Wow guys this is going great!
And Lynda you are right again! My friend's favorite is Prime Vaping RY4 now that you mentioned it!
Okay...I did some more research. Found some more interesting stuff...
From Wikipedia about Vegetable Glycerin:
In foods and beverages, glycerol serves as a humectant, solvent, and sweetener, and may help preserve foods. It is also used as filler in commercially prepared low-fat foods (e.g., cookies), and as a thickening agent in liqueurs. Glycerol and water are used to preserve certain types of leaves. As a sugar substitute, it has approximately 27 calories per teaspoon (sugar has 20) and is 60% as sweet as sucrose.
The juices we are making are pretty sweet. 30% VG mix = 30% sugar, well times 60% = 18% sugar(sweetness). Now if you are talking a 50%, mix that would be 50% sugar, okay....times 60% still equals 30% sugar(sweetness)! Perhaps the vinegar or lemon juice is used to CUT the sweetness level and allow the flavors to come through? They are also saying VG is a preservative.
Okay...Something else that is interesting and concerns us in the Wikipedia article:
When used as a primary true alcohol-free (e.g. no alcohol (i.e. ethanol) ever being used) botanical extraction solvent in innovative non-tincture based 'dynamic' methodologies, glycerol has been shown, both in literature and through extraction applications, to possess a high degree of extractive versatility for botanicals including removal of numerous constituents and complex compounds, with an extractive power that can rival that of alcohol or water/alcohol solutions. That glycerol possess such high extractive power assumes that glycerol, with its tri-atomic structure, is utilized with dynamic methodologies as opposed to standard passive 'tincturing' methodologies that are better suited to alcohol's di-atomic structure. Glycerol possesses the intrinsic property of not denaturing or rendering a botanical's constituents inert. Glycerol is a stable preserving agent for botanical extracts that, when utilized in proper concentrations in an extraction solvent base, does not allow inverting or REDOX of a finished extract's constituents over several years. Both glycerol and ethanol are viable preserving agents. Glycerol is bacteriostatic in its action, and ethanol is bactericidal in its action.
VG must be the carrying agent when they do tobacco extractions. That's about as far as I want to go on the extraction process here. If anyone is interested about the tobacco extraction process, Kurt has a very informative thread at the very top of the DIY explaining how to do it.
Vendors must be using the Lemon Juice and or Vinegar to lower the PH of their juices, and not necessarily as a preservative. PG and VG are already preservatives and they make up the great majority of juice ingredients, I don't see why you would need to add more preservatives. What do you guys think?
Pete
