Hi all! I'm a complete newbie and this may be a silly question, but search didn't turn up anything that seemed pertinent.
I'd really love to find a vape that tastes of a specific brand of rye whiskey, and have yet to turn up anything even vaguely resembling it. Would it somehow be possible to incorporate the actual whiskey into the juice somehow? Would that even be safe? I'm thinking mixing it with VG and letting it evaporate might work, but I'd really hate to poison myself while experimenting, so figured I'd come here and ask the experts. :)
Thanks in advance!
Well, considering that some flavors are alcohol based, I don't know how safe or unsafe it would be from a vaping perspective. If you are talking about distilling it, at least here in the US, distillation of alcohol is extremely illegal and dangerous if you don't know what you're doing. Letting it evaporate off would be okay from a legal perspective i believe, but I could be wrong.
...wow, it did not even cross my mind that this could be considered moonshining. :D I'm sorry if I have inadvertently tarnished the sub by asking for help with illegal activity; I really do just want to get the flavor out on its own!
You're not tarnishing! The only reason I know this is because I was looking at making my own extractions and after a little research realized that unless you have a license and a real lab to do so, you could get in trouble or even worse, injure yourself :P
We can brew any booze we like here in NZ. Most peple I know who have tried has stopped. You just can't make it even as good as the bought stuff unless you go put many hours in to learning. Although in saying that I do know someone who started making vodka in his garage and sold the company for many millions.
This is personal, not professional opinion -- I wouldn't use this in products for sale BUT if there was a certain alcohol you wanted (say, your favorite scotch) that you wanted to vape, one thing you could do is evaporate all of the alcohol out of it, essentially concentrating the flavor (best way would probably be heating slightly and gently, maybe to 90-100 degrees F in a water bath and leaving it open to the air for a while) -- and using this just like any other flavor concentrate. Only thing is don't use anything with sugar in it because it'll definitely fuck up your coil. Other things might also fuck it up but the flavor compounds in whisky are pretty similar to some of the "natural and artificial" flavors we use.
Oh, no, I'd never dream of letting strangers try my juices, let alone offer them for sale; I'm good at keeping things sanitized, but at the end of the day, I'm still just fooling around in my kitchen.
Interesting idea, though; that was basically my second idea for trying to extract flavor, although I'm not sure using the straight distillate in juice would have occurred to me. I may have to give this a spin!
I love Laphraoig and I have a bottle of quarter cask in my kitchen right now. I'm going to evaporate the alcohol off and try to vape it and see how it tastes, because I love Laphraoig.
All booze has diacetyl.
edit: Source, I used to be a chemist at a distillery.
Nope nope nope Don't do that. The Flavor Apprentice and many other flavoring companies sell flavor concentrates in pg. They have all the flavors you are looking for without the risk of adding all kinds of other stuff.
Unfortunately, no, they don't; I've tried a handful so far, as well as blends thereof, and can't manage anything even in the same ballpark. I realize I could probably include other ingredients to mix the flavor, but I'm not that good yet, and figured this might be a shortcut.
Is there any particular reason you think it's a no go? I've read about the problems with vaping sugars, but as a lot of flavors are alcohol based, it seemed like it might be doable safely.
Well the first thing that cones to mind would be diacetyl. It is a natural by product of fermentation and is not a good thing to be inhaling. There are also a bunch of carcinogens in whisky and other liquors. I'm not a medical expert but it is probably more unhealthy to inhale them than to ingest them orally. These are all things that won't kill you today or tomorrow but certainly aren't good for you ( I don't know if there is something that can kill you today or tomorrow. I'm just a dude on the internet.) Honestly if you can't get it to taste right with flavorings you won't be able to get it with real whisky. With alcohol flavored flavorings I've found that a little goes a long way. Too much and it tastes horrible.
I did not know about the diacetyl thing; need to do some more research, but that's probably a no-go.
The problem I'm running into is that Pennsylvania rye whiskey has a pretty distinct flavor profile, (sort of like scotch as opposed to bourbon), and as far as I can tell, no one seems to make a flavor extract based on it. I think for my next attempt I may try just mashing some rye and seeing how that goes.
Thanks for taking the time to explain!
Have you tried flavor art? I keep meaning to try them as better tinkerers than I swear by them for alcohols. It might be worth a few bucks to try them out before you go whole hog on a new project.
Not yet, but I have their whiskey and a couple of their wines coming in my next order.
So far, I think the 'best' I've encountered is TFA's Kentucky Bourbon. It's not a flavor profile I prefer, but if you handed me a glass of something with that flavor and told me it was a new Jim Beam product, I'd believe you.
My 2 cents, pop over to www.vapingunderground.com and ask HeadInClouds if he could assist you. This guy is amazingly helpful and very experienced with the brandy, whiskey etc flavors that are out there for vaping. Odds are he can help you to reach your desired flavor without having to take unknown risks.