What is Steeping? My juices seem to change flavors over time, why?

[BAY Rose]

I keep seeing talk about "steeping", and just found a thread (on ECF) addressing this question but it's so far gone unanswered, so I am asking the Vets ...WHAT IS STEEPING?
How does it change flavors?
Why do my flavors seem to change on their own after I've had them a while? Sometimes for the better, sometimes not.

Still a noob to all this. But I've now been analog free for 2 1/2 weeks and loving vaping! HURRAY!!!!

 

[Hoosier]

Steeping is allowing all the individual components of a mixture to reach entropy, or maximum diffusion, which takes time. The time can be anywhere from a few seconds to a few weeks depending on the mix. Steeping is simply setting the sealed bottle aside for a time period of your choosing. (You will see posts that say that steeping is done with the cap off, and they are wrong in the book of Hoosier as my book calls that breathing which is less likely to do anything to help the taste according to my nose.)

I have found that steeping only helps a few mixes, but if a new flavor does not taste good at the first try, then setting that bottle aside for a time is a fairly effortless way to see if there is anything about that mix that you may like. (Also, your sense of tastes change as your body repairs itself from the damages of smoking, so it may give your sense of taste time to change.)

So what changes? One thing is that each of the components of an e-liquid have a different viscosity so steeping allows the mix to really become a single viscosity. (This really should not take that long.) The other is the chemicals that actually create the taste have time to react with each other and the nicotine. (This is what can take some time.) I find that flavorings reacting with each other is really where steeping makes a real difference and it is only when that can happen and usually only with complex mixtures.

Some mixtures are better when fresh, some after some time to steep, and the rest, well for the rest, it does not matter if they are fresh or a few weeks old because they taste the same.

How do I know this stuff? I've been mixing my own for quite awhile. I've learned a number of things by experimentation, observation, and rereading my notebook. Steeping is not a magic bullet. There is no magic about it. It is not a be-all or cure-all. It is a simple tool that might help. Make your own observations and you will find some mixes that you like better after they sit for awhile, but also mixes that are best enjoyed as soon as possible.