Please don’t…
stay as you are! straight forward… please! no time for headaches!
8 Likes
It’s why I started this thread in the first place, to see how how everybody felt about this and share the knowledge.
In mixing I believe that there’s not such thing as right or wrong, there are some main rough guide lines, but apart from that… we’re all explorers and we all learn from each other!
Your english is perfectly understandable (You’re from Greece if I remember correctly!! discussion about Atmos Labs, which I love!)
The point is that from a “mixer” point of view, blending is one thing, steeping is another.
It’s just (for me) difficult to understand that once the “flavour” is made (and steeped) and all the molecules are bonded together that it can just blend it with VG/PG without any particular steeping time.
As I always say, not discussing whether right or wrong, but trying to see everybody’s point of view, so this 3d can help other mixers in the future…
5 Likes
I’m really stuck on this theory that a Stone has the ability to steep itself. In my mind you have the individual flavors of a Stone that are all (or mostly) existing in a common solution, generally PG. Now maybe some miniscule chemical interaction could take place amongst the flavors…likely because they’re all bored sitting around in this PG and need something to do. But nothing really notable takes place.
Now introduce some VG which is totally different both chemically and in texture, and those PG-infused flavors suddenly have a new reason for waking up in the morning! They react and begin to bond with the new kid on the block! And so then begins the steeping process.
Now I could be way off on this but that’s how I understand the process. So can a Stone steep on it’s own? I kind of doubt it.
10 Likes
Yes thats right!
Aaa ok thats is difficult to understand for me too. Especialy if you go to high vg with no water as many people do.
4 Likes
I’m not alone…
4 Likes
I was think of it but I can’t remember that discussion. Probably you reference to my dude @Godcomplexdude which is also Greek.
3 Likes
Could very well be, it was just in the back of my mind…
By the way yes you’re right it was Godcomplexdude, just checked… Sorry about that… it’s the age…
4 Likes
Love it! The Flavor family gets a new step dad. It may take a minute or two to bond. Makes good sense.
7 Likes
I don’t think a professional anything would help honestly. The impressions of the individual mixers are entirely subjective in the end. An experiment would be interesting to follow though.
4 Likes
No need to worry about 
2 Likes
This is a prime candidate to test this concept! I’m going to mix this as a One Shot, mix one test right away, give it 3 weeks to steep, and test it. On that day i will mix another test from the 3 week steeped concentrate and see how they compare. I firmly believe the steeped e-liquid will blow the SnV from steeped concentrate out of the water.
6 Likes
Maybe. I would like to know the actual processes involved, such as what happens to flavors when they’re mixed with PG, VG, and nic. What happens to mixes after time? I understand taste is subjective, but what happens in the chemistry end of it isn’t. I think it would lay a lot of ideas to rest if we had something definitive in this area.
5 Likes
Well not really, different flavours are made of different compounds and react differently when put together, so not even that can be taken as an assumption or a truth.
That’s why we think fruit steep shorter, tobaccos longer and so forth, so different compounds different mixture different steeping times, so that’s also subjective, or even better, subjective to the recipe, the way the manufacturer made the flavour, percentages, if it’s sinth, if extracted and so forth it’ll never end.
I knew this wasn’t an easy…
3 Likes
I have to agree. I get a strong sense that juice manufacturers do not function as a diagnostic lab. I tend to believe it’s a little more like Hojo’s greasy spoon, with a dab of this, a dab of that, and a pinch of this other. Toss it on a shelf for a bit and ship it. I remember reading one article where a juice manufacturer delineated how they tested replacement concentrates. They had some dude (with a golden tongue, I’m sure) vape the old and the new side by side. If he didn’t notice a difference they were good to go. I have read where some folks have sent batches off to diagnostic labs to test for some particular presence in an effort to thwart negative rumor but that’s about it.
5 Likes
on the one shot v stone question, a further difference occurs to me aside from usage:
A stone (as I understand it) usually consists of all the requisite flavours, just mixed together in the same bottle, wheras a “one shot” (as I understand it) usually undergoes a bit of dilution besides.
For one particularly intersting example, I once asked a manufacturer for steeping times for their one-shots, and they responded with: No steeping is necessary, as they have already been mixed with VG in the bottle, which has the effect of pre-steeping them. They are ready to just shake and vape.
Now, that just wasn’t true. I had a particular favourite in their range, which I bought repeatedly until they stopped selling it 
and found that it always took several days to steep, and was at it’s best after 7 days. Well, I tried it as S&V and the flavour was nigh-on undectable.
To be fair, you could say that’s because I don’t put PG in my mixes, but I’ve never otherwise noticed such a dramatic difference. In fact, when it comes to SFT-ing flavours, my results are usually identical to other folks’ results
3 Likes
Can you drop a name on this manufacturer? I’m curios. I haven’t been around too long, but I’ve never heard of pre-diluted one shots. Just straight concentrates mixed up in a bottle at the predetermined ratios.
2 Likes
Might have one shot mixed up with short fill.
4 Likes
I’ll drop you a PM. Doesn’t seem quite fair to "name 'em and shame 'em " so to speak, when there wasn’t anything actually wrong with their product, just with what one member of staff wrote in one e-mail. And it was years ago, too. (i sometimes forget I was mixing for quite a while before I joined ELR. Silly me. I was reading ELR forum , mind, just hadn’t twigged the advantages of joining up. Anyway, the thing is, that was in my pre-ELR days , so to speak. Ancient history.
)
More to the point, i thought that was pretty normal practice? No? It’s hard to tell from ingredient lists (which I pay a lot of attention to, as you know) because a lot of the widely-used “concentrates” are pretty dilute even as single flavours. So ,they could be mixed together and stuffed in a bottle without further dilution and still make that “pre-steeped” claim if they wanted to. ( The superconcentrates are a relatively new thing, by and large).
2 Likes
Ah, that’s too bad then. I think these conversations will continue as long as we vape and DIY. The one thing I do know for certain is this. Like many of us, I have a ton of juice mixed at any given moment. As of this moment I have 2.4 L of juice sitting in the cabinet. I make it, put it away and get to it in a month or two. It always works well this way. No mixers, frothers, shakers, sonic baths, etc. I like to keep this as simple as possible. 
4 Likes
I envy this process actually, would mean one more thing that didn’t need batteries or cleaned. Mixer is a must for me.
3 Likes