Hi all,
- I have had a very comprehensive long term experience with refrigerating e-liquids that has lasted over a year. About a year ago I had decided to store my flavoured e-liquids which consisted of both naturally extracted tobacco liquids with higher nicotine content and general flavored liquids with low nicotine for sub-ohm vaping in the fridge as a means to try and preserve them particularly after I stocked up prior to the August 2016 deeming regulations scare.
For the purposes of this post I will abbreviate naturally extracted tobaccos which high nicotine (10-18mg) and a high PG ratio as (“NETS”) and synthetic or organic flavoured e-liquids with low nicotine levels (3-6mg) and high VG ratio as (‘sub-ohm e-liquids”). The results I have had in the fridge have been different for the two categories.
Prior to storing e-liquids in the fridge I had researched the effects of refrigerating e-liquids in the fridge and found very little good informative advice based on experience. My intuition told me that storing e-liquids in the fridge can’t possibly destroy e-liquids because they are merely being kept in a cooler environment. I reasoned that if someone lived in a colder climate like Europe or North America in the winter, then surely their e-liquids wouldn’t go off just because the climate is under 10 degrees.
But I didn’t feel secured with some intuitive notions about refrigerating e-liquids so I tested a few bottles of naturally extracted tobacco liquids (“NETS”). I kept them in the fridge for about 2 months and sampled them by filling tanks from the bottle right out of the fridge. The juices tasted as good as before I put them in the fridge so that was my green light to store all of my beloved juices in the fridge. As the height of a harsh Australian summer arrived I took a chance and put all my e-liquids in the fridge. The fridge was kept at a temperature half way on the temperature dial in the fridge and all juices were stored in amber boston glass bottles and placed either in cardboard shoe boxes or large plastic containers.
Over the next few months I would retrieve bottles from the fridge, sample them and fill a tank and then, after a few days, return the bottle to the fridge. The juices tasted fine. In the meantime, I was also vaping sub ohm e-liquids by taking the bottle from the fridge, filling a tank and returning the bottle to the fridge.
What I unravelled about storing e-liquids in the fridge slowly unfolded over time and the realization of the damage the fridge was doing to my juices was disguised initially because I was sampling through 2-3 years old liquids at first in a kind of structured format of sampling liquids from oldest to newest in a bid to de-clutter myself of extraneous juices which were old and going bad. I sampled juices, mainly NETs which vaped fine after 2 to 3 years before I started to refrigerate juices, however, when I took many of these juices out of the fridge and left them to return to room temperature for a few days they were off. They had a stale or dirty flavour to them and some of the juices made me feel mildly ill. They also left an acrid taste on my tongue and would bring on vapers tongue. Initially I was confused because these older liquids of 24-36 months in vintage tasted okay and were vapable the first time I sampled them after refrigeration but by the time I sampled them again a few months later, they were off.
It was in sampling the newer NET e-liquids which were about 6-12 months in age that I was beginning to realize that the fridge was damaging my e-juice. These liquids had been in the fridge about 3 months after I first sampled them and they tasted fine but by the time I returned to them 3 months later or longer, they tasted off. I was puzzled at how juice could go off so quickly. Some bottles would go from good to bad in just one month. In each case, I was removing bottles from the fridge, leaving them out for a few days while I vaped them and then returned the bottle to the fridge.
It was when I sampled e-liquids which were about 7-9 months old which had been in the fridge from the day I got them that the biggest shocks came. About 20-30 bottles of NET e-liquids were all off. Many actually tasted good fresh out of the fridge, but after they had been out of the fridge for 1-3 weeks they went from tasting good to tasting bad and giving me some of the symptoms I had become all too familiar with when vaping e-liquids which had gone bad.
The red herring and confusing element in my vape experience with refrigerated juices is the sub-ohm e-liquids. These were, as mentioned above, low nicotine and high VG and they never stayed out of the fridge long. I would fill a tank, and return the bottle to the fridge. The sub-ohm e-liquids were still vaping quite good after a prolonged period of being in the fridge for 12 months. Some of those juices were 24 months old and had been left in a draw for the first 12 months.
Prior to storing any e-liquids in the fridge, I found that NET’s stored properly in a dark cool place would generally outlive flavoured e-liquids and were still good after 2-3 years. I had NETs live through 2 or 3 hot Australian summers in a dark place still good to vape. However, they were going off within 6 months when stored in the fridge. This was even the case with fresh newly ordered e-liquids I had put in the fridge right from the beginning and not opened or removed from the fridge once until I finally took them out and found that they were off or going off.
So why were my NET e-liquids going off in the fridge and not my sub-ohm liquids? Well, as I mentioned above I never left sub-ohm e-liquids out of the fridge. They stayed in the fridge. When filling a tank I would return the bottle to the fridge immediately.
In summary what I have learnt in a nutshell from my 12-18 months of storing e-liquids in the fridge is as follows:- Storing e-liquids in the fridge will not increase their life expectancy;
- Many e-liquids will actually have a shortened life spanned by keeping them in the fridge and will go off after a period of somewhere between 3 months and 9 months of being kept in a fridge;
- Flavors duller and become quite flat in e-liquid which is left in the fridge.
- E-liquids kept in the fridge long term will, upon being vaped, give the vaper symptoms of headache, jitteriness, an acrid taste in the mouth and an unpleasant vaping experience. Flavors will be diminished or altered and the e-liquid will have a ‘dirty’ character to it, particularly rich, dark liquids and NET based liquids.
- E-liquids, particularly NET E-liquids which are PG based and with high nicotine that were removed from the fridge and not returned may taste okay initially but then will rapidly decline in quality and go off, just like food being kept in the fridge and then left out of the fridge.
- In other words, if you have made the mistake of storing flavoured e-liquids, whether they be NET’s or sub-ohm juices, then keep them in the fridge. They will deterioriate rapidly before your eyes once they are allowed to return and stay at room temperature.
- E-liquids stored in plastic and kept in the fridge will have an accelerated deterioration and will take on a plastic residue in the flavour of the e-liquids. Plastics stored in the fridge even for a short time like a month or two will spoil.
- Bottles of juice with more 'headspace' that is, the space between the juice and the top of the bottle, will degrade faster. In other words, the emptier the bottle of juice the faster the juice will degrade. This is accelerated when the juice is kept in the fridge.
*PS - smaller bottles of juice will degrade faster than larger bottles of juice, all things being even.
I have posted the results of my long term experiences of storing flavoured or NET e-liquids in the fridge to discourage anyone from doing so.
My knowledge in this regard has been empirical and not scientific so in my best uneducated guess, the reason flavoured and NET e-liquids go off in the fridge is due to condensation in the bottle both in the fridge and when removed from the fridge. If the e-liquid seems to be okay right out of the fridge, it may rapidly decline once left out of the fridge, like a piece of food that was preserved for a long time only to go off rapidly once exposed to room temperature conditions and air.
Altering temperatures of the e-liquid from cold to warm, and then to cold again changes the chemical composition of the e-liquid and invites bacteria and other microscopic life into the juice because water forms in the e-liquid from the condensation.
It is also possible that osmosis may occur where particles from food in the fridge transfers inside the bottle of e-liquid. This risk does not only occur in plastics but can occur in glass bottles because of the seal around the cap may not be fully air tight and microbes may get into the juice.
Despite my lack of knowledge of the science behind the deterioration of e-liquids in the fridge, I have no doubt that storing e-liquid in the fridge, whether it be high nicotine and high PG liquids or low nicotine high VG liquids, will go off quickly or at the very least, the flavour will be altered.
Liquids stored in the fridge for a short time may not have deteriorated noticeably but liquids kept in the fridge for 3-6 months or longer will most definitely be manifestly degraded.
I recommend storing e-liquids in cool dry and dark environments, even in the height of summer. DO NOT Store your flavoured e-liquids in the fridge. Any cold temperature storage should only be in the freezer and ONLY non-flavoured nicotine e-liquids.
- Storing e-liquids in the fridge will not increase their life expectancy;
Last edited:
Yep I Agree
