So I've been pretty successful with some one and two flavor liquids - I've got Earl Grey Tea and English Toffee pretty much where I want them, and Cranapple is coming along. The tea and toffee have been mostly comparing different brands of flavoring and experimenting with strength. The cranapple is working comparing brands and strengths and then fiddling with how much of each to use.
But the next liquid I want to make is something similar to a Burley Menthol tobacco that I'd been buying from Vaperite. It doesn't taste like smoking, of course, but I've been enjoying it and hope to come up with something similar. It tastes kind of like good plain pipe tobacco smells, but with menthol.
It sounds like things get more complicated with tobacco flavors. I have Inawera Burley Tobacco flavoring to start with for the base, and I'm assuming that the way to do this would be to work with that to find a percentage that I like and then add menthol. But I've got a couple of questions:
So, am I looking at the right things here? I'm not planning to try for a perfect clone, just something sort of similar to what I've been buying. I never liked any of the other tobacco flavored liquids that I had tried, so I'm not likely to go very far down the tobacco path.
But the next liquid I want to make is something similar to a Burley Menthol tobacco that I'd been buying from Vaperite. It doesn't taste like smoking, of course, but I've been enjoying it and hope to come up with something similar. It tastes kind of like good plain pipe tobacco smells, but with menthol.
It sounds like things get more complicated with tobacco flavors. I have Inawera Burley Tobacco flavoring to start with for the base, and I'm assuming that the way to do this would be to work with that to find a percentage that I like and then add menthol. But I've got a couple of questions:
- Steeping - most of what I've read indicates that tobacco flavors are where steeping really becomes necessary. So how soon can a tobacco flavor be expected to taste at least sort of like it is going to end up?
- Strength - if steeping is necessary to tell how it's going to taste, how do you figure out what strength to make it? Just make samples of multiple strengths? What about starting strong, letting it steep and then adding more base as needed?
- Bases - I see that Inawera (and other sources?) has different bases that can (should?) be used with tobacco flavors. Is this necessary? Or even desirable? I don't want or need the flavor of burning vegetation, and I don't want the end product to be sweet. If I do use these, how much volume do they add? So far I've found it easiest to make up my PG/VG/Nicotine at 24 mg/ml and then just add flavoring, so I end up at 18-22, which works fine for me. If these bases are added at any larger amounts, then I'd need to modify this.
So, am I looking at the right things here? I'm not planning to try for a perfect clone, just something sort of similar to what I've been buying. I never liked any of the other tobacco flavored liquids that I had tried, so I'm not likely to go very far down the tobacco path.
