Using alcohol as flavor additive?

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Hoosier

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You could. I doubt it would turn out the way you expect.

Whiskey and it's better brother Bourbon get their color and additional flavoring from wood starch. That's another name for sugars. The rest of the color comes from the burning of the interior wood of the barrel, which is carbon, or what sugar turns into when it's heated up by a coil. If you don't mind your wick and coil looking and tasting like the inside of a bourbon barrel before the white dog is added, it might be worth a shot. Especially if you're not concerned with the toxins that burning sugar may produce.

Most rums have additional sugar, usually cane sugar, added right in there. See above paragraph for some idea what sugar does on a hot coil.

I have one recipe that uses a few drops of straight, non-evaporated, rum. It doesn't change the flavor, but does change the way that mix feels in the mouth. I'm not overly concerned with the amount of sugar that makes it into that mix from this and that mouth feel is what makes the mix work just right for me.
 

Mitey F

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I've thought about the sugar, and so long as it's not "bad for you" I'm OK with that. Blackened coils are hardly an annoyance, as I re-coil every week-ish anyway, and re-wick every 2-3 days.

I'm mainly curious as to whether or not it's "safe", or if it's been done before. I can do my own experimenting with mixing flavors.
 

Hoosier

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You'll be recoiling much more often if you get much sugar in there.

Last time I experimented with flavoring that had sugar in it, I went through 3 coils in an hour. And that was before rebuildables were invented...but most of that hour was trying to figure out what was happening to my atomizers and I really needed a good vape on juice that worked by the time I had dissected those attys.
 

we2rcool

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+1 Hoosier & dannyv45

...and we'd add that it's really a challenge to 'cook down alcohol' (we've tried doing it many ways...from spreading it out in a 9x13 glass pan in the dehydrator all the way to 'in a pan on the stovetop'). If you have the patience for doing it and can manage to do it without burning it (or your house down), the end result is extremely thick...and we can't imagine it working as an e-liquid flavoring.

We rarely use the various flavorings that taste like alcohol, but people rave about how good many of them taste. There's just no way cooking down a bottle of liquor to make a 'flavoring' for ejuice is gonna save you any time or money.

But hey, if the idea trips yer trigger and you wanna try it out, don't let us stop you! (Just be seriously careful - especially if getting it anywhere near an open flame...which we strongly recommend against).
 

Mitey F

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To be fair, cooking down a small amount (say, 2 oz for personal DIY) couldn't really take THAT long could it? Reducing food-things in general is kind of a "put it on the stove over low heat and let it sit, stirring occasionally"...

As for gunking coils, there's a lot of reasons I use RDA's with cotton 95% of the time... it only takes 2 minutes to clean and re-wick.

So I suppose burning sugar is the biggest problem here...

I honestly figured it had been done before, perhaps I'll reduce a few shots of rum and see how bad it really is :) Thanks guys
 

we2rcool

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To be fair, cooking down a small amount (say, 2 oz for personal DIY) couldn't really take THAT long could it? Reducing food-things in general is kind of a "put it on the stove over low heat and let it sit, stirring occasionally"...

As for gunking coils, there's a lot of reasons I use RDA's with cotton 95% of the time... it only takes 2 minutes to clean and re-wick.

So I suppose burning sugar is the biggest problem here...

I honestly figured it had been done before, perhaps I'll reduce a few shots of rum and see how bad it really is :) Thanks guys

You're right - we were thinking about cooking down a cup or more. It probably woudn't take "that long". 'Just be careful and keep the heat low-low; it's super easy to "scorch it'.

And yep, vaping sugar isn't recommended...but you certainly wouldn't be the first (or million & first) to vape chemicals that are 'recommended against' :rolleyes:
 
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