In searching for NET (naturally extracted tobacco) for e-juice online, I’ve found that most recipes are sketchy, vague and fail to give the ‘newb’ a thorough understanding of what is necessary to produce a tobacco like e-juice that is safe and tasty, or that offers actual quantities of yeild. Math?
In purchasing products for NET, my interest is in saving money in the face of purchasing small bottles of e-juice. So I want to know what vessels, nicotine testing kits, and other such things I’ll need to make and explore recipes properly. I also want to see ratios in online recipes. Unfortunately, most of the recipes I find are some person’s accounts that lacks a lot of information. Additionally, most people use unexplained acronyms for important terms that are known to the experienced but not to the aspiring makers out there. PLEASE offer useful information if you’re interest is education.
So here is a bulleted list, which I will be posting to multiple forums, of questions I have for anyone willing to help me with a serious recipe:
What containers, Ball jars, etc. should a heat assisted or cold steep require?
What size should a cooking/cold steeping container be for a certain yield?
What size container makes sense for mixing the extract into a final product?
Based on steeping method, how fine should tobacco be shredded/powdered?
I smoked Drum/Bali Shag/P. Stokkebye’s hand rolling tobacco for 20 years and would like to recreate their quality.
If using a heat/reduction method, what protective gear will I need?
I would like to achieve somewhere around a 70% VG/30% PG final product. Therefore, how much PG should be used for steeping, and how do I arrive at that ratio once the extraction is complete? I have seen too many recipes that list ingredients adding up to more than 100%. MATH people, math.
Time? Clearly timing differs based on cooking/steeping method. So, to best reproduce the smell/taste of raw pipe/handrolling tobacco, what is the best time to steep or cook?
When mixing a final extract, how much extract/flavor to PG, VG and nicotine (after figuring out the nicotine level of extract)?
What concentration/amount of nicotine extract should I order/use to bring my juice to 12mg?
Since I’m looking for a 70% VG/30% PG final product, what large quantities of ingredients should I purchase?
i.e. how many pints to quarts to gallons of PG, VG and nicotine extract does it make sense to purchase?
Finally, any recommendations of suppliers for purchasing bulk ingredients from?
I’m sure I’ve left important questions out, so if you entertain answering my questions, please feel free to offer more than I’ve asked. Hopefully this outline will provide more vapers with the information they need to make their own e-juice.
My first NET was made with the tobacco which I was was smoking; Peter Stokkebye London Export RYO. Although I was happy with the flavor, once it was in NET form and vaped, it really tasted nothing like it did when combustion was involved. So, just so you know, get ready to experience a totally different flavor; the true flavor of tobacco leaves without fire involved.
I can tell you, for a more analogue type flavor and kick, you’ll need to lean towards a dark fired burley and oriental type tobacco. Virginia and Cavendish are going to be on the sweet side of things. Perique is in a class of its own, but extremely nice as a blender with just about everything.
You’ll find most of your choices here with pipesandcigars.com (quite inexpensive as well).
Perhaps some of the posts in the NET threads will answer some of your bullet point questions and help you get on track. I started my NET journey more than a year ago and I’m still reading, reading, reading, researching, trial and error-ing and learning every day.
thanks for this! this is the kind of information that takes a day of searching to add to recipe notes. i just want there to be an easier way for those of us that have turned to vaping to escape smoking cigarettes/hand rolled cigarettes to spend more quality time with our loved ones. i intended for my bulleted list to become a good online template to give vapers easy access to better information for DIY than seems to be readily available without long periods of sifting.
One thing I am going to help you is patience is key. I have a steep going on 5 months now for pipe tobacco. I have a Virginia flue that someone gave me that took 7 months to cure. I will tell you again patience is key. Also a good tobacco vape takes time to steep. At least one month for natural extracts. That is to me true flavor.
Use your net as a flavor (aka PG) then you could add or subtract as much as you want.
Your goal is a laudable one. I’m sure there will be many tobacco vaping folks that will appreciate a reference guide to performing NET extracts.
I’m one of those people that loves sifting through vast threads of information and gleaning what I can from as many different people as possible. For me, that has been the fun part. There are so many different view points and opinions to consider and ponder when one embarks on producing NET. Plus, it has taught me so much about the different types of tobacco of which I never knew.
What to it? Throw some shit in VG or PG, watch the paint dry for 6 months. Scream ohhh boy!!! Extract, make juice, wait another month. Then vape. Run out, and cry you did not make more. How I do it.
Just produced 1000ml of cold steeped 30PG/70VG NET juice! It’s damn similar to BlackNote products. I used 2 500ml Ball jars each with 1.25oz (2.5oz total) of Peter Stokkebye’s London Import and steeped each in 250ml (1 500ml jar) of PG ordered from Wizard labs for 6 weeks. I simply boiled water in the jars to purify (microwave) and went for it - no contamination.
I took 67tele’s (e-cigarette forum) recommendation of Wizard Labs and simply ordered all my PG (500ml), VG (1000ml), 100mg/ml (150ml) PG nicotine and the nicotine test kit from them. This may have cost a little more, but well, one-stop shopping. I also went fancy and got a hand pump actuated Pyrex Büchner funnel (2.5μm fritted glass filter) and 1000ml flask for vacuum filtration (about $60 on ebay from China and good quality). It’s a slow filtration process, but not as slow as the old coffee filter method, and the result is a very clean solution. I figured I’d make the initial investment, save money on store bought juice and clog-up my coils less. I’ve noticed very little difference in the clogging of my coils as compared to store bought 30/70 PG/VG.
After the cold steep was done, the process went like this: filtered the NET solution (PG) from both jars first through a small mesh kitchen sieve/strainer - a very basic kind of bowl style screen/strainer that happily fit perfectly into my 1000ml Pyrex kitchen measuring cup. I squeezed down on the saturated tobacco with a large spoon until the majority of juice had been separated and then tossed the left over tobacco. This solution was then poured into the Büchner funnel in 2 parts (the funnel only holds about 350ml), and pumped heavily - the pressure is maintained while the filtration works, so there is almost no need to continue pumping. The pressure gauge will reach a maximum pressure and continue to slowly draw the solution through the filter without much maintenance. In essence, the vacuum pressure established by pumping doesn’t drop off because the volume of liquid/material keeps air from shorting out the process. The pressure you build by pumping stays very constant until the liquid is gone and air can enter the flask.
This is what the toolkit looked like (don’t be too intimidated):
Note: vodka solely for the purpose of offsetting boredom.
In the photo are the following items from left to right essentially: empty 500ml Ball jars, small white nicotine test container, black digital scale for measuring tobacco, Ball jar pump that doesn’t fit my jars, the stately mad scientist’s Büchner funnel and flask, grey plastic hand pump (attaches with tubing contained in the funnel shown here), 2 jars of 100% VG (500ml each), 150ml PG nicotine solution (100mg/ml), nitrile gloves that come with the nicotine test kit, test kit instructions, small container of bromothymol (test kit), bottle of hydrochloric acid (test kit), filter papers that come with the Büchner funnel (didn’t use, as they make the whole effort crawl - 15μm incidentally), 3ml syringes and different gauge needles for the test kit, and finally my lovely jars of cold steeped NET.
So what you don’t see are the 1000ml and 300ml Pyrex kitchen grade measuring cups and the screen filter/sieve/strainer with apertures of probably 2mm or so…that and lots of paper towels to rinse and then dry everything with purified water (Zero Water filter) - the test kit called for distilled water, but I couldn’t be bothered to go to the store and spend $1.50.
The recipe looked like this for the most part:
2.5oz of London Export steeped 6 weeks in 500ml of 100% PG
mixed 180ml tobacco/PG solution (some left over) w/
120ml (100mg/ml) nicotine PG solution
then w/ 700ml VG
this yielded a 12mg nicotine content.
The result was two 500ml jars of clean, beautiful tasting NET. Based on retail prices for 20-30ml bottles of juice (here in the Bay Area), this is a yield around the value of $600. BlackNote product prices make this NET even more worthwhile.
Here are some useful links:
this is the calculator I used (Mac here, so few options):
http://…/
So everyone understands, my reson for exploring NET juice is based on having smoked hand-rolled cigarettes for over 15 years; when I began to vape, I found that my only choice was to ‘smoke candy.’ I’m happy to be out of the cycle of crazy flavors like…well, you know. I’d be happy to add some flavor in small amounts to each 30ml bottle I fill just to experiment, but in general I wanted something more like a cigarette and less like a weird-… glowing soft drink/Axe body spray. One of the great things about this and other NETs like it is, they don’t make everything smell like cheap perfume from CVS; get it on your hands, barely noticable. Spill some in your car, no one will know. I know many of you want the ‘pinnapple, currant, vanilla’ godzillas, but for those that want a simple, clean, virtually odor free nicotine and tobacco like vape, THIS IS IT. Don’t get me wrong, a good hand-rolled London Export still tempts me, but this is a close as any company has come to reproducing the sensation of a good tobacco.
I’m sure I’ve left out the kind of information I found so hard to find in one place (thanks again 67tele), so please PM me with any questions; however know, I’ll probably be slow to respond.
@fitzdevlin Please allow me to be the first to say your post is simply awesome and will be a great help to others. Thank You for taking the time to write it up.
I couldn’t get your link to the Buchner funnel to work , is this a similar one?
This is the seller I purchased from, but it appears something about the listing has been updated: http://www.ebay.com/itm/262520038655?_trksid=p2057872.m2749.l2649&ssPageName=STRK%3AMEBIDX%3AIT
You want to look for sellers that offer a range of filter sizes; I think #3 is higher than 5μm; I believe the 2.5μm I purchased was something like a #6, but don’t quote me on that; definitely contact the seller to request a fine filtration level, as I have noticed that even with 2.5μm my coils are clogging faster now (Kanger Top Box with OCC coils). Still, not much difference, but I imagine that less filtration would equal the necessity of learning to rebuild your coils to offset clogging and cost. Also, I stated the funnel capacity as 500ml, when in fact it was 350ml, so that is correct. I’ll try to edit the post above to reflect that.
Thanks for the recommendations, and yes, it feels great to be self-sufficient now; between making your own juice and rebuilding your own coils, a person can really free themselves from a lot of heavy costs of this less hazardous habit. I just learned that some big box stores sell PG, and apparently box pharmacy stores sell VG both at incredible deals; I haven’t checked to see what qualities we’re talking about, but it’s definitely easy to overpay online for quality PG/VG.
