Now that I have your attention, lol, in searching for something else on the Web I encountered the same thing over and over again, and then again on various people's blogs. What I had always thought was simply very poor use of terminology seems to be based on several widely expoused "theories" that are nothing more than mythology with no credible basis. This leads to poor and potentially damaging misuse of terminology - for example it easily implies to the greater scientific community (who mostly get their terminology right at least) that seemingly all liquids are in fact at some point based on tobacco leaf.
It also leads to confusion about what actually is happening to the liquid over time, which is more why I am posting. FDA is going to do what they are going to do, some zealots will insist that "steeping" in fact is what happens, most people will be too lazy or indoctrinated to change, but it is possibly at least helpful to not attribute mystical processes to what is really going on in your juice.
First to review "steeping" is term which is specific to a process in which a solid is held in contact with a liquid, usually a solid plant based material and usually for purposes of extraction of flavorants, alkaloids etc from the plant. This is exactly what is going on when people extract tobacco leaves by typical WTA or NET processes. If you are working with bottles of flavor you generally should not have solids present. (I've seen a few, I call them "defective" myself).
So here are the two big things I see most often which are just dead wrong:
1) When a compound is dissolved in PG or PGA or PG/VG it in fact takes some days or weeks even for the "solids" to be fully "absorbed" into the liquid, or some such similar nonsense. I will spare you the thermodynamic arguments, this is simply not true. Either you still have solids present, in which case you likely don't have a flavorant you can use yet, or you have a solution, in which case the compound in solution is simply in solution and has no "memory" that it was ever even a solid etc etc etc (BTW in fact many flavorants are actually liquids in pure form, not solids). I can state unequivocably that no such phenomenon of this lengthy "absorption into PG etc" process in fact exists, based more or less on the same fundamental thermodynamic laws that allow me to also say unequivocably that a cup of coffee I've left on the desk all morning will never suddenly spontaneously warm itself back up.
This idea appears to be the root of adopting the term "steeping", but the concepts described are contrary to and precluded by well known scientific facts about the behavior of solutions.
2) Part of the "steeping" process involves the "gradual transfer of flavorants from PG into the more viscous VG over time". Again absolutely false. There is no concept of separate distinct PG or VG phases in PG/VG mixtures, they are miscible and form uniform solutions. Also when you put PG or PGA based flavorants into PG/VG or even VG to make a new solution all you need is either a short time and they will uniformly distribute themselves on their own, or just a good shake or two will do the same thing.
Bottom line is unless you are tossing in a vanilla bean or extracting tobacco leaves and clearly have a solid phase present, the term "steeping" does not even apply, and all these various theories about how things distribute themselves between PG and VG for example have no basis in actual thermodynamic reality.
You are not "steeping" your vape liquid, you are *aging* it. Plain and simple.
The actual changes may not be well understood because we tend to not have the analytical facilities to observe them. But the key phenomenon that are actually occurring are straightforward enough, and I will discuss them in Part II.
In the meantime, look at a can of Budweiser, it is "Beechwood Aged", not "Beechwood Steeped". They have it right. They are even throwing in beechwood chips, so they appear to meet the basic system requirements of a "steeping" process - a solid phase is present. But they are not attempting extract the beechwood, it is a medium to absorb fusel alcohols and other off flavors out of the beer during the carbonation step.
Again, You are aging your liquid, not steeping it.
It also leads to confusion about what actually is happening to the liquid over time, which is more why I am posting. FDA is going to do what they are going to do, some zealots will insist that "steeping" in fact is what happens, most people will be too lazy or indoctrinated to change, but it is possibly at least helpful to not attribute mystical processes to what is really going on in your juice.
First to review "steeping" is term which is specific to a process in which a solid is held in contact with a liquid, usually a solid plant based material and usually for purposes of extraction of flavorants, alkaloids etc from the plant. This is exactly what is going on when people extract tobacco leaves by typical WTA or NET processes. If you are working with bottles of flavor you generally should not have solids present. (I've seen a few, I call them "defective" myself).
So here are the two big things I see most often which are just dead wrong:
1) When a compound is dissolved in PG or PGA or PG/VG it in fact takes some days or weeks even for the "solids" to be fully "absorbed" into the liquid, or some such similar nonsense. I will spare you the thermodynamic arguments, this is simply not true. Either you still have solids present, in which case you likely don't have a flavorant you can use yet, or you have a solution, in which case the compound in solution is simply in solution and has no "memory" that it was ever even a solid etc etc etc (BTW in fact many flavorants are actually liquids in pure form, not solids). I can state unequivocably that no such phenomenon of this lengthy "absorption into PG etc" process in fact exists, based more or less on the same fundamental thermodynamic laws that allow me to also say unequivocably that a cup of coffee I've left on the desk all morning will never suddenly spontaneously warm itself back up.
This idea appears to be the root of adopting the term "steeping", but the concepts described are contrary to and precluded by well known scientific facts about the behavior of solutions.
2) Part of the "steeping" process involves the "gradual transfer of flavorants from PG into the more viscous VG over time". Again absolutely false. There is no concept of separate distinct PG or VG phases in PG/VG mixtures, they are miscible and form uniform solutions. Also when you put PG or PGA based flavorants into PG/VG or even VG to make a new solution all you need is either a short time and they will uniformly distribute themselves on their own, or just a good shake or two will do the same thing.
Bottom line is unless you are tossing in a vanilla bean or extracting tobacco leaves and clearly have a solid phase present, the term "steeping" does not even apply, and all these various theories about how things distribute themselves between PG and VG for example have no basis in actual thermodynamic reality.
You are not "steeping" your vape liquid, you are *aging* it. Plain and simple.
The actual changes may not be well understood because we tend to not have the analytical facilities to observe them. But the key phenomenon that are actually occurring are straightforward enough, and I will discuss them in Part II.
In the meantime, look at a can of Budweiser, it is "Beechwood Aged", not "Beechwood Steeped". They have it right. They are even throwing in beechwood chips, so they appear to meet the basic system requirements of a "steeping" process - a solid phase is present. But they are not attempting extract the beechwood, it is a medium to absorb fusel alcohols and other off flavors out of the beer during the carbonation step.
Again, You are aging your liquid, not steeping it.
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Man, now that does sound dangerous. "I love inhaling the steam of electronic liquid."
