I'm getting base while I can before the loophole closes and its either unavailable or price skyrockets. A litre of delosi will last me upwards of 5 years. I'm also going for PG as the carrier for the base. Open to all of this as I'm brand new never mixed once, want too, but have zero experience.
So far I'm my amazon cart is a 12 pack of 8oz amber glass rounds. And I've been advised on this sub to get argon gas to replace the oxygen for when I freeze my base long term inside these amber glass rounds. Besides I dustrial size argon tanks ive found this product advertised for wine storage but says 100% food grade argon gas. The can says .42 oz (12.0 grams). I assume it is just argon, as adding any gas would not have the same preservative effect, and there is nothing on the label that indicates anything else in there. Is this one can enough if I'm going to be using 5 of these 80z amber glass bottles to have to top off with argon? Here's the product info to see what I'm talking about on amazon.
ArT Wine Preserver | Premium Wine Preservation | Argon Gas | Wine Saver Spray | Eliminate Oxidation
If you don't open the bottle you will be fine storing it forever they vacuum seal them.
You should split it off into smaller bottles and use the wine storage gas to vacate the oxygen before storing them in the freezer.
Wine gas is argon iirc
As he mentioned
8oz bottles are still pretty big, depending on how strong you mix and how much you vape of course. I decant the big bottle into 4oz glass with the wine preserver stuff and polycone caps in cold storage. Then work out of a 4oz with a dropper cap. Each 4oz lasts me a couple months mixing 6mg (100mg base)
Also I like to label all the little bottles and wrap a bit of electrical tape around the collar. Just in case anyone gets curious as to what's in the weird bottles in your freezer they don't open them to find out
Been 2 years with no argon in amber glass (left almost zero oxygen space though) and my nic is as good as day one, seen same results 10+ years out
Do you have issues with expansion? I froze all my nic with the bottles pretty full and haven't had to pull one out yet but I'm worried about when I eventually do have to pull one out that is gonna overflow
Wait for it to come to room temp before opening, pg contracts when frozen so your bottles won't break. Some may spill over if there is a massive difference in room temp between when you bottled it and when you open but the way I understand it is it only happens if it's too hot cause the pg will expand past the point when it was bottled, so stay on the colder side :)
Short version: no overflow from expansion, you good.
I literally have kept nicotine in the jugs it came in. I do keep it in a dark drawer. I cycle a few of my older nicotine bottles as I mix. Just to see what's happening. It's all in the one liter bottles they came in. 90% of my nicotine is purnic & I'm currently finishing a liter of wizard labs nic that's 4½ years old. It never changed color from a amber-ish color. I check my older stuff from time to time to see. My apocalypse nicotine is still sealed & I'm sure it'll last too. I also i have 6 to 7 year old flavorings that are still good. Like some TFA caramel etc. I just tried some single mixes with so.e of my old stuff. Single flavor mixes just to see if they're still good, and ecen to my surprise they are. Hope this helps. And if you need any mixing advice or anything vape related you can & are welcome to DM here. I work alot so it might be a minute before I respond but I will. Good luck with everything! ✌️
Surprise, you live in Antarctica /s
Nice to hear.
Or is the plastic bottle delosi ships base in sufficient for throwing in the freezer semi long term 1-3 years?
Plastic in the freezer , not good idea as plastic gets brittle in the freezer, and plastic will allow oxygen to get in the bottle. Use Glass
There are hundreds of types of plastic. Very few of them get brittle at freezer temps. PET, LDPE, and HDPE are the most commonly used types in DIY and are all fine to freeze.
Edit: you are right about most plastics being O2 porous and for that reason alone you should you glass. Just wanted to point out the brittleness part but i agree with you on storage.
Best long term storage solution:
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Amber round glasses of course (to store in freezer)
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fill until just under the neck of the bottle
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argon gas top off
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wrap bottles in foil. This is an important part that a lot of people overlook. Every time you open the freezer, it's being exposed to light. Not a lot, but after years of being flashed with light through the amber rounds (they aren't 100% light blocking), it is degrading the nic a bit and it won't be perfectly clear if you don't block all of the light exposure. If you wrap your bottles in foil, 100% of the light should be blocked.
You can also go above and beyond and vacuum bag seal your amber round bottles, as very small amount of air will leak in/out with the amber rounds after years in deep storage. Putting the bottles in a big vacuum sealed bag prevents that 100%
Someonw told me about this method and I don't think you could realistically do anything else to make it more secure than this.
So I do something similar. I have 3 gallons of 100mg/ml nic in vg. I put it all in 4oz amber glass jars, and use the ArT argon from Amazon. Understand that the argon just needs to cover the solution to prevent air/oxygen from touching it. I just give each jar a1 second spray and close it up. I don't even store it in a freezer, just in a box in a nice dark closet. It's been in storage over a year, and I've had no oxidation or noticable degradation.
Argon is completely unnecessary. As soon as you open a bottle its gone so the only time it has any impact is on a full bottle in which case the amount of air you are replacing is tiny. Storing in glass rather than plastic is far more important that replacing that headspace as commonly used plastics like LDPE are pretty bad about letting oxygen in. Since nicotine and oxygen cannot move well at freezer temps that little bit of headspace isn't able to do much but a whole bottle that is porous enough for O to enter from every direction can have a huge impact.
Its important to remember oxidation isn't something that just eats through your whole bottle if there is a tiny amount of air in it. The amount of oxidation that could possible occur is directly related to the amount of oxygen available. That couple mm of air just isn't capable of oxidizing much of your nicotine solution.
3 mL of headspace air at 25% O2 will give enough O2 to at most react with about 5 mg of nicotine. And that is only if it all reacts. VG naturally contains about 2 mg of O2 per liter, which if it all reacts will oxidize about 0.38 mg of nic per liter of VG.
PG contains more but I cannot remember the amount off the top of my head and seems far more prone to oxidation than VG based. I only use VG based nic.
While no oxidation means no color change color is not a good measure for oxidation level. It takes very little oxidation to yellow a solution as the oxides that are created here are a deep brown color and a small amount will easily result in a yellowed solution. Also remember that checking nic levels via titration is only accurate to +/- 10% and since 10% oxidation is very noticeable I personally don't think it makes much sense to test this way.
As someone who has been prepping for long term storage since the Deeming regs were released in 2016 my advice is this:
- buy VG based nic not PG
- decant into 120ml glass bottles (unless you go through a ton of nic)
- when you freeze your bottles make sure you pack them correctly. You can get inserts that keep them from bumping into each other and make sure its at least a little bit padded
- make sure that whatever you put them in can deal with leaking. If something does break you don't want nic all over whatever else is in your freezer
- If at all possible store in at least 2 different freezers. Last thing you want is for something unexpected to happen and lose all of your nic instead of half of it.
I heard oxidation (in boston rounds) only affects the surface of the nicotine?
More or less. Where the O2 meets the nic is where oxidation occurs so the big bubble of air right next to the nic solution is going to be your biggest concern(though only relatively because the amounts are pretty small)
There is some O2 throughout naturally and it does have the same ability to oxidize nic as the headspace does but we're talking very tiny amounts.
With many plastics O2 can seep over the whole surface so you're looking at headspace+whatever % O2 is in there naturally+whatever is touching the container whereas a glass bottle you're only looking at headspace+O2 amounts dispersed in solution so quite a bit less especially since we are looking at this over extended periods of time. That oxygen is just going to keep permeating that plastic and will eventually dig its way into the very center. Cooling also slows these things down so they can't interact so easily and because of that can't oxidize as easily which is why we freeze. All else being equal and with plenty of O2 the higher the ambient temperature the further in the O2 will be able to go.
So to kind of get back to your original question if you completely disregard the small amount of O2 in the VG and only look at oxygen in the headspace causing oxidation of the nic then, yeah, practically all of that is going to be at the top where they meet and only as far down as the amount of oxygen allows which isn't much.
So like if its legit legit sealed and there is no oxygen except at the very top you could (kind of) just scoop it off and the nic "under" it would be more or less unoxidized.
If you had something like 10% oxidation then it wouldn't mean the whole bottle is 10% oxidized nic in the same way that like say a 100mg/ml nic solution is dispersed throughout. The oxidized portion would be concentrated around the exposed area.