DIY juice mixing with ultrasonic cleaner steeping

Guys, i started DIY juices probably about 2 weeks ago. Made my own Red Bull, Apple, Watermelon and Cappucinno juices. I use Flavor Apprentice concentrates at about 10-15% with a few drops of artificial sweetener per 10ml. The fruit juices were good to vape straight away. Left the cappucinno one for a while to steep as it was a little flat. Tried doing the hot bath, store in dark cupboard with cap off method for about a week and a half now on all juices.

Today i got my ultrasonic cleaner. Popped them all in and had the setting for an hour at 50 degrees. Temp went up to 70+degrees. After an hour, popped open the apple and gave it a try on my kangar protank. Didnt taste as good as it did when i first made it. Yet to try the rest, but i popped them back in the UC for another hour and going to try when i get home.

My thought is, does it lose flavor when you leave it open in the cupboard with the cap off? Do they tend to lose flavors that way?

Also, do any of you use ultrasonic cleaners? How do you put your juices in the cleaner? I fill it up with water and chuck the bottles in. They are just floating around when the UC is working. I have heard method about doing 3 hours in the UC and then pop the lid off in the dark for 24 hours would be equals to 1 week of steep time. Also, steeping is suppose to change colour of the juice? Didnt see any change after the UC. I heard popping the lid off after UC for 24 hours allow for oxidasation.

Vinegar? There is a big thread on vinegar, Some ppl recommend dropping a few drops in your liquid to increase the acidity so it wont lose flavor. Does this work?

Abit disappointed now with all my juices. Probably gonna chuck all of them away or should i just improve them by adding more flavor? Though this wouldnt be an exact % of my mixes now. Hope i can get some good feedback for you pros our there. Tasteless juice really sux.

 

I can't help with the whole mixing/steeping thing, but I can say that my taste buds have gone through "stages" as I've gotten further from my last smoke. I've been thru a couple of different periods of all my juice tasting nasty and funky. It turned out it wasn't my juices, but my tongue having lil tantrums for some reason. It's come good now.

 

sounds like a period menstruation of your tongue. Haha. But i suppose its true that you are getting your taste buds back after not smoking analogs. I;m still not fully off analogs as mates still offer them to me. I have just stopped buying them. Haha. But at least i dont have to depend on them anymore. Then again, should affect my taste buds.

 

Smaller batches steep faster than large batches, probably be.comse of the larger ratio of air space wrt to the smaller amount of juice in the bottle. Air space is one of the things you can control with DIY - eg put 25ml in a 30ml bottle. I've seen juice not change for two days and then change colour quickly, within hours, of shaking. Possibly this is be.comse of the larger air space due to vaping some of the juice, and the 48 hours of blending time.

10 - 15% is a fairly large amount of flavour for me. I started off that high but everything tasted terrible and overdone. I discovered that less is more. Kay67kay is correct, after stopping smoking your tastebuds go through some changes. Don't be too surprised if the juices you used when you started vaping taste terrible now. The best advice I can give is try using less concentrate and see how you go.

Here's an example for you: I started vaping with tobacco flavours, the stronger the better. Some of them actually tasted like fresh tobacco smells. I started to get a rollie flavour I was using backwash in the tank (liquid in the tank darkens quickly and the flavour goes bad) and it actually began to taste like an ashtray to me. All my tobacco flavours then tasted bad, I couldn't get the flavour out of my head.

In desperation I tried some fruit flavours but I can't vape them for long - my tastebuds give up and they all taste the same - of nothing. To compound the problem I've found I can't vape anything with very much EM - it rips my tongue up and I learned to be wary of any slimy tasting vape. A lot of fruit flavourings either already have EM in them, or they seem to need something like EM to sweeten them up.

Back on the tobacco flavours I tried some FA desert ship and just about blew my head off - that stuff is strong, and vile after a while, but it's an interesting spicy flavour up to that point. I'd tried FA RV4 previously and found it too mild for my taste so gave up on it, but now 'mild' was starting to sound pretty attractive.

I made up a 10ml batch of FA RY4 at 5% and true to form it was very mild, and also very boring. I put in one drop (yes, just one) of the FA desert ship and Bang! it came to life. The gingery finish was a little harsh however, so thinking that I needed something to smooth out the finish, I added ONE drop of Liq bourbon vanilla (a very strong vanilla). It didn't taste of vanilla but it _did_ do what I wanted - smoothed the finish of the juice. I then thought about a lot of the so-called "tobacco" flavours you get in pre-filled cartridges and started to understand why they are often heavy on the coffee notes and very short on actual tobacco flavour - for most people there's nothing really horrible or yucky about a light coffee vape... It's designed to be pleasant for the vast majority of new vapers, not an actual replacement for ashtray flavourings which start to taste really bad as soon as your tastebuds come back to life.

So, I added just ONE drop of FA coffee to the mix and that was it - the coffee hint added complexity to the start of the vape and the finish. This has been my ADV ever since, and I made a few more 10ml batches of it to be sure, then made several 30ml batches, and now make two 50ml batches at a time. When I'm down to one 50ml bottle I make two more so they will have nearly 2 weeks to steep.

The RY4 is just a light base, and be.comse of the way the adjunct flavouring is done it dosn't actually taste strongly of any of those things, they just add complexity to a light base. I can vape this all day and providing I change to one or two other flavours for a few hours at some point I enjoy it just as much in the evening as I did that morning. Moreso in some cases.

You should also try some other devices. I've moved away from anything with a cartridge in it and currently prefer my ADV in a protank, but I've tried CE5's, Vivis and the Vapeonly Mega with good success. I do however like one of my fruity flavours (mango with some graham cracker actually) in an LR DCT.

Be careful with the vinegar be.comse you don't want to overdo it. It can improve a flavour, but can also bleach a flavour depending on how much you use and the flavour itself.

I don't use ultrasonics, but I guess it _may_ speed up the blending process. Heat probably speeds up the oxidation process but you don't want to overdo it either. It's my feeling that it's better to allow oxidation after a 48 hour blend with a bit of shake up every 12 hours or so. I don't leave the bottles open, just open the bottles for a short time to allow an exchange of fresh air before I shake. Leaving the bottles in the dark doesn't actually help the steeping process - it just stops sunlight damaging the liquid while it is steeping. As long as they are not in direct sunlight it's not going to make much difference though a dark cupboard is probably a good thing for long term storage.

This is what seems to work well with my ADV. Your juice and your experience may be quite different to mine.

 

Im more into fruity and coffee flavors for now. Yet to try tabacco flavors yet. Ive made new juice. This time using glass bottles. Been thru 2 x 1hr cycles. Now on the 3rd. Hooefully it works this time

 

I've not heard of the vinegar thing. I definitely wouldn't do that!

Sone juices do darken over time for sure.

Whenever I get new juices and they have an alcohol kinda smell, i give them a good shake, take the lids off for 24 to 48 hours. Once the smell has mellowed out and is more true to what I think it should be, I know it's ready to vape. Eg if i get a banana flavour and it's got zone chemical and or alcohol smell, i leave the lid off until the natural banana smells presents.

What kind of jewellery cleaner have you got? It might not be powerful enough.

Plus like Kay says, your taste buds could just be off atm.

 

i tried a couple of drops of vinegar a while back, its not too bad at the start of a tank of juice but it seems to stay behind as te juice disappears and gets over powering after a while, has a real strong bleh aftertaste towards the dregs.

 

thanks for the input guys. nice to gather everyones opinions. My UC i bought of ebay is 42khz ultrasonic frequencey at 60W power, can go up to 99 minutes and temp up to 80 degrees. I would say it is alot better UC then most people have. Bought it for 130.

 

DO you mean there is a sour kinda aftertaste each drag? How many drops do you use? I was planning on doing 2 drops per 10ml.

 

I'd recommend you start with one drop and see how that works for you though I've seen a thread somewhere that someone mentioned that they used three drops per 2ml. Sounds a little excessive though. Vinegar may reduce the sweetness in a liquid that is too sweet, and may reduce the pH making it more stable. Some juices seem to be improved with the addition of vinegar, while others exhibit no change. Cider vinegar and lemon juice are also suggested alternatives.

An alternative acid that may have the same effect of reducing pH while leaving the base flavour more or less unchanged is malic acid. Malic acid is one of the main acids found in apples and grapes (which also have tartaric acid in abundance) and you can usually buy it in powder form from any brew shop that also keeps wine making supplies as it's used to balance the pH of a wine must. If you wanted to try the malic acid make a 10% w/v solution in PG and use it as per the vinegar.

Acidifying a juice may increase the throat hit, and may lead to a sore throat if it is over done. Nothing serious, probably no worse than eating a large bag of salt and vinegar chips which always makes my tongue sore.

 

I am probably in the minority, but i pretty much vape all the juices I make up straight away. I often make up 100ml at a time and I do notice some get better after a few days to a week, and others dont, but after a good shake up straight after mixing all are usually fine, and i dont mind watching how they improve over time (or not). I vape mostly tobacco based juices with a tad of caramel, honey, licorice, coffee, etc to give it some slight sweetness. Usually the tobacco will take a few days to come through, and the sweeter flavours i add are more prominent at the start.

One thing i noticed is that if I add too much flavour I will get a bad chemical taste with some juices. Also if I use too much flavour with some overpowering juices it also blows my taste buds out for a week. I have lost all taste about half a dozen times over my two years of vaping.

Sometimes less is more

 

sort of sour yes, i can't remember how much I used, it was only about that amount. I tried it twice, i think 3 drops in 5 or 10ml originally mainly so I knew what it tasted like and I think i tipped that out straight away and dry burned it clean after one puff. blech.
next time was possibly one drop in 10ml, this was ok till the level dropped.

i can't remember which vinegar I used, may have been cheap white vinegar but I think I used apple cider vinegar.

 

i think ive sort of got it. Mix your juice up in a glass bottle. Give it a quick shake. And into the Ultrasonic cleaner for 3-4 hours. Then, open the cap and let it air for few hours. Should see a change in color. I'm using vodka and nicotine in my juices now so it seems to bring out the flavor alot more.

 

I'm like mick, I mix my juices up, give them a good vigorous shake, until there are a lot of tiny bubbles in the juice. I then wait for the bubbles to rise to the top & for the juice to have no bubbles left in it a(around 1hr) & vape it.
I usually mix up 3 or 4 bottles at a time & alternate my juices so my taste buds don't go on holidays, this also allows the juices to steep over time, as they are being vaped. Some improve more than others with steeping, usually fruit or less complex flavors improve the least.
I generally like strong flavor in my juice, even after over 2 years of vaping but I have always liked strong flavor like espresso coffee etc.

Some juice will change color more than others too, I have seen some go from light to dark over time & some change from a yellowish tint to a reddish tint & yet others remain almost clear while sitting around over a week or more.

 

more tests done. my apple ejuice steeped with USC for 3 hours turned a light yellow. Let it air for a half a day and it turned a bright yellow. Never used to change colors on my previous batches without the USC. Was clear even after left for a week. Not sure why this is the case though.

 

I think it is possibly the heating that you are doing to the juice that is .comsing this. Some of the sugars in the juice will be caramelising, when being heated, .comsing a colour change.
You could easily prove this by mixing up 2 bottles of the exact same juice & putting on in the USC without the heat & 1 in the USC with heat for 3hrs each, then compare the colour.

 

well when you put it in the USC, it will heat up.comtomatically. I set the temp at 50 degrees but an hour later the temp is up to 90 degrees.The vibration of the USC will heat the water anyway. Then again, i only have 2 drops of sweetener in my juice. Heating it up makes the different liquids easier to mix and combine. It tastes sensational too.

 

So, use cold water from the fridge & change the water at 30 minute intervals, perhaps add an ice cube or two, it will still be getting warmed but not quite as much & will give you an idea of whether the heat is making a difference.

At 90 deg, the nic is starting to degrade too, I think, so the nic strength won't be quite the same as juice steeped naturally.
The sugars I was referring to, are not actual sweeteners or sugar but the compounds in the flavor that act like sugar to sweeten.

 

Thanks for letting me know about the nic degrading. I'll have to try to keep the temp lower abit. So what happens when we vape and the liquid gets heated up till it turns to vapor? Are we losing the nic then as well?

 

Since you vape a tank of juice in about a day, you won't notice any degradation in your tank. Nic doesn't degrade instantly, it takes time but heating it speeds up that process.
SS600 or someone with more knowledge of chemistry would be better qualified to answer this. Though I think if you left a bottle of juice for 6 months, after steeping it in the USC at 90 degrees & mixed up a fresh juice of the same type steeped the same way, then you might be able to notice a bit of difference in nic strength between them, if you vaped them side by side.

Suppose you vape at 18mg/ml & had a 10% degradation over 6 months, you'd be losing almost 2mg/ml, so the juice left sitting for 6 months wouldn't be hitting as hard as a fresh mix.