Removing Alcohol

I realize ethyl alcohol plays an important roll for some flavors. For personal reasons I would like to avoid it. I know I could simply just use flavors without it, but some flavors I have that contain it I would like to still use. So, from what I have read and please correct me if I am wrong because chemistry is not my strong point, the ethyl alcohol is used to house the flavor molecule and transport it. Then once mixed with either vg or pg , the vg or pg houses it and the ethyl alcohol can be removed via evaporation? I was planning on mixing a batch letting it steep awhile for the conversion then let it breathe for two days. Would this get rid of all that alcohol? The other method I was going to try is using an ultrasonic cleaner with cap off. Does anyone have any tips for this?

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The alcohol will gas off in your steep bottle over the course of the steep - i would not let the bottle breath as you will lose some flavour from your end product.

I am not a chemist either but i would imagine that the process of heating the juice with a coil would rid the vapour of any remaining alcohol so you should not get any at all (someone correct me if I am wrong)

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Some of the posts about breathing your mix to breathe out alcohol normally do it over night, not days, for fear of losing some parts of the flavor. and definitely dont heat up your mix with the cap off. youā€™ll lose a lot of flavor from your mix that way.
however, if you do want to breath your mix, i would suggest not to put the nicotine first, and only put the nicotine and shake it after the breathing.

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10 - 20 mins on a mag mixer takes care of it for me everytime, an alternative method i use is to short fill the bottle, for example try filling a 30 ml bottle with 25 ml of finished liquid, cap and shake vigoursly, and let it sit for a bit, the alcohol will evaporate out into the head space at the top of the bottle, remove the cap and ā€œ off gas ā€œ the liquid, repeat this process occasionally over several hours or days until the liquid no longer smells offensive, with a liitle bit of practice you can easily smell the evaporated alcohol fumes, every time you off gas the liquid smell it, it will slowly smell better until thereā€™s no more improvement in the smell and then its done and ready to steep. Hope this helps, good luck !

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If you have an issue with ethyl alcohol, you could also avoid it and buy alternatives from different brandsā€¦

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Wellā€¦ it will get rid of the alcohol the same way it gets rid of your eJuice ā€¦ by turning it into vapourā€¦ Inhaling alcohol will actually allow it to pass into your blood much faster than if you drank it instead ā€¦ what ā€¦ am I really the only one who has ever poured a bottle of vodka over the hot stones in a sauna? :crazy_face:

As for OPā€™s question: Yes ethyl alcohol is quite volatile which means that it will evaporate faster than most of the other substances in the juice, so letting it breathe for up to 24 hours will get rid of at least some of the alcohol, but some of the more volatile flavour molecules will also disappear with it.

Edit: I guess that if it is only some of your flavours that contain alcohol, then you could mix those first with PG and VG, breathe off as much alcohol as possible, and then add nicotine and the other flavours after the breathing.

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It really is quite a delima. ā€œBreathingā€ obviously allows volatiles to ā€œgas offā€. Some of those volatiles you want, others you donā€™t, depending on the concentrate. Probably the best option would be to find a viable substitution without the EA. Other than that I guess it would try ā€œbreathingā€ it and see if you like the result?

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Ya you are correct - never really thought about it much tbh.

Depending on the flavour concentrate, the % used and the steep time it would be a very small amount but still an amount.

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I know itā€™s a bit off topic, but I found this hilarious! (It was a ā€˜nice additionā€™ IMO lol)

Da comrade!!! :wink:
In mother Russia, vodka drinks you! :laughing:

About the alcohol:
I wouldnā€™t recommend that long for off-gassing IMO. Shorter times should be more than adequate. But remember, alcohol content varies widely by flavor, as well as by brand. So I think itā€™s part of learning your flavors, to learn how much breathing time is necessaryā€¦ :wink:

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Just passing a thought here ā€¦

Many more people vape commercial liquids than you find people doing DIY. From seeing the DOD Flavorah interview, I think itā€™s fair to say that 90% of e-liquids are commercial productions. We also know that commercial liquids use pretty much the same ingredients we do, so they also contain the same alcohol and other chemicals.

Iā€™ve never heard anyone using commercial juice complain about the alcohol in their juice, nothing about adverse effects besides probably coil gunking, too sweet or simply a flavor they donā€™t like (please correct me if Iā€™m wrong).
So I wonder, all this talk about sensitivities to alcohol and other ingredients, isnā€™t that more a psychological thing than anything else? Itā€™s probably only us, DIYers, who look up what the content of our concentrates are, and probably shocked by what we see, suddenly have an aversion towards those chemicals.

We are also pretty much the only ones that shake and vape. Commercial liquids get plenty time to steep and release their volatiles. Maybe we should just try and be a little more patient when we make our creations and not vape anything that hasnā€™t at least steeped for 2 or 3 weeks.

On the other hand, maybe I am totally wrong. Maybe they do have processes where they first mix those concentrates with PG or VG to capture the flavor and release the volatiles before mixing with other ingredients and steeping the juice.
Would be nice to know how e-liquid companies deal with it, but those are probably proprietary procedures that weā€™ll never know.

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There are more reasons to not want alcohol in juice than just sensitivities, recovery and religious grounds are two that spring to mind.

If someone has a sensitivity maybe that is why they DIY in the first place.

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(post withdrawn by author, will be automatically deleted in 24 hours unless flagged)

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Where did you get your info from

Contradiction to your seeming to know all about commercial juices above.

Letā€™s just go with that and leave it at that.

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Legitimate Thought, I am sure we all would like to know protocol of steeping, gassing off, from commercial e-liquid companies.

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Smaller companies bottle orders as soon as they come in and then send out, an example of that would be VVV, so mixes donā€™t always get pre-steeped. As far as alcohol, I think many people have their reasons in avoiding it. A former alcoholic would not want to taste/smell heavy alcohol in an Eliquid, and some people donā€™t like the taste at all. I donā€™t think people go in to look at ingredients and decide they have aversion though, I think what we do is look up ingredients when we find something in the mix that doesnā€™t agree with use and try to pinpoint what the offending ingredient is. Thatā€™s just my rationale though, Iā€™m sure many people have their reasons for not wanting to use certain flavoring ingredients. The best thing we have in DIY is Choice.

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Oh, and come to think about it, I did see a YT video of a e-liquid manufacture, vibrating 4 jugs, 3-5 gallon jugs, with the tops open, He said that AIR was the key part of the flavor, that is why they left the tops off will vibrating, and something about vibrating for, ( I think ) 8+ hours, i will find that video later, gotta go get on the lathe, turn some metal, throw some chips !!!

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I dont want any alcohol what so ever in my juice because im a recovering alcoholic. I dont care if its just traces of alcohol. Just the thought that tace amounts are going in my body messes with my head. Im soo sensitive to alcohol i actually did feel a head change from vaping certain flavors. So im making a list of flavors with no alcohol for personal reasons. Here is a response I got from a manufacturer.
ā€œEvaporating it would theoretically remove some of the alcohol, but I donā€™t think this would remove all of the alcohol from the flavor. This would also cause flavor molecules to evaporate, which might impact the flavor as these molecules evaporate at different rates, altering the taste profile. If the alcohol were removed completely, this would cause separation issues as well- alcohol is added to flavors to act as a necessary solvent when some ingredients are less stable in a PG-only solutionā€
Easiest thing for me is just going to be avoiding ethyl alcohol flavors. Thanks for all the feedback.

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Zen I sent you some info. :wink:

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It isnt just a psychological, if there is high content of alcohol in the mix and it isnt evaporated it can leave a very harsh throat hit for some people.

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