Hey MrM,
I wanted to top up one of the cartos that sit with many others on my desk---Ahlusion Gold Rising, which purports to be an RY4 but got kicked off The Big RY4 List by consensus because it doesn't taste like any RY4 we know. Maybe it's more an homage to/replica of the ancient Ruyan 4 liquid from 2005 that some people hold to have been the model for the 2007 original Janty RY4 (although the jury's still out on that one). Anyway, I like Gold Rising a lot---I just don't think of it as an RY4. But that's neither here nor there.
I retrieved my 10ml bottle of Gold Rising---now down to 7ml---from one of the many drawers in my juice stash, and suddenly noticed something that had escaped me earlier. I must have missed this when the bottle was full. Upon shaking, the inner surfaces of the bottle above the liquid revealed an oily residue. The juice itself is a transparent amber-gold, but this residue was yellow-green colored. I was shocked and surprised, because---in my experience---that yellow-green oiliness is a dead giveaway for Tobacco Absolute.
I seem to recall reading in one of your posts on the NET thread that Ahlusion uses various extraction methods for their NETs, including steam distillation. Is the Gold Rising extract an example?
Flavor-wise, Gold Rising doesn't remind me of commercial TA/TE at all, but the physical evidence sure points in that direction. Perhaps the extract used in Gold Rising is closer to the Velvet Cloud Vapor in-house-extracted proprietary TA, which is slightly closer to commercial TA to my palate, but remains different enough to be perceptibly its own thing.
Since you have a direct line to Wlad, I figured you might know what's up with the Gold Rising extract.
For what it's worth, I too have noticed with GR that it is ever-so-slightly oily--not like Blue Beard Tobacco from VCV, but not as uber clean as the rest of his juices. Interestingly enough, Blue Beard and GR are honey-cured tobaccos.
With my 30 mL of XPress GR, whether I have molested the bottle or not, the empty portion of the bottle has a
very fine layer of liquid just above the full portion. Considering gravity, the only reason that would be is that it's slightly oily and it is clinging to the walls of the bottle.
My other bottle of GR, the profiled juice, is much clearer and tastes different (even better), so that one has been tweaked to my tastes--I love that I can get juices altered. However, when I drip from the dropper of that bottle of GR, the light yellowish-golden color of the juice never quite leaves the dropper even after the dropper should empty. I have checked with the aros, and a few other non-aros, and those droppers drip themselves clean.
Ahlusion uses CO
2 extraction for their aros and also for some of their other extractions. At one point or another they have employed
http://www.ahlusion.us/faq/our-liquids/97-why-are-your-liquids-cleardarkxyz.htmlWater/steam/vacuum distillation, Alcohol/ethanol/CO2/n-Butane extraction, or infusion. (<--link)
If I was a betting man, which I am not, so I wouldn't bet on my own theory, steam distillation may very well be what was used for GR and what we see is a little bit of essential oil from the tobacco. I have had 25 or so of the 29+ tobaccos Ahlusion sells and I can say that GR is an anomaly in this particular aspect (slight oil residue). That said, I love the juice.
Edit: For those that skim posts, Ahlusion is not making and or using tobacco absolute; and even if GR does use a steam distillation (which I am NOT certain of), the juice does not taste like other steam distillation juices.
moondrop has a very good one... as does backwoods brew
I never tasted TA in BWB, but it is damn near impossible to not taste it in Moondrop.co. I linked to Moondrop.co in my opening post because I think they are a vendor that can give a crash course in what TA tastes like.