N.E.T Creations and Reviews (Naturally Extracted Tobaccos or Teas)

E-liquids NET Creations and Reviews
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This section of the forum doesn’t get used enough! So, here we go…

For those who like to DIY their own flavorings from tobacco, coffee, tea or what have you, jump in and tell us what you’ve extracted and from what!

I’ll start the ball rolling @JoJo and, after you finish your homework, you can tell us how your NET experiment came to fruition. :grinning:

I decided, since I love rooibos tea (all tea really) and it was available on my kitchen shelf, to give NET a try. I chose Celestial Seasonings Moroccan Pomegranate Rooibos tea. I added roughly 5g of loose tea to 20ml of VG; the goal being, to end up with 15ml of flavoring. Using a small mason jar w/lid as the steeping receptacle, this mixture was heat steeped for a total of 1 hour in a warm rice bath; stirred every 15 minutes. The mason jar was then placed among my other eliquids, steeping in a dark closet. After two weeks of this steep process ( just letting it sit, with no stirring or shaking ), it was time to bottle my creation.

Somehow I deleted a couple of pictures showing the beginning of this process, but oh well! Below are a few shots of the straining and bottling process for my DIY juice flavoring.

This is the tea and VG prior to being move to the mason jar; you can see all the tea bits in the bottom of the glass bowl.

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I used tea bags for the straining process. A small colander was used as the base for straining.

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The NET was then poured into the colander w/tea bag strainer. It does help the process is the NET is warm beginning the straining process.

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A small amount of force was used to help the NET through the strainer. Using gloves is suggested, or you’ll wind up with tea colored fingers! Below, was actually a fourth go at the straining process, but this time, the NET went into the bottle. Again, the strainer used was a tea bag.

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Finally, two weeks later, I have my NET in a 15ml glass bottle. As I had planned ahead, the straining process claimed about 5ml of the original 20ml of NET.

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I placed a small drop of the NET on the paper towel to illustrate the color of the final product.

Now that I have my NET…it’s off to the lab for testing! Stay tuned!

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Nice pics! I shoulda done that.

So, process was a little less involved. I used Kroger’s Private Selection Rooibos tea. I put two tea bags worth of tea in a 50ml repurposed plastic bottle and filled it up with about 40ml of warm PG. I shook the mess out of it and stuck it in a window for two days. I shook it every time I remembered to, which was probably only a few times. Then I strained it twice with an aeropress and a paper filter, rinsed the bottle out, and put it back in the 50ml. I probably wound up with about 30ml after all was said and done.

I mixed up a batch of 7% Rooibos NET (I need to change the name of my flavor in my stash…I like that better), 2% marshmallow (TPA), and 2% Madagascar Vanilla Classic (FA). It’s pretty weak even after a good steep, so I’m thinking the NET is gonna need more like 10-20% or more or I need to up the amount of tea or time I let it sit. I was worried it would get too bitter if I let it sit for too long. What I wound up tasting most was the vanilla, but there was definitely some tea undertones.

I did a couple tablespoons of ground coffee in warm PG a ways back, but I haven’t used it in ages since I got the Dark Bean from FA. It was better than the few other coffee flavorings I’d tried before then, though.

I’m anxious to try again with some other teas I have. I’ve got a Passionfruit Papaya that’s really good and sounds like it’d make a great liquid. :smile:

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I did a cold tobacco pga extraction a few months ago . It had mixed results. Flavor wise it was on par with the tobacco I used. Mixing percentage was high though. It wasn’t concentrated enough. It also gunk the hell out of my coils. I’ve been reading about an ethanol extraction which I’ll be trying as soon as I can get a hold of some ethanol. Here’s the post and process I’m referring to.

Posted by
Str8vision Super Member ECF Veteran

Tobacco extraction using heated Ethanol

Hot ethanol extraction produces a more robust, wider spectrum tobacco flavor. In addition to the brighter flavor notes that ethanol alone produces, hot processing also provides the deeper, richer notes cold processing lacks. I’ve only extracted four different tobacco blends using this method but all turned out quite exceptional, better than well aged PG, VG, and “cold” ethanol extractions of the same tobacco blends.

Prepare a hot bath with water temperature set at 160F (71C). Ethanol boils at 173F (78C), so make sure the process temperature stays below 170F (77C). I use a crock pot set on “warm” but a thermostatically controlled hot plate would work as long as it is accurate.

Place shredded tobacco in a glass container, pour in enough ethanol to completely cover the tobacco plus 5 - 10% extra for absorption. I use half pint canning jars (jelly jars), which work quite well. Lightly seal the container and place it in the hot water bath, add enough warm water to the bath to match the level of ethanol inside the container. Process for 12 hours, check periodically and add water to the bath if needed.

Put a coffee filter inside a funnel and place the funnel in a clean glass container. Dump the tobacco and ethanol into the coffee filter. Gather/fold the edges of the coffee filter together encapsulating the tobacco inside and gently squeeze to release/recover most of the ethanol. Discard the tobacco and filter. Lightly seal the glass container and place it in a freezer for 24 - 48 hours. Ethanol won’t freeze, it just gets cold. The waxes and oils pulled from the tobacco will stratify at the bottom of the container.

Put a coffee filter inside a funnel and place the funnel in a clean glass container. Retrieve the ethanol from the freezer and gently pour it into the coffee filter while still cold. Don’t squeeze the filter this time, just discard it. Now your extract can be filtered to whatever level you prefer, I currently use 1 micron borosilicate glass filter paper.

I use the ethanol extract at 7% as a flavoring but you could also transfer the flavor from the ethanol to either PG or VG. Do this by adding/mixing an equal amount of PG or VG to the ethanol, heat the uncovered mix to 150F and allow the ethanol to evaporate.

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The gunking can be fixed with better filtering: Vacuum filtering - this is what LordOfLiquids (Danish NET’er) uses:

Slow flow filters:

Buchner funnels:

Filtration flasks:

Vacuum pumps:

They do sell kits though :smile:

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Thanks @daath. First to see if I can extract some good Tobacco flavor. If that works I’ll invest in a good filter. I also need to read about safe usage of ethanol and where to get it.

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Nice info folks! This is an intriguing area of DIY vape liquid mixing with which I am excited to explore. I’m feeling satisfied with the vape gear I currently own and now look forward to collecting a few nice implements with which to extract mixing liquids from tobacco and tea. It’s kinda making my head swim with all the possibilities. :yum:

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After doing a few trial and error mixes with my NET, I finally hit on a mix which is quite vape worthy. The flavor of this NET corresponds to some tobacco mixes which I have enjoyed. Tea, of course, is a leaf from a plant, as is tobacco; they’re gonna share some similar vape qualities, imo.

I didn’t go crazy with the adders to the mix 'cause I wanted to get as much of the tea flavor as possible in the vape. I did find, however, the percentage of NET used in my mix needed to be quite high to get the punch and flavor I desired.

Like @JoJo, I started with the percent ratio of NET kinda low; 10% at first. The result was, to say the least, meh…void of enjoyment.

Next mix went to 20%…better, but still not quite all there.

The third, and final mix, jumped to 30%. With this mix all the flavors of the tea popped. The woody, warm nature of the leaf, the tartness of the pomegranate and the light spices in the bagged tea came to the forefront. The adders which I used, meringue and sweetner, simply rounded out the flavor and tamped down the rough edges of the tea. Is it an ADV? Not yet…but it will be a nice distraction from the norm. There’s always room for improvement.

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My next NET will be a Vanilla Rooibos; the goal will be to make the NET a bit more potent and be able to reduce the percentage needed in the mix to make the flavor pop.

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I have just finished mixing up 0.5 grams of matcha tea (stone grinded green tea) with 5 grams of warm pg, frothed it and now its sitting in the dark. I will post more during the process.

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These faucet venturi style aspiration pumps are cheap enough,combined with a lil tubing ,one could speed up and get more for their time & further purify, aswell.

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As I’ve mentioned previously I love the mix of Virginia and Perique tobacco. I seriously want to try NET and believe I would like to try with my former favorite pipe tobacco - Reiner Long Golden Flake.

Where I’m not concerned is in using this tobacco which has no added ingredients. No additives or humectants, just layered Virginia and Perique that has been pressed and aged. That said, I do want to express some concerns and see if any of you experienced with NET know about these concerns, have a way to counter them, or can say with certainty they are non-issues.

  1. Natural Sugars. Tobacco does contain natural sugars and aged tobacco even more so. Not being a chemist I have no idea how these sugars may interact with alcohol or other substances during the NET process, or if there as any other concerns aside from it obviously gunking coils, such as how the concentrat would need to be stored and recommended use by times.
  2. Pipe tobaccos are among my favorite. However, even some Cigars contain additives. While tobaccos such as Black and Mild cigars or Captain Black pipe tobacco are extemely pleasing to the nose, my concern is how those additives could be either inherently dangerous after NET or could pose other problems aside from coil gunking.

Lastly, I’ve read a good bit about NET here and elsewhere, but it seems the process and results vary. For anyone who has used any one process that you would recommend to a first timer, what would it be? If you could please explain what you do, how you do it, and quantities off all the ingredients. Also does something like Everclear grain alcohol suffice?

Waiting to hear!

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From what I’ve read I’m not sure how much if any sugars are processed in NET flavors. It was mentioned in the process I used that waxes, oil and resins can be filtered from NET in the freezer filter process. Here is a photo of what I was able to filter out of my NET using 1 micron filter paper. Whether the sugars hardened and was filtered IDK .

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After reading @Jimk post about tobacco additives, I went with natural leaf tobacco for my next NET projects.

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I don’t have any definitive answers as of yet on these questions. I’m still searching for all the info I can get about the NET process myself. Many vapers want to do NET , in part because of the wonderful tobacco flavor which is achieved through the NET process. Bottom line…it is tobacco and tobacco does have things included in its makeup which we don’t want in our systems. Our goal is to rid the extract of as much of those potentialy harmful things as possible.

That being said, with the use of PGA in the process of NET, the solution must be as free of water as possible. Using zeolite to remove excess water from PGA, prior to its contact with the tobacco, seems to be the ticket. Why?

“The reason we don’t want much water in our alcohol solution is because water catches tars and resins that the ethanol won’t. This is not a “clean” extraction, but anything we can do to avoid organic sludge being added to the extract is good. This is why a solvent such as Vodka, with a 60% water content, is a very poor choice for extraction.”

This was quoted from this post below:

https://www.e-cigarette-forum.com/forum/blog-entry/how-to-do-a-cold-ethanol-tobacco-extraction-in-a-home-environment.5525/

I would expound a bit more on this right now, but I’m on my way out the door to make money for extraction supplies! :wink: …to be continued.

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Found another blog post concerning using zeolite as a molecular sieve for the elimination of water in PGA. Looks like it’s the the 3a molecular sieve which will do the trick.

http://www.researchgate.net/post/What_size_molecular_sieve_is_best_for_using_as_a_drying_agent_for_methanol

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That lot of leaves must smell heavenly!

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It goes to show what I know about tobacco. I thought I was ordering samples and got a couple years worth.

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Was your extraction a cold pga filter process man I’ve forgotten from reading to much.
Did you just cold pour & let gravity do the trick? I’m courious how long it takes to filter.

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I use a heated extraction with a combo of hot and cold filters… a total of 5 filters. It takes about 15 minutes to cold filter the pga with 1 micron filter paper.

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Enough reading…time to jump into the deep end of the pool.

Started my first extractions today. Trying 2 methods with the same tobacco type; Peter Stokkebye London Export.

The 2 methods are a cold extraction with PGA and a heat extraction with a 50/50 mix of VG/PGA.

Looking forward to the outcome; may take a while, but I got nothing but time.

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I started my first yesterday as well Jim. Just one method though and not very scientific at all.

I bought this tin of tobacco…hell I don’t even remember when. More than a year ago but less than 5 :slight_smile: I never opened it but it’s been sitting on a shelf ever since.

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It’s one of the Virginia/Perique blends I mentioned before. I grabbed about half a tin worth and put into a jar. Poured in PG till it just reached a level higher than the tobacco, then screwed the lid down and put in my crockpot on low. That was about 5 pm yesterday. I left it overnight and checked this morning…

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I turned it off this morning and let cool back down. Cranked it back up at 5 pm today to repeat the process. I plan on doing this maybe 4 or 5 days. Filter and try it.

Question - what would you recommend starting percentage for something like this? Oh yeah, and I plan to use the freezer method from @Pro_Vapes to separate some oils/solids as much as possible. Ok, all ears now.

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Very cool guys, I hope the results are awesome.

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