Well, my quick little test batch I posted last night isn't really all that bad. But all this gear I have acquired is taking up TONS of space so I need to minimize. I have like 11 liters of nicotine base which doesn't need to be kept out, I plan on freezing some, possibly trading or selling some, and keeping some out for when I want to DIY.
As I found out last night, working out of the liter jugs is a bit of a pain, so I was thinking maybe I should just leave some cut amount in a bottle and store / do whatever with the rest until it's needed. Being new to this DIY stuff, my question is; If I vape at 6mg, would I want to cut the base nicotine (48mg/ml VG) all the way down to 6mg or should I cut it to something like 18 so I can have some wiggle room to cut it down to either strength or to fit with the recipe?
Again, pretty new to this DIY thing, so any input would be awesome. Thanks!
This makes me laugh. "Pretty new to this DIY thing, but I got 11 litres of nicotine."
Yeah. The short story is, that a friend of mine who owned an independent vape shop decided to get bought out by a bigger player, that bigger ecig shop already had their own juice line so didn't want any of his stuff so he was either going to throw it out or give it away. So I took it.
Personally I don't dilute mine. i just use 100mg/ml in a dropper bottle. When I need to add nicotine I just look at what the recipe requires and add drops until it hits the right weight. Now you have to be a lot more careful with exposure but being able to have just a tiny bottle out and the rest frozen in aliquots is really nice. To me it would probably be more of a hassle to have a premade, diluted base.
So let me see if I have my math correct (thanks to the .1ml website)
If I wanted to take the 48mg VG nicotine base and cut it to 18mg in a 30ml bottle for 65/35 VG/PG blends I would:
11.25ml or 37.5% nicotine base
18.75ml or 62.5.% of VG
Which would give me the 18mg base, right? Then from that (and assuming I want 20% for flavorings) my ratios would be as follows;
Nicotine 33% or 10ml
VG 31.7% or 9.5 ml
PG 15% or 4.5 ml
Flavor 20% or 6.0 ml of flavoring
Correct?
Hooray for thinking out loud!
You know eJuice calculators do this all for you right? Even nicotine dilutions...
This is the last calc you will ever need. It's really great and the developer updates frequently.
So much this. I print (yes, onto pulverized tree) each recipe before I mix so that I have a nice, computerless way to mark things off as they get measured (I write down the actual weight on the scale). Then they get hole punched and put into a binder chronologically, where I can write down tasting notes in the future.
I'd be willing to buy some of the 100mg nicotine off you. You're almost certainly going to have to sell most of it. Even if you freeze it, that only slows the oxidation, doesn't stop it completely. And it will probably take you a year to go through 1L of 48mg, and by then it would be very oxidized and just unpleasant. If you can find a good enough freezer, you could store an extra liter or two for maybe 2 years, depending on how cold the freezer stays.
I'd suggest selling off most of the nicotine at competetive prices, offering a discount to those ordering nic if they want some of your duplicate flavors(flavors generally go bad after a year, and 4oz bottles should last you long enough unless you start making juice commercially). Then use the money you make to expand your flavor collection, buy a new mod, throw some money to the guy that gave you all this(or take him out for dinner or some shit, just make sure he knows you're grateful.)
No matter what you decide to do, keeping 11L of nicotine stored will be a waste of space and money unless you do some large-scale juice distributing.
edit: but to answer your question, making an 8mg/mL dilution would be perfectly fine, and would allow room for 17% flavor, which is a good number to aim for(or less).
Not trying to stir crap but i have two year old 100mg nic in PG that is stored in a clear container in my fridge door. It tastes the same as the day i got it and none of my customers complain even the 18mg dripper kid says it tastes better than the local shop that has this towns market in a stranglehold so I'd assume they go through it much faster than myself... why do you say two years max? Is there some scientific shit i should look at that might worry me? Seriously curious here.
Not scientific, just a general guideline. It's better to have enough to last you until next order, than to stock up and have a lot of your nic go bad. It's kind of like buying food at costco if you live alone; you pay less per pound(mL in our case), but that does nothing if half of your 3 gallon tub of jam goes bad before you use it.