I think you are both approaching the same conclusion from opposite directions if that makes any sense LOL.
One one hand we have marketing which touts the creation of a vortex which will inject air into ejuice and if you read the reviews and hype will magically “speed steep” your juice. Short answer…Nope. But overcoming the marketing hype and photos of this magical vortex stirring some colored water is a tough one,.
On the other hand there is a much respected long time member who claims that, among other things, creating a vortex while stirring is harmful. Yet by using the flashlight to detect thousands of tiny air bubbles proper mixing is claimed to be accomplished on the “molecular” level. So large bubbles and aeration are harmful but thousands of small ones aren’t? Enter prohibition of heat in the process-sort of-because stirring will generate its own heat. I said earlier that I really didn’t want to go here because it’s one of the most contentious topics here. I think overuse of a vortex is harmful. I do not want to disparage this person in any way and agree with most of his conclusions.
I am not a chemist and make zero claims as to what chemically occurs. I started like most everyone else by shaking the shit out of mixes and reading as much as I could get my hands on. Then the sawsall, then a candle warmer-small crock pot, then a badger, then stirrer without hotplate, then hotplate stirrer, and am now designing a overhead stirring system which eliminates the problems of relying on magnets and at the same time all processes will be in a sealed container-if thats how individual people want to do it. But whether by shaking, dremel, sawsall, or any mechanical device we are aerating our juice.
Every one of us that have shaken a bottle has aerated our mixes one way or another. Enter the subject of off gassing and how long it should occur. Should we stir in open air or a closed container. Should we breathe our mixes or just allow the gases to escape other ways? If injecting air harms our mixes, what happen when we shake our flavor bottles and “volatiles” escape.
There are a lot of posts focusing on off gassing of volatiles including one which uses vacuum to remove these volatiles while stirring. This leads me to lean towards doing everything in a sealed contasiner. When shaking, frothing, etc. etc we are all stopping the offgassing at some point, even when you let mixes breathe overnight.
Neither am I. But I don’t believe it takes a chemist to taste a juice they’ve mixed and decide if it did or didn’t negatively change their flavors. So whatever in the world may be happening with my juice on a molecular level doesn’t matter so long as my results are what I’m looking for.
At the risk of completely derailing this thread (as if it’s not too late already), I did a mix this morning. Two actually. One I did as a simple mix in the bottle and shake. The other I pulled out my Dremel and USC. Bear with me…
We all know the shake in the bottle thing. Here’s what I do when mixing to a froth.
I added my nic at this point. Tasting these side-by-side (the shake in bottle and Dremel mix), there is no real discernible difference in taste. Where it will become the most apparent is when the maturing of the juice, or steep, starts to occur. Depending on the flavors used, this may be the frothed juice starts showing signs of maturing anywhere from a few days to a week or more before the unfrothed one.
No conflict here! I appreciate yours and others’ input. However, I’ll also be clear about one thing. People say a lot of things. I don’t care if someone is a doctor of chemistry, works for NASA or is Einstein resurrected, none of their conclusions mean a hill of beans to me when I have my own experience to lean on. And my experience tells me that aeration of a juice that does not contain nicotine has zero negative impact on the flavors. Heat is an enemy, yes. But the type of friction needed to generate that level of heat won’t be accomplished with a Dremel in a 90 second froth. And I doubt seriously it would ever happen with a mag mixer not supplying an external heat source. But on that point I don’t have personal experience.
No disagreement here. When I stir I start out with a vortex that goes down ALMOST to the stirbar but don’t want to froth it. Then I reduce the vortex to a little deeper than what is shown in your photo, I stir for about an hour with most mixes but always stir in a closed container. However, At intervals, I allow the gases to escape. This works for me. Whether to breathe mixes is contentious, and I think entirely dependent on personal method and what we are mixing.
The issue of using heat is where I differ with many. The short answer…when I see any flavor company put a warning on a label that temps should never exceed say 109 F is when I will change my opinion. After all, most were developed for cooking. Indeed, there is one post where Walt (RF) advises 140 F.
Concerning nic I am not concerned with heat but do not want to oxidize it. I add it after stirring and cooling if I use heat. I add and stir very slowly. I have noticed a big difference in my mixes by doing this.
Finally, There are two (generally) types of homogenizers. One is the “shear” and the other is ultrasonic. The ultrasonic homogenizer creates enormous heat and would be dangerous for our use in other ways. But your use of the ultrasonic cleaner is likely more beneficial than any stirrer. Mine has a 7 minute timer so I don’t use it simply because I don’t want to stand there and push buttons.
Clearly, it is what works for us as individuals. I began by saying what stirrers I use, one cheap, and one pretty expensive and pointed out that both “stir my juice.”
Great reply. We could debate things all day but in the end, if the FDA tells us vaping is dangerous to our health and we find just the opposite to be true, then are we going to go around telling others vaping is dangerous just because an entity backed by a gagillion dollars says it is? No. Neither will I listen to anyone claiming aeration is negatively affecting the flavor of my juice. I have practical experience on hundreds of mixes that allows me to say in fact, it does not. Still, I’m only keeping it honest and not trying to poke at any individual.
Now to get the thread back on track, let me just say the NFF01 Flavor Factory sucks major ass!!
I found this thread and links to be interesting and informative:
@50YearsOfCigars summed it up at the end:
There is no “secret science”… Industrial scale mixing operation have been explored in detail.
Here is a link to a company that knows all about it. This link is a vast resource that will help the vaper and DIY mixologist explore the “scientific” process of micro-mixing and blending of flavor molecules at the micron level.
Click around at this site, it is very extensive and you can get lost for hours exploring the subject.
“steeping” is just dispersing the flavor components at the micron level in a uniform manner throughout the liquid carrier…
We should not get lost in terminology and the links deal with mixing, homogenization and much more.
Why do you need heat? Personally I feel heat does a disservice to our juice. The best thing for juice is time, there’s magic that happens in the dark over time.
So your using heat to speed up mixing, I literally just set my mix on my mag stirer and leave it mix until it’s where I want it, I get it in this day and age everyone want it now, but look at it like this what tastes better a microwave dinner or a meal that you spent several hours in the kitchen preparing?
But that’s still “prepared food” not a true meal, if you think good food comes out of a box I can’t explain to you what time does to flavor that any process can’t quite match.
Do some research on that Scilogex unit. I am sorry I can’t remember exactly what it was , but there is or was some issues with its ability to control temp properly. May have been the probe.
Temp control is only needed if you really want to experiment with that.
If ease of blending is the only reason for it a hot water bath for your vg is more than adequate.
You don’t think I make large batches? I have one recipe in particular that I make about 800 ml at a time, I put it on my mixer and leave it sit and mix no heat just a stir bar spinning in the beaker then into bottles and in my ammo cans to sit for a month, I dont touch it, it just sits in the back of my vape closet. You do what you want I’m just telling you from my experience heat is not required.
