My hotplate stirrer came in today and I couldn’t wait to try it out. So I mixed up a batch of my Sweet Dreamer recipe for some friends. Here is how the liquid looked when I first got it stirring…
This is after about an hour at 120 degrees or so
And this is after 2 hours
You can definitely tell it is darkening up nicely. How long should I let this go you think?
I want to say, I have tried using heat with various methods. And my USC won’t mix anywhere near as well as this is doing. Plus it has been running a solid 2 hours holding temp right around 124 degrees all this time. With my USC I have to reset it every 3 minutes. What a pain. I am loving this stirrer! No more shaking bottles for me!
Here you can see the difference after 3 hours
Looks great. Kinda envious, makes me want to run out and buy one. Sadly, I don’t mix a high enough volumn to make it worth the cost and it would be funny to see me doing this in 30ml bottles (which I have thought about).
I will be using it for 50ml batches and up. I just need to get the spin bars for my smaller flasks. My friends will text me wanting a certain juice and usually I don’t have it. With this I can make it for them in a few hours. All my friends want fruit flavors. So this seems to steep them nicely in a very short time. The recipe in the pics usually takes a few days. It is better than the recipe I made 2 weeks ago.
I have a recipe I just made that takes 3 weeks to steep. I have a bottle of the recipe that was steeped in the closet for 3 weeks. And I have a 200ml batch I just made on the stirrer. I can’t tell the difference. This is going to be so nice for testing new recipes. I won’t have to wait as long to make small adjustments.
Just curious, have you tried using a crockpot prior to this? I remember a thread saying something about the crockpot achieving similar results?
I tried once. My crock pot on low melts PET bottles. The juice was unvapable. So I never tried it after that. I would imagine the crock pot would speed things up. But the combination of heat and the stirrer I am guessing works better. My favorite thing about it is once it gets up to the desired temp it stays there for the duration and stirs the entire time. So you wouldn’t get any hot spots in the juice. I think the only other thing close to this would be USC. But I have tried that as well. I like this method a lot better.
I ordered that magnetic stirrer off ebay tonight. Now I will need stir bars. In your experience does a particular shape or size work best? For beakers? Small bottle?
The diamond shape works good for thicker 90/10 type mixes. The octagon shaped capsule looking bars does good otherwise. For like a 50ml flask I use a 1". For my 250ml flask I use a 1.5". That is the biggest one I have right now, and I need to order more sizes not that I am mixing larger batches. I would say figure out how large the flat is across the bottom of your mixing vessel and stay a bit below that.
Is there a way to fish the magnet out of the mixture if I was to mix in a small neck 4 oz bottle?
Any magnet should pull it out. Just run the magnet up the outside of the bottle. I always let it hang at the top for a minute to drip dry.
Where do you shop for spin bars?
Amazon or eBay. I have looked and that’s where I have found the best deals. But stay away from the ones I am bidding on 
I wouldn’t dream of it. Im sure there’s enough out there for me not to step on you. Think I will get a set of them in different sizes and see what works best
I was just kidding I bet I have outbid someone from here before. I buy a lot of stuff off eBay.
I did that too. I have pills from 1/2" up to 1-1/2". I need to get some really small ones to fit into my HDPE bottles.
Got my stirrer in the mail yesterday and tried to mix a batch (strawberry-ripe and vanilla bean ice cream) last night in a 600ml beaker. I guess I need to get a thermometer and perhaps a larger stir bar (stirrer came with a one inch bar). I had it spinning and heating for about 40 minutes before turning it off. Having no thermometer I had no idea how hot the liquid actually got, but it was pretty hot and had a nice vortex. I bottled an 8 oz mason jar and had about 45ml left over which I put in 30 ml plastic bottles to vape on. The flavor isn’t as pronounced as I hoped it would be, perhaps it will improve over the next couple days or so as it sits.
Grats. Walmart sells a thermometer with a probe on it that is perfect for like $14.
Hi LordVapor! Its been over a year now since you received the Corning 220 so I am curious if it is still working well for you. I would also like to know if you would choose differently knowing what you know now. And maybe a brief summery of what you have learned in the time you have been using it! Thanks!
It still works like a dream. Corning makes very nice stuff. I expect this to outlive me. And I would buy it again even if it doesn’t. I don’t mix anything unless I can make enough to put on the stirrer. I like watching my juice spin while listening to this…
Pros:
Cons:
But really, I love it. It could stand to have a tad stronger magnet so I could spin it a little faster. But even if the batch is too large to get a good vortex going it still mixes very well given the 2-4 hours I leave it on the stirrer.
I have come to the conclusion that 4 hours at 120 degrees isn’t harming the nicotine, at least enough that I can tell. I can still get the same head rush if I chain vape heated or non heated juice. And I know 4 hours on my stirrer makes my juice better after testing it numerous times. To each his own of course.
I saw a site that tested nicotine stored under various conditions. They sat a bottle in a window sill in the blazing sunlight for days/weeks/etc and other places like underwear drawers or something and they reported the nicotine degradation wasn’t enough to even worry about. But the nic stored in the underwear drawer smelled funny.