered. At all times I am aware of where my hands are and if there are any drops on the gloves, I wash them off. I am alert, sober (including avoiding too much nic), and I have bright light to see.

Poured about 30 mL into a clean sterilized mason jar. This gave enough room in the 500 mL MFS bottle to recap it and shake-mix thoroughly. Poured the 30 mL back into the bottle, and repeated the shaking. Now it is mixed well enough.

Storage bottles were 50 mL amber glass with eurodropper inserts, all sterilized with vodka and dried overnight. I recommend a small funnel for pouring into the bottles, but I didn't have one, and I have very well trained and steady hands (and paper towels under everything to catch spills). Poured the thick liquid directly into 50 mL bottles to within about a mL of the rim, inserted the euros, wiped them off thoroughly with vodka-wetted paper towel, capped them tightly, labeled them, and now they are in the storage bin in the cold basement.

0.5 L filled 8 bottles, since they actually hold more than 60 mL, with about 15 mL left in the MFS bottle. Added a few mL of vodka to that, shook it up a lot, heated the outside of the bottle with hot water to make the liquid flow well, and then inverted this into the mason jar and let it drain for about 30 min or so. Since I generally vape 18 mg strength, or less, every one of those drops is prob about 0.5 mL of vaping juice. When the bottle was drained, I collected the juice in the mason jar with a syringe, and put that in dropper bottles. Then all glassware and syringe were washed thoroughly with hot water, gloves were removed and thrown out, table was thoroughly wiped off. Done. The most dangerous substance in my house, by far, is now safely stored, and I can use it via syringe without ever touching it.

Inspired by Mike Pickle, I made an 18 mg VG juice with 10% capella pralines and cream.

Chris, you are indeed a master. Not only is the nic smell not present at all, but this DIY hits like 24 mg at least, with a little bit of nic pepper taste, which I really like a lot. I am thrilled, buzzed, and so thankful! Simply outstanding on all counts, and I am set.

BTW I am sure, as an organic chemist, that the way I have bottled these, and when Spring comes those bottles can go in the freezer (there is no expansion and it does not freeze solid), that this juice will last several years at least, probably more. At very cold temps, as far as I know, there is simply nothing the juice can do to go bad or lose nic. See my comments in the Smoke Juice Storage Tips thread. Barring a major house-fire or police confiscation, I am sure I am set for a very long time indeed.

Very best wishes to you, Chris, for a healthy, prosperous and happy 2010, and many many thanks for selling such a fantastic product at such a fantastic price, and shipping it very safely! You are the man!!

 

[beingbekah]

I did pretty much what you did, Kurt, with just a few changes.

I too used the 50 mL amber glass euro dropper bottles from specialtybottle.com. Quite a find there, sir! They make it possible to take one big risk with this poisonous stuff we all love so much and minimize the risk of toxic exposure thereafter.

I observed safe and asceptic technique like mentioned above, only adding a face mask to further avoid contaminating anything by breathing on it. Yes, I know, the ingrediants of unflavored ejuice are not microbe-friendly. Call me paranoid.

I used a syringe to fill the bottles to the brim through the euro dropper after capping to leave as little headspace as possible. When I go to use a bottle, I will pull ~15 mL or so out with a syringe, shake, return the liquid in the syringe to the bottle, and shake again before measuring out what I need to mix.

After capping the bottles tightly and wiping them clean, I labeled each bottle and wrapped it in a paper towel to offer some padding and further block out light. You could use a sock or cloth for this, as I heard mentioned somewhere. I then placed each bottle in its own small vacuum food saver bag with a packet of silica gel that I made by taping up a paper packet and punching small holes in it with a fine needle to facilitate air/moisture transport, then filling it with silica gel available in the flower-drying department of your local hobby store. You could use loose silica gel, but i was concerned that it would work its way up into the bottles' threads and cause trouble later. I then vacuumed out the air and sealed the bags using a commercially available kitchen vacuum-sealer. On each bag I wrote the strength of the liquid, it's base liquid components, and the date (this may not be necessary for everyone; I had liquid from Chris as well as from two other suppliers, each with different nic levels and PG/VG ratios).

All the bagged bottles were packed into a cardboard box that I scribbled warnings all over and put into the freezer. Between the lack of light, moisture, and oxygen and the low temperature, I expect that the chemical reactions which degrade nicotine will proceed very slowly and the small mountain of concentrated nicotine liquid I have stored away will last me quite a while, maybe four or five years.

Something else I do that I haven't heard of anyone else doing:

I make ready-to-mix "just add flavor" dilutions of unflavored eliquid in ~50 mL batches. For example, if you want to make 24 mg/mL strengh juice with 25% flavoring, you can mix up some 32 mg/mL and add three parts of it to one part flavoring in whatever size container you wish. This is great for experimenting with new recipes and means you don't have to fool around with the high concentrations as often.

To figure out what nicotine concentration your "just add flavor" juice should be, use the following equation:

J = F / (1 - X)

where J is your "just add flavor" concentration
F is your desired final concentration, and
X is your desired flavor percentage, in decimal form (i.e. 10% = 0.10, 25% = 0.25, etc.)

If your not algebraically inclined, you can use one of the juice calculators and just not add flavoring to the mix.

Hope this wasn't too confusing. It's certainly longer than I intended...

 

[Kurt]

I did pretty much what you did, Kurt, with just a few changes.

I too used the 50 mL amber glass euro dropper bottles from specialtybottle.com. Quite a find there, sir! They make it possible to take one big risk with this poisonous stuff we all love so much and minimize the risk of toxic exposure thereafter.

I observed safe and asceptic technique like mentioned above, only adding a face mask to further avoid contaminating anything by breathing on it. Yes, I know, the ingrediants of unflavored ejuice are not microbe-friendly. Call me paranoid.

I used a syringe to fill the bottles to the brim through the euro dropper after capping to leave as little headspace as possible. When I go to use a bottle, I will pull ~15 mL or so out with a syringe, shake, return the liquid in the syringe to the bottle, and shake again before measuring out what I need to mix.

After capping the bottles tightly and wiping them clean, I labeled each bottle and wrapped it in a paper towel to offer some padding and further block out light. You could use a sock or cloth for this, as I heard mentioned somewhere. I then placed each bottle in its own small vacuum food saver bag with a packet of silica gel that I made by taping up a paper packet and punching small holes in it with a fine needle to facilitate air/moisture transport, then filling it with silica gel available in the flower-drying department of your local hobby store. You could use loose silica gel, but i was concerned that it would work its way up into the bottles' threads and cause trouble later. I then vacuumed out the air and sealed the bags using a commercially available kitchen vacuum-sealer. On each bag I wrote the strength of the liquid, it's base liquid components, and the date (this may not be necessary for everyone; I had liquid from Chris as well as from two other suppliers, each with different nic levels and PG/VG ratios).

All the bagged bottles were packed into a cardboard box that I scribbled warnings all over and put into the freezer. Between the lack of light, moisture, and oxygen and the low temperature, I expect that the chemical reactions which degrade nicotine will proceed very slowly and the small mountain of concentrated nicotine liquid I have stored away will last me quite a while, maybe four or five years.

Something else I do that I haven't heard of anyone else doing:

I make ready-to-mix "just add flavor" dilutions of unflavored eliquid in ~50 mL batches. For example, if you want to make 24 mg/mL strengh juice with 25% flavoring, you can mix up some 32 mg/mL and add three parts of it to one part flavoring in whatever size container you wish. This is great for experimenting with new recipes and means you don't have to fool around with the high concentrations as often.

To figure out what nicotine concentration your "just add flavor" juice should be, use the following equation:

J = F / (1 - X)

where J is your "just add flavor" concentration
F is your desired final concentration, and
X is your desired flavor percentage, in decimal form (i.e. 10% = 0.10, 25% = 0.25, etc.)

If your not algebraically inclined, you can use one of the juice calculators and just not add flavoring to the mix.

Hope this wasn't too confusing. It's certainly longer than I intended...

Thanks for the additions beingbekah! Some might argue that the silica is overkill, since the bottles are quite sealed anyway, but hey, this stuff is about piece of mind, and it certainly won't hurt. Some months back there was talk of putting the bottles in a vac-sealed dessicator container. They can be obtained for about $40 for a 2 L container, but those are large for most freezers, and this was something discussed before it was realized that unflavored juice can be frozen, and people were just putting it in some cool dark closet.

One thing about those 50 mL bottles with euros, and I don't remember if I mentioned this, but in order to get all the liquid out of a bottle with syringe, the needle will need to be very gently bent in a curve, so it can reach the wall of the bottle with tilting. Since, at least with my 18 g needles and the euros I got, there is no leaking when the bottle is fully tilted, this works well and does not detract from safety issues.

Also, because I assume that the original juice was bottled under sterile or very clean conditions, and thus is clean in storage, I tend to just make juices right from the 50 mL bottle of high-nic unlfavored, rather than diluting to to make flavor-ready batches which are then stored. But there may be an advantage to your method of making prediluted unflavored ready for flavors in 50 mL batches. This might not be a bad idea, since I never vape higher than 35 mg anyway. One does have to be a little careful about taking out and putting back 100 mg VG into the freezer though, as cold VG will absorb water if exposed to the air. So I would make sure it comes to RT before opening...which is necessary anyway to get the thick VG to go through the syringe. I think this may all be too OCD, but then all of chemistry lab procedures are OCD, aren't they? The zen of safety.

Given how strong 100 mg unflavored is, it could be argued that one of those 50 mL bottles of it, when ready to be used, should be transferred into 10 mL glass bottles, with all but one going back in the freezer for later. But I think any added protection from O2 and other stuff with the euro in place is negligible compared to what I am doing now. At some point in the future I will test the juice I have out for use now, to see if it loses any nic content, since I am guessing the 50 mL 100 mg will last me a couple months, at least, since I vape 12-14 mg normally.

 

[beingbekah]

Yeah, most of it's probably just OCD overkill... but I've noticed that a lot of vapers are a little OCD about thier juice. Having a background in chemistry just makes it worse. Low temperature and dark glass euro droppers would probably have been sufficient, but what can I say? I'm a geek and I've got a decent bit of money wrapped up in this stuff. I don't want to lose one drop if I don't have to. Hell, I've got some flavored juice that is pretty narsty and I still can't bring myself to dump it. I can't stop thinking "What if I have an emergency?" even though I've got a little under a liter of high-test unflavored.

 

[Raven1]

I just keep mine in the fridge like I did with my analogue cartons. Haven't had any problems yet.

 

[Ctrl F8]

Firstly, thanks DVap and Kurt (and everybody) for all of your priceless information.

In another thread, DVap mentioned that nic liquid is clear and that yellow liquid contains impurities. The reason I ask is because, as a newbie, I ordered a DIY kit containing 30 ML of yellowish nic liquid. (Today, I ordered some from MFS, which claims to be clear.) The reason I ask is twofold: 1) I want to know what I'm vaping and whether or not I should deal with that vendor, and 2) that yellowish stuff don't vape. At first I thought it was the 510 atomizers that were no good. I then tried some juice leftover from a sample bottle from a different vendor that had been producing vapor and it vapes. So it's the juice and not the attys. I don't expect you to solve that problem here (I'm going to do a post on the DIY subforum), but if you do have any insight... I mostly wanted more information about clear vs yellow nic liquid.

And Kurt, how do you bend needles? I assume fire is involved.

Thanks again!

 

[Kurt]

Firstly, thanks DVap and Kurt (and everybody) for all of your priceless information.

In another thread, DVap mentioned that nic liquid is clear and that yellow liquid contains impurities. The reason I ask is because, as a newbie, I ordered a DIY kit containing 30 ML of yellowish nic liquid. (Today, I ordered some from MFS, which claims to be clear.) The reason I ask is twofold: 1) I want to know what I'm vaping and whether or not I should deal with that vendor, and 2) that yellowish stuff don't vape. At first I thought it was the 510 atomizers that were no good. I then tried some juice leftover from a sample bottle from a different vendor that had been producing vapor and it vapes. So it's the juice and not the attys. I don't expect you to solve that problem here (I'm going to do a post on the DIY subforum), but if you do have any insight... I mostly wanted more information about clear vs yellow nic liquid.

And Kurt, how do you bend needles? I assume fire is involved.

Thanks again!

You bend the needles VERY gently by hand, not fire, as you would with glass. And this is only needed for the 50 mL bottles. I think the 30 mL bottles the straight 1.5" needle will get to an edge. Haven't tried but TWs 30 bottles use a euro insert, and the needle will get to the wall. And after I got the 100 mg MFS juice, I think now that 30 mL bottles would be better, since 50 mL of 100 mg will last a LONG time...a few months at least.

The needle is Al, so if you bend too fast it will just fold and then block liquid. So I basically gently bend it a very little bit in the middle, just enough to feel it give a little, then do the same in another position on the needle, then another place, etc, until it is bent enough that when inserted into the bottle it can reach the wall, which means all liquid is accessible, even if there is only a mL left.

Bent needles are available online. Google "bent needles luer-lock" or some such search. They are cheap, but you may have to buy many in a lot.

Good luck!

 

[Ctrl F8]

Thanks Kurt. I just attempted to bend an 18 gauge and decided that I needed a little too much force for my own comfort. Maybe I'll play with it in the future.

 

[Kurt]

Thanks Kurt. I just attempted to bend an 18 gauge and decided that I needed a little too much force for my own comfort. Maybe I'll play with it in the future.

Realized you had asked another question here, and I've been away from the thread for a bit. The yellow is likely from two possible sources, neither is bad for you, so I wouldn't worry too much about DIY with it.

1. Nicotine over time can react with O2 to form a yellow-orange product, cotamine. This is the first metabolite of nic in the body, and it is ok in juices, just less active than nic. Take very little cotamine to tinge a nic juice. In PG or VG this reaction is pretty slow, but the original free-base nic can often react some before it gets into the vehicle. I think the chinese juices often use exposed nic for making their juices, which is one reason Dakang is so yellow compared to some of the US juices, like the completely colorless MFS (thing of beauty).

2. The extraction/purification process to produce the nic can be incomplete, bringing in trace amounts of other tobacco compounds, which are often deep in color, and also tend towards yellow to deep brown. Again, I must assume this is the case with Dakang, as their unflavored is strongly colored, and I have yet to see analysis results on the ingredients. But again, I do not think this is a point of concern. The compounds themselves are not harmful, as long as the tobacco didn't have lots of pesticides (do we know if this is true?), and these compounds will yellow a juice in very trace amounts.

MFS clearly uses the highest grade pharma nic, which is really not much more expensive than lower grade nic, such as what is used for pesticide. Chris can correct me, but you simply cannot get colorless and clear nic juice without using very pure and clean nic, and very clean storage conditions for the nic. Nic yellows to cotamine when exposed to the air very quickly...it does not when wrapped up in PG or VG. So the appearance of the 100 mg VG I got from Chris says everything about the quality of the juice and the operation itself.