Just thought I share a little experiment. I tested a few different types of plastic bottles compared to glass, in a unscientific manner.
What I did, was use my strongest flavor in my arsenal. A Spearmint, thats just ridicules. anything over 1% is super strong. It even made my Watermelon, stored right beside the mint, have a slight mint contamination. And i'm clean when mixing. So it's not from that.
Anywho, put this pure flavor into LDPE, HDPE, PVC, PET and Glass bottles. After 3 months storage, I dumped it out and checked bottles. LDPE is the only one I can see anything that reassembles etching. Flavor for LDPE, HDPE and PVC has changed, the LDPE to a chemical taste (ugh!, burn it with fire!) HDPE and PVC seems muted. PET and Glass pretty much the same. Might be slightly less potent in the PET but probably just my imagination.
Now, what I found most interesting was when I cleaned them all very thoroughly. Then I gave them all a sniff. All plastic, except PET and of course the glass, reeked of mint. PET and Glass, didn't seem like there been any flavors in them at any time after washing.
What I would expect with glass, but PET caught me by surprise. So if you are using plastic, please at least make sure its PET for storage. Glass is by far the best though looking at the material properties and Gas permeability in particular. But its rather expensive with glass if you have 100+ flavors. PET is the next best thing.
Edit: PET is the clear, hard type plastic, like soda bottles. The opaque white, soft bottles are usually LDPE, HPDE or PVC.
I transfer all 4 oz flavors into sealed amber glass bottles and some of my 30 ml more expensive flavors go into 30 ml glass bottles .
The soft plastic off white bottles are the best for easy filling but they do hold on to strong flavors .
The PET clear hard plastic is what i have been getting from BVC when i order 30 ml size flavors.
Better to store than to try and squeeze those things unless you have a bionic grip.
I wonder if Unicorn bottles are made in the harder PET plastic , most are soft plastic.
most unicorn bottles are LDPE. I've found a few suppliers who have HDPE/PET unicorn bottles, but they're MUCH less common.
Yeah, unicorn bottle is probably LDPE. But storing mixes for up to 1-2 months I haven't had a problem, could probably go a little longer too. Just concentrated flavors. I use some unicorn bottles myself when on the go for my mixes. But I always use the same one for each recipe. They just hold on to flavors so well, it will just contaminate the next.
Haha, Bionic grip! I found there is usually a "soft spot" somewhere on the PET bottles I have some flavors in, but thats 100% PG. I could see the issue with high VG.
Are you really getting PET from 30ml at BCV?
All of mine are HDPE
I just looked again , it's actually about a 50/50 mix . Some FlavorArt 30 ml is the HDPE and some TFA 30 ml is the clear PET plastic.
~~Can anyone recommend a vendor for ⪆30ml glass/PET bottles, stat? I'm storing all my flavorings in LDPE and starting to feel dumb for doing so. Mostly have 15mL size but starting to buy 30mL and have had about 50 of them for over a couple months now.~~
edit: Searchbar win. Glassbottleoutlet, here I come.
Probably not a huge deal, I just found this issue with nasty taste from the bottle in 3 of my juices so far. FW monster, FW maraschino cherry (no big loss here, horrible flavor) and TPA spearmint. But they will most likely lose some potency.
I just ordered 50x 25ml glass with alu. lid and 15x 90ml glass from aliexpress for around 45$ total. I bought from them before on several occasions, never had any trouble for what its worth. Everything is going into glass, or PET in a pinch from now on.
I do enjoy the ease of dispensing liquid from ldpe bottles though... that was half of the deal when I got my scale :(
I make bottles. PET bottles in fact. Though for laundry detergent. The reasons you mentioned are the reasons that's what we use. It's the best plastic for long term storage.
PET for laundry detergent? When I was working in plastics, they only used LDPE for high density fluids.
Depends on what product we're making. I work in injection molding. It's all small bottles and such. We also make the caps. For that we use PET. our blow molding dept uses ldpe.
This is fantastic research!
Unrelated, but #1 for the Strawberry Sweet. It may be my new favorite. Mixed 3% with the same amount of FA Kiwi, very nice! This one doesn't get pushed around like some other strawberries. As a poor taster of that particular flavor, I am loving this one.
How is FA Kiwi? I only have TFA Kiwi Double and either it isn't the taste I'm looking for or I used it wrong.
Nothing to do with the bottles. But what spearmint are you using? Is it decent, I'm looking for a nice potent spearmint, so any suggestions would be great
It's Tpa/Tfa's spearmint. Yeah, it's a good, true spearmint imo. I usually use it at 0.4-0.8% depending on what i'm going for.
Then again, my 30ml bottle is still half full after 2 years+, so they might have changed the "recipe" for all I know.
I like hdpe because it dobt crease as fuck
Haha, true, but you don't need to squeeze out 5ml's in one go. Do it little at a time, and the bottle won't crease.
But you do what you are fine with, just found it interesting. And coming from Scandinavia, I horde flavors so I save on shipping. :-D And those types of plastics has ruined some of my jucies that I stored for quite a while. But if you go through the bottle in a couple of months it's probably not gonna matter much.