I guess what I am asking is how quickly does nic oxidize in a plastic bottle at room temp? And how much degradation occurs when it experiences a couple freeze thaw cycles? These are probably silly questions and the answer is that it's negligible but I'm totally new at this and I'm trying to do everything right.
Hi. You won’t have several freeze/warm up cycles because you can estimate how much you‘ll need for the next few weeks and fill that into a small bottle (shake it well beforehand). Put the rest into the freezer until your glass bottles arrive (2-4oz. with polycone caps, argon wine preserver). Before you fill the glass bottles, let it sit a bit until it reaches room temperature, shake and fill.
It takes a long time, maybe over a year. Really only the top layer of the juice is exposed to the air.
What will get you though is UV exposure. Sunlight directly destroys the nic and alters the composition of the base. These compounds are generally stable at room to near room temps for awhile, and can take brief exposure to outdoor randomness without much change going on, but after that you can expect the juice to severely degrade.
Freezing air will not harm 50/50 PG/VG because PG is basically antifreeze... HOWEVER... If your juice is 20/80 (PG/VG) or less PG then it's likely your VG will freeze sold or burst the container. Warm weather doesn't have much of an effect so long as you aren't leaving it out in a 120+F vehicle for any extended period of time. (PG is hydrophobic, it will draw water from the air into the mix eventually, and this is what causes your problem. When there is high enough PG count it will neutralize the freezing feature, but not when it's low PG) VG is vegetable fat basically, so this again isn't a reactive substance. It's not going to degrade no matter how long you keep it, but keep all things out of sun.. It's really the worst problem. Intentionally freezing it is completely unnecessary, again it's mostly air/sun exposure that does the worst. Temp flux is largely irrelevant unless you live in an igloo or in the middle of a desert. People freezing their nic are just drawing a correlation to how tobacco products can be preserved via freezing that doesn't exist (nor is required) for nic juice. It's important to note that PG is an alcohol and this keeps anything from actually degrading the compounds in the juice to some extent.
Anyway, you can visibly see whether a nic base is going bad, it'll look more like urine / amber than translucent with a yellow tinge. It's still usable, but you will likely have to use more of it. (Again, the topmost layer of the container is usually all that is getting oxidized. If you aren't disturbing the container at all between makings this can take a hell of a lot of time.) I usually bulk buy my nic base, and they keep for as long as I keep them out of the sun and unopened. Since you use them one at a time, it's not a problem. Some of the containers I've opened are years old by the time I crack them... give them a quick shake, crack them, and they look no different than the ones that I just bought. I've had a few that I've maybe had a few shots left in the container and just exposed them to certain things including cold, heat, and leaving the cap off. The sun and the cap off were the two worst things you could do. The rest I couldn't even detect.
I left it out for 2 wks before I decanted/preserved. Mine is still fine. I can’t stress enough tho to test a small sample first before hand. Seen enough ppl on here that found out the hard way later that there was something wrong with their batch.
I keep 100 mg nic in the freezer and it stays a liquid. I typically mix every 2 to 3 months and it stays fresh. It only stays out of the freezer for 20 minutes or so and then goes back in.
That introduces oxygen. You can displace that air with argon gas before putting it back in the freezer