I am not a expert mixer by any means!!
I mainly follow established recipes and tweak them to taste!!
However after a few hours…with a lot of shaking… I have yet to find steeping makes a difference. I’ve experimented with steeping and except for nicotine oxidation that darkens the liquid…
The flavoring we use is designed for shelf life in commercial foods…
You never buy a Mountain Dew or Pepsi at the store and say…WOW THAT’S GOOD!! It must have steeped??? Please tell me what you think!! Thanks!!!
2 Likes
Try vape Cap sugar cookie on a shake and vape, then try at 1 month +. Steeping is definitely not a myth, although there are a lot of flavourings out there than can be vaped right away and a steep does very little to it.
12 Likes
I’m not a expert at all. I just want to get the best out of my mixing.
What do you think about steeping and adding fresh nic a few days before vaping???
2 Likes
Some flavors will not change much with a long steep, but others NEED steeping for bringing out or mellow taste. My point in steeping is bringing the flavors together and that happens after 14 days to 1 month, IMO.
8 Likes
I add nic before vaping, I think after a good shake it’ll be good to go, but I normally give it an overnight for good measure.
2 Likes
As far as steep times go, I generally do a few days for harsh fruits (peach in high%, lemon, lime etc), 1+wk if my blend has creams in it, 2+ if it has any custards, and 1month+ for bakeries and tobaccos. For the most part, I consider fruits to be shake an vapes.
2 Likes
You will find that many flavors will improve with steeping. Vanillas, Custards, Chocolates, Creams, and many others will improve immensely. You will also find that some flavors may not change much with steeping. Mostly fruits but don’t think for a second that that is true of all of them. I want you to also consider this. In rare occasions steeping can make a juice worst than when first make. For example, Tea flavors are difficult sometimes to work with. You must take into consideration that Tea flavor will steep and become quite strong. Too much Tea flavor once steeped will become quite nasty. That being said you would have to make the percentage of tea very low in the recipe. So low that you might not taste it at all if you just shook the recipe and vaped it. In a weeks time though the tea flavor would be there and if done right, quite tasty. Point is, some flavors you can get away without steeping BUT, most will show improvement…
9 Likes
When I use to brew beer, ya boil and mash, and sparge what is now a wort, and pitch yeast, and ferment… after a bit you transfer and add co2… you have a beer. You have a glass of it… ya, it’s beer… but you wait a few weeks and the beer basically melds into a BEER. Nothing happens after the beer has completed it’s fermentation but things mellow and just start to work better over time.
When I smoke a pork butt and make pulled pork, it’s pretty good… I get no complaints, but after we pig out (get it, pork butt… pig out…) and put the leftovers into the fridge for a couple of days, that same pulled pork and it’s smokyness mellows and what was a very good smoked pork butt turns into excellent pork butt. Same thing happens if you smoke cheese… you smoke it, wrap it, stick it into the fridge for a couple weeks then have some of the best smoked cheese you’ll ever taste. If you ate the cheese just after you smoked it, it wouldn’t have too much flavor.
Steeping works in more than just juice.
9 Likes
@anon60225325 imo is completely right , i dont believe anything happens after a month and most things only need two weeks , ill use @Alisa loopy cereal for an example this liquid is greeeeeaaaaat after 3 weeks to a month all flave have blended the lemon in the fruit rings has mellowed its just perfect but taste it right after yiu make it , its not vapeable to me, i have left this same recipe for more than a month and it taste no different than a month so underanne nailed it imo
4 Likes
I can’t smoke cheese. It always melts and drips down into my lighter…then the lighter quits working. Must be a trick to it 
How many month old recipes have you vaped side by side with a fresh mix of the same recipe? You can really answer your own query, just make a few recipes that contain creams and or custards and put them up. Then in a month mix the same batch, shake and vape and then vape the month old stuff. You’ll get it.
17 Likes
Some mixes require just a couple days and some take a couple months. In the time that ive been mixing i have tried many different methods for curing and have determined that for me just mixing and putting it on the shelf for the time required works best.
With that said, if you are going to vape a custard or cream and dont cure it properly you will be missing out. While i can vape Vanilla Custard V1 (CAP) right after mixing and enjoy it it is 1 hundred bagillion times better after two months.
@daath, He is obviously from Wisconsin. 
Hope you are feeling better!
EDIT: In my ramblings i never really added to this discussion so here we go. We are mixing flavorings in a viscous solvent and it takes awhile for the mix to homogenize, one could use heat but with the possibility that it will mute certain flavors. And then you have what is happening with the flavorings as they are mixed together.
6 Likes
Must for most flavours.
3 Likes
Well, you do have to gas off the chemical reaction from putting the chemicals together. Shaking, stirring would do that provided those gasses have an escape route.
Now me personally, I wouldn’t touch a lot my own recipes for at least 3 days after I mix them and that’s after one night of letting the mix gas off. It’s not a myth, they do get better with age. Some of these recipes I mix are not even vapable to me until they are at least a week old.
5 Likes
Here is my take…there are two types of mixers. Folks that love to shake and vape and those who don’t have time to mix every day.
I agree that there are some recipies out there that are just amazing at the shake and vape level. Some of those after a month don’t taste as fresh…
Building/fixing a recpie that tastes great at the snv level but tastes off at a month does take work.
For me, I sadly work too much. I don’t have a dedicated mixing space. So I mix every two weeks. Make about 12-16 new mixes every time. Pif two of them to fellow vapers and call it good…
At this point I have so many 15/30mls bottles I have a 2-3 month supply on hand. I no longer know what it’s like to snv. I no longer have a desire to do so…personally I want stuff ready to vape at the 3-8week mark.
Just a random thought.
7 Likes
I don’t know how anyone can vape something within hours of mixing it. There is no defined flavor unless you’re using 15-20% of each flavor concentrate. It’s an absolute must. Try Flavorah lemonade day one and again day 30. Without steeping, that flavor is overwhelming to say the least. On the opposite end, try Cappela sweet strawberry day one and again day 30. There is barely a hint day one versus a bold strawberry day 30.
In other aspects, some flavors have a very strong alcohol taste that needs to tone down which can only be done over time. You have to give an adequate amount of time.
It’s science. Think of marinating chicken. You don’t just make your marinade, stick the chicken in it for 15 minutes and then cook it. Typically you would leave it overnight or maybe 2 night. Why? Because it takes time for that marinade to penetrate the thick, dense tissue of the chicken. The longer you marinate the chicken, more of the flavor is present throughout the entire piece, not just the outside of it. The same concept applies here. VG is thick and viscous and it does not adapt quickly to flavors. Essentially what happens is the flavoring needs to break down the molecules of the VG in order for it to adapt to them. More so in juice with a high VG content. This can’t happen instantaneously, it can only take time. And regardless of all the “quick” steeping methods out there, i.e. hot water, ultrasonic cleaner, etc…, it’s time that provides the best results.
In closing, steeping is a necessity. Unless you’re satisfied with vaping VG with minuscule, bland notes of the flavor concentrates that you mixed in it, it is critical. And all flavors are different. Some may take longer than others, however the results in the end with pay dividends of satisfaction when you taste your final product.
3 Likes
Steeping is not a myth. and time steeping works the best for us.
5 Likes
“Word” from on high… Steeping patience comes more easily as you amass juice. The secret to steeping? …buy a bunch of empty 30ml glass dropper bottles and fill them. Every time you make a flavor order, add a dozen (or two!) bottles and include some 120ml bottles for fav recipes …if you can’t mix often, mix big (thanks @Chrispdx!) It’ll happen naturally
5 Likes
It’s great that you’ve found a lot of recipes that don’t need steeping. Everyone’s tastes are different and maybe you won’t like any of the custard or bakery recipes that need steeping. Keep an open mind about it though. As many others have pointed out, steeping can play a vital role for many flavors; there’s a science behind all of the reasons why. Using your analogy of Mountain Dew, well what about wine? Some flavors are fine right away, some need to age to reach their full potential. Currently I have a fruit combo that’s lively and crisp as a S&V then gets sweet and mellow after a few weeks. I like both versions even though it’s the same recipe but if I want the crisper version, I have to mix it fresh. Occasionally, a flavor combo might be great right away up to a week, then mature into shoe polish for some mysterious reason.
3 Likes
I steep my bakery mixes and then add my fruits. And even then I find some fruits need additional time to lose some of their harshness or chemical off-notes. Example: Inawera Blackcurrant is a must steep flavor and if you ever try working with FA Blackberry…
By the time you purchase soda at the store, it has in theory already been steeped (as we vapers know this term). The flavor molecules have reacted with each other and it isn’t just shipped out the door after whipping it together. The Maillard reaction is the chemical interaction between amino acids and reducing sugars. A good simple example of this is browning a pork chop first in a frying pan and then baking it till done. In fact, the process was being used in the preparation of food since the dawn of man.
Back to soda, the dissolved sugar and flavor concentrates used are mixed in batch tanks where they are carefully mixed. The flavor base is treated with ultraviolet radiation or flash pasteurization, which involves quickly heating and cooling the mixture. Fruit-based syrups generally must be pasteurized. Then it is mixed with water and lastly carbon dioxide. The analogy here is that this could be interpreted as steeping short term with heat.
2 Likes