Title.
I'm relatively new to diy and currently I'm shaking it maybe 2 or 3 times a day.
Is that enough? How often do you all shake your juices?
Edit: Thanks all for your input. I will stop the daily shake and will give it a good shake when mixed, maybe 1 or 2 times a week and then one more shake before vaping. Great help!
I shake it after I initially mix it, then again when I pull it out of storage to vape. That's it.
what he said.
I started 2 months ago so would count as newbie as well.
I mix in a 150 ml beaker and use a paint mixer to stir the bejesus out of the juice - without getting too many bubbles. Its satisfying to see the strands of VG base and PG flavors swirl and mix.
After 2-3 minutes (or when I cant see any streaks), its transfer to bottles and don't see them till the prescribed steep time.
Has worked out for me so far.
Cheers !
I like to shake it for up to an hour each day. I find that watching pornhub gives me that motivational boost to keep the shaking up. If I'm feeling frisky I might shake it two or three times in a day!
In all seriousness just once after mixing and most times once more after steeping
I put on a belt that holds all my ejuice then I run on the treadmill for my daily 3 miles.
I shake after i mix it up, after that i shake it when it comes to mind (maybe once every other day)
Does it not affect the the juice in a bad way when not shaken for a day?
Two or three times per day is definitely overkill. Two or three times per week is plenty as best I can tell. I actually put all of the bottles that are steeping in one container and shake the whole container two or three times a week.
In my opinion, shaking every day vs shaking a couple times during a 2-4 week steep is trivial at best.
I have done some trial and error with it and my results have been that after the initial shake, there doesn't seem to be a big difference if any at all. ( Note that when I mix, I shake every finished bottle for a few minutes straight, vigorously. ) If I know some of the flavorings I am using in a recipe separate, then I shake them every other day and before use.
Shaking your e-liquid every day is an overkill, and might have a negative effect at one point.
Every time you shake the liquid, you introduce oxygen inside (those little bubbles that you see rising). The more you shake, the more oxygen gets in the liquid. Oxygen = bad for nicotine and flavourings.
After you mix it, shaking it just once or twice for a two week steep is enough.
I don't know where you've heard this "if you don't shake the liquid every day it will go bad", but it's definitely not the consensus around here and from the mixers I've watched and learned.
When I first started I was convinced you needed to shake it constantly, I would be shaking multiple times a day. I found that sometimes my mixes were a little bland. After I realised this was a little silly I started shaking maybe once or twice a week at most and my results improved.
Glad to hear you got it sorted! Yeah absolutely no need to that as it can oxidise the nicotine like in your case.
Very often I just put it in the cupboard and shake it before I put in the atomiser as /u/Jujugwe mentioned. Very rarely I remember to shake it mid-steep and my results are good.
I knew over shaking was bad for the nicotine... but didn't know it was bad for the flavors. I'll mix my juice without the nicotine added at first, shake the hell out of it right after mixing... but then I'll come back day 2,4,6,etc and take the cap off (not the nipple), and squeeze the bottle until the juice come up to the bottom of the neck right before The nipple (plastic bottles obviously), and repeat this over and over, then shake the bottle when done. I do this to smell how the juice has changed overtime, and also I figured if any of my flavors have alcohol in them, this will assist in evaporating it and getting it out of the juice. I'll usually add the nicotine between a week or two weeks after making the juice. Once the nicotine is added, I don't perform this anymore. I pretty much shake it right after adding the nicotine, and then shake it again before I vape it.
I'm not aware if flavourings bind to oxygen the same way nicotine does (nicotine binds to oxygen atoms which lowers the strength of the nicotine itself, and makes for a harsher throat and earthy smell) but they are still bad for flavourings.
There are three main things that play part in degrading chemicals and grow bacteria: light, oxygen, temperature.
Let me give an example with a piece of steak -- a piece of steak doesn't just go bad (rotten, inedible) overtime by itself. It goes bad, due to the bacteria that start growing on it. For bacteria to grow they need a couple of things -- sufficient temperature (optimal temperature for growing bacteria is around 30-40 degrees Celsius), they need an oxygen supply and they need food (the steak itself).
You can experiment and put a steak out in the sunlight during a hot summer day, and at the same time, put another steak in a refrigerator (where the temperatures are around 3-4 degrees celcius, in which bacteria growth is much slowed), you eliminate the light, and you eliminate the exposure of oxygen (due to the packaging the steak is in).
Compare them after some time, the steak out in the sunlight will be long gone and even rancid, while the refrigerated one is still good to eat.
Now let's go back to flavourings -- I'm sure you've already figured out that by opening the bottles and squeezing the air out (this technique is called "breathing", it used to be popular one time around the subreddit, but I don't think people recommend it that much anymore, neither do I) you're introducing fresh oxygen in the bottle.
Since flavourings are volatile compounds, they are eager to escape every time you open the bottle. Some are heavier volatile compounds like vanilla or cream, that tend to stick around more, some like fruits are lighter compounds and they escape the bottle more quickly.
This is why you would first smell the fruit in a Strawberry Cream mix, the Strawberry is a light compounds and escapes the bottle first, with the heavier cream hitting you after that.
Enough volatiles escape from your bottle, and there's your flavouring gone. That's why you keep your flavour bottles closed all the time.
Obviously there is a fine balance to this (if you leave a glass on milk for an hour on the sunlight, it wouldn't go bad that fast).
In general however, the breathing technique you are using, does affect the flavourings with the oxygen you are introducing (think about it, if you're expecting the alcohol to evaporate, why do you think it's the only thing that's evaporating). If this works for you or not, it's for you to decide, as there are a plethora of factors that come into play, like how you consume your juice, how fast and etc.
I personally don't recommend breathing as a technique to steep juice, and I don't know of one of the more advanced mixers around the community that use it. They all recommend, "mix, cupboard, wait".
/u/Romlun and everyone else concerned, my "patent pending" procedure is -- mix using a cheap IKEA Milk Frother (remove the barbed wire form the bottom, to just leave you with a regular round wire, and have enough liquid in the beaker you're mixing so you don't introduce a lot of oxygen into the mix), put in the cupboard for 2 weeks (if able to wait that much) and vape. Possibly shake it once I take it out if I remember.
That was quite the explication, thanks for all the info. I guess I should probably just stop doing the squeezy breathing, and maybe only just smell the juice after a week to get an idea of the changes it's made since day one. I'm definitely a believer in normal steeping doesn't involve temperature, cap off steeping, or ultrasonic cleaner witchcraft. I thought I was being smart by only squeezing it before I added the nicotine. But you definitely have some valid points that seem far more intelligent than my mindset on what I was accomplishing.
It's kind of weird this day and age in DIY to still see people talking about open bottle steeping in hot water baths or crockpots, or leaving the cap and nipple off overnight, etc. (and those people are doing it with the nicotine already added).
If my method of bottle squeezing without the nic is capable of introducing oxygen\contaminants easily, and also losing needed flavor molecules; the level of negative effects for the crockpot\open top\hot water\heated ultrasonic bath crew must be torturing their beloved creations.
I shake the hell out of them when mixing the liquid and then I (if I remember it) shake maybe once every week or two weeks..in my experience the most important factor is to let it rest for the right amount of time given that the initial mixing was right, then is just a matter of patience, occasionally shaking is not that important or at least Ive never noticed any difference.
After I've mixed up my juice I shake it and I put my bottles in a box on top of my washer or drier for the next 30 to 90 days to steep
So the juice gettes a little vibration a few times a week, I'm not sure if it really does anything in the long run but the juice is in a moderate temperature out of direct sunlight and gettes a little shake. So it's my cheep steep method