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
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 )
Tweaks
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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.
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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.