My first home-made flavor concentrate, thoughts?

E-liquids Beginners
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Hey friends, after some web research and fiddling around with my mixing gear, i made my first home-made concentrate / extract. it’s a ginger flavor.

i’m starting this experiment with couple of dried herbs/spices that i like and use everyday, ginger, cinnamon and cloves - thinking if that extract won’t work in mixing eliquid, i can use it as flavoring for my tea and coffee :slight_smile:

method:
mixed 15ml of 30% PG + 70% VG, added 1 tablespoon dried ginger powder, shake/mix well, store away for a month, shake every now and then
(another one currently steeping is Cloves)

Final products
the ginger completed a month yesterday, so i took out from the hiding place, filtered using “Oil Filter Paper” - from local Daiso store, and the result is about 10ml of an almost-clear, yellowish ginger concentrate with no solids. it was too strong to the smell & taste so i diluted further by adding another 10ml 30/70 base

Use Test

  • made a mix 10ml with 10% ginger. it’s very potent and spicy - but i won’t use as a standalone anyways.
  • mixed with a Lemon/mint juice at 4% - very nice & smooth - it adds a spicy dimension in the background. i guess anyone who tries this has to be someone who loves ginger to appreciate it
  • another test, added 2% to a pineapple / VIC mix - same effect
    (also now added to my coffee as i type this :slight_smile: )

Tweaks

  • in future extracts, i will change to a 50/50 extraction base. the VG is much better in getting “infused” with a flavor, but i also need the base to be less viscous for the final filtering. so i think upping the PG ratio will help. the thread on reddit uses a 100% PG but i don’t want to do it that way.

  • the flavor is not full ginger, there’s something else “sweety” in there. so i need to ensure the quality/freshness/potency of the ginger and the VG [edit: after filtering the extract, shake the filtered bottle, and let it settle, then filter again and transfer to a new bottle. even after filtering the first time, there was still very fine solids that went thru. my guess is, these will impact the flavor if they hit the coil - since these are dried herb, they will cause a woody taste. i just did this and noticed that i was able to get rid of “heavy liquid” and the double-filtered extract is a lot clearer - will post pictures next time]

overall happy with the outcome and waiting excitedly for the Cloves. the challenge is to find mixes where these flavors can play nice

in my original research, i read couple of threads on reddit of mixers doing this which encouraged me in the first place to play with the idea. i’m just wondering if anyone here is doing their own extracts, and what thoughts and leanrings you can share.

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There’s a whole lot of info on extraction in this topic.

http://forum.e-liquid-recipes.com/t/n-e-t-creations-and-reviews-naturally-extracted-tobaccos-or-teas

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[quote=“TheFlavorSeeker, post:1, topic:86945”]
wondering if anyone here is doing their own extracts [/quote]

Yay you! :grinning: Now, wasn’t that kinda easy and fun to boot! It definitely adds yet another dimension to DIY mixing. Hopefully, as it has been for me, this is only the beginning of a long, fruitful journey with regards to extracting your own concentrates. I find, there’s a great deal of satisfaction in the process. :wink:

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@BoyHowdy, i meant the coffee mug :slight_smile: - found another use to these flavor concentrates :slight_smile:

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I was just showing that it you use the search function you will find several people making flavor extracts from everything.:slight_smile:
They include Vanilla Beans , Coffee , Tea’s ,and Tobacco’s.:slight_smile:

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I really like this thread @TheFlavorSeeker. I’m sure it has legs. Actual commercial flavor extraction is some closely guarded proprietary science/voodoo. I imagine the Medicine Flower labs surrounded by Hippy Ninjas who would each give their lives to keep their dark-magic safe. It’s very cool to exchange ideas on how-to low-tech this stuff for home DIY. We’ve already seen the Tobacco NETs discussions on ELR, this is a great expansion on the theme

I also know many of our recognized flavorings have been used for over a century. I had plans on starting my own topic as the history of flavor synthesis has a basis at the core of alchemy …reducing something to it’s root core …turning lead to gold …turning ambergris into perfume. This is a defining Human passion. No chimps are trying to magnify the glory of a banana, yet we have a choice of 50+ instant bananas to tempt our evolved desires.

totally fascinated…

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@Josephine_van_Rijn, thank you for sharing that thread… interesting read. totally missed it as i wasn’t searching for NET’s but it’s very useful… looks many here were involved in that discussion and the experiments - i’ll keep posting results as i progress

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i made an adjustment by re-filtering again and removing the heavy, settled part of the extract that had very fine solids - i hope this will further improve the taste of the extract. i learnt this here so thank you guys.

edited in OP

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i now have anise in steeping - i love anise - as a hot drink, and i love the smell. so i thought that would be a good one to extract and mix with - maybe with honey.
the other one i’m considering is cardamom
i’ll report back.

a quick thought, do you guys think the “active/useful” ingredients of these herbs remain in the extracts? for example, ginger is known to lower BP and help heal cold and flu - wouldn’t it be awesome to have a “healthy vape” :slight_smile:

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