How much nic are you using? I’m coming ever more to the conclusion that’s the problem. Fresh orange and apple (and anything light on flavour % or that omits heavy creams and bakeries) simply has nothing to mask the nic throat hit. But it’s an odd thing - if you persevere, your throat gets used to it and it almost completely disappears! I’ve mixed juices that seemed wonderful to me and tried them on a friend and they’re gagging. Then I try one first thing next morning, and sure enough I’m gagging too…
But I think I might have found a solution: Nicotine salts. In fact, it’s been known for a while that citric acid or vinegar can help reduce throat hit. This is counterintuitive, because it’s easy to assume the throat hit (especially with citrus) is due to acidity, so why would you add more? But when you add acid to nicotine you get a nicotine salt, which is less harsh than nicotine in its free amine form.
My early experiments with citric acid only produced marginal improvements. I now realise that’s because I wasn’t adding enough! I’d got myself some pH test strips and was put off that my pH’s were way lower than commercial juices like Element’s, and obviously I didn’t want to add so much CA that it would alter the flavour. But apparently to get the full effect you have to dump LOADS in the mix - roughly 2% of a 10% CA solution per mg of nicotine. I have a sample of Element NS picked up from the Birmingham expo and it is rather acidic. In fact, according to the test strips, pH is similar to my 3mg nic with 6% CA added. (Note that this is still much less acidic than actual orange juice.)
I have read that commercial nicotine salts (as used by Element and Juul) are based on Benzoic Acid rather than Citric Acid. This is more efficient (you need about half the quantity) and also is relatively flavourless. Seems it’s cheap and readily available and I will be trying some out next week hopefully.
For nic I mix 1.5mg and use nicselect. If nic was the issue that would be an easy fix and would have been identified years ago. But I vape atleast 5 new mixes every week along side other mixes. Since I’m a fruit person I span the globe…apples, strawberries, a raspberry, lemon, mango, and so on. All mixed with other flavors from basic creams to stuff like white chocolates to cream cheese.
If nic itself was the issue (not just bad nic) then the only fix would be to omit it… [Edit: I should say AN issue, as there could be more than one e.g. alcohol in the orange flavourings and absence of other throat-easing ingredients when attempting to get that natural orange juice flavour.] Do you have the same issue at 0mg? If so, I guess my problem is completely different. But I’ve got another nic on order that people seem to rate (pink mule) and will look for NicSelect if that’s a recommendation.
Amen FLV persimmon is one of my all time favs - orange, nectarine and peach would be a great combo nice. I have used in a similar way for orange and mandarin also great with mango and creams
Just a sneak peak for tangerine flv…since I don’t have my notes. It is true to taste…pretty forgiving at a higher percentage. I think, since I don’t have my notes, the 2.5% mixed with mallow and cream was pretty good.
As of right now I am vaping the fresh03 vanilla icecream mix with tangerine flv and orange shisha inw. The icecream steeped 6 weeks. Then I added 16 drops of shisha orange inw and 8 drops of tangerine to a 30ml bottle and steeped an additional 4 days. It’s pretty good.
Drops aren’t accurate…,but I am pretty handy with it and am consistant with it. I typically mix up a bunch of 30 mls bottles of ice cream and custards. Then when steeped I may just vape that or add fruit after the fact.
Apologies for the side track but here’s a brief follow-up on my experiments with Benzoic Acid… In short, it almost completely removes nicotine throat hit and has no detectable flavour. I bought 100g off eBay for £7 delivered, which is enough for 40+ litres of 3mg liquid! The crystals dissolve easily enough to make a 20% solution (by weight) in PG, which I use at just over 1% in my 3mg mixes. Full effect is achieved @ 3/4 of nicotine concentration, which for 3mg is 0.3% x 3/4 x 100%/20% = 1.125%.
For those that marked this thread for tracking and or watching.
Well. Yes. I am close to release my style of orange ice cream. It still needs a few tweaks and I am going to use a few other flavors to test out. But I you wanted to trust in advance and want to eventually get flavors early. You will probably need.
Tangerine flv (cap sweet tangerine may replace)
Orange shisha inw (no replacement easily available)
And ice cream fw.
Mf orange is too hard for too many to get. Orange shisha inw is very very close. To the point when it’s weighed down with cream and other stuff it wouldn’t matter. (Kiwi mf = kiwi inw avail at NR)
The other issue is orange mf while good/great at higher percents has a couple off notes and is hard to play with.
I was also hoping I would get my one drop order in but sadly it won’t be processed in time.
