So I've gotten two bottles of medicine flower (passion fruit and black currant) just to try them out. I'm aware that they're concentrated and must be diluted. Where I'm lost is the percentages and process.
Every recipe I come across cites .25% -.45% usage. Is that amount the amount of diluted product used? Which would beg the question: what percentages are these diluted to before being used?
I've tried 2% and 4% dilutions in 10ml of vg as a tester and then used .4% of those in testers and VG is all I taste after a week of steeping, which tells me I'm doing this wrong. Any help or insight would be appreciated because I've googled a good bit and found very little other than end product recipes.
Dilutions need to be steeped as well, before downmixing. It's possible your dilutions aren't well homogenized.
I would suggest skipping dilutions for now and just going with dark magic mixing -- drop 1g of MF into a 30ml bottle, add nic, top off with VG, shake daily for 2 weeks and try that.
1g of flavor per 30ml is where MOST people I mix for like it to be. I've used that for most MF flavors, actually, although I haven't done black currant or passion fruit in probably a year or more.
I have one guy locally who tastes nothing at all until I drop it to 0.4g per 30ml though. And I mix for a gal who needs 1.3g per 30ml but needs to steep it for 3 months before she tastes anything.
I agree with this. For myself I can mix them at 0.25% to 0.5% but I have to vape them fairly fresh - steeping for maybe 2 or 3 days just to reduce harshness of fresh juice. But they tend to fade at that percentage fairly quickly if they steep longer than 2 or 3 weeks. If it's something that is mixed with other flavorings that need to steep for a few weeks, I mix them up in the 0.75% to 1.5% range, depending on the flavor. They are horribly over flavored tasting fresh, but after the steep they have mellowed out enough to be very nice. I look at MF similar to how FLV performs (especially some of the more concentrated FLVs) they are super potent at first, but do tend to mellow out with a steep.
Yep -- I mix honeydew for the GF and she steeps it 6-8 months before vaping it. I hate honeydew flavor so I gag just thinking about it. The first 3 months it's really underripe and almost bitter skin like, but then it settles and really sweetens up and ripens for some reason.
No amount of accelerated steeping, homogenizing or heat helps. Just time. I've tried everything to get it to that point faster but it just needs time.
The MF honey flavors are the same -- very floral and soapy at first, but give it 3-6 months and they're beautiful.
MF Guava is shake and vape. MF grapes can be shake and vape single flavors, but if you want to use MF grape in a complex mix, it needs a LOT of time.
> steeps it 6-8 months before vaping it. I hate honeydew flavor so I gag just thinking about it. The first 3 months it's really underripe and almost bitter skin like, but then it settles and really sweetens up and ripens for some reason.
Because you’re using too much of it.
I'm using similarly about a 1G per 30mL and it's about right for my palate, too. You don't need much of these extracts compared to diluted flavors, still. Typical flavoring amounts are 10 percent or more by weight or volume, and typical flavors have PG base, whereas MF is raw.
Yeah, 1g per 30ml is just the long term average for almost everything for almost everyone. I keep track of each person I mix for and their preferred flavor profile -- I also offer to reduce flavor by a tiny amount every mix to see if they like it more, less or the same. If I go from 1g to 0.9g for someone who likes 1g, they almost always tell me the flavor has dropped a LOT.
>going with dark magic mixing -- drop 1g of MF into a 30ml bottle
just so I'm crystal clear: the 1g of MF you're referring to is straight out of the bottle right? Undiluted.