Flavor concentrates

[toke]

i would like to know what type of flavour concentrates am i able to use in my diy mixes. so far ive only used concentrates from skyeblue vaping. and i know valleyvapour sells concentrates as well. but i would like to know what exactly is this concentrates? what makes it different from say food flavouring? ive found local "flavour producers" like http://www.creativeflavors.co.za/concentrate.html and
http://www.flavourome.co.za/ and some more that i cant recall. is there actually a difference in what they produce compared to concentrates i buy from vape shops?

 

[BumbleBee]

I don't know a whole lot about flavour concentrates but what I do know is to stay away from anything oil based or anything that may contain any kind of oil. The safest would be to stick to the guys selling concentrates formulated for vaping. Food concentrates may be perfectly safe in baked goods, sweets and drinks but inhaling them is a totally different matter.

 

[zadiac]

Yup. Rather stay with the stuff that's made for vaping. You don't know the ingredients in food flavorings and it can be potentially harmful.

 

[Silver]

i would like to know what type of flavour concentrates am i able to use in my diy mixes. so far ive only used concentrates from skyeblue vaping. and i know valleyvapour sells concentrates as well. but i would like to know what exactly is this concentrates? what makes it different from say food flavouring? ive found local "flavour producers" like http://www.creativeflavors.co.za/concentrate.html and
http://www.flavourome.co.za/ and some more that i cant recall. is there actually a difference in what they produce compared to concentrates i buy from vape shops?

I dont know the answer to your question @toke

Just also bear in mind that Vapour Mountain has several concentrates too
Its not on their website but you can check out one of the sticky threads in their retailer sub forum in the retailer section
@Oupa, @Derick, @drew, may not be responding since they as retailers are not allowed to punt their products on the general forums. But in this case, they may be best equipped to answer this general question

I am going to move this thread to the Who has stock forum and ask the juice experts to help @toke out.

 

[Derick]

Thanks @Silver

The flavours we use are from international companies and their flavourings are known very well in the vaping world - they have been tested extensively by various parties since vaping started and they are still deemed to be the top flavours - talking about TFA, Capellas and Flavour art.

We have looked at local flavours, and there seem to be some decent ones, but you have to remember, those companies you listed are companies that supply to other companies - they are not going to sell you 10ml of their flavour - they are going to expect you to buy 5 liters or probably a lot more.

Secondly, some of the companies, when asked about Diacetyl did not know what we were talking about, other's knew what it was and confirmed that some of their flavours contain it - they were not willing to remove it as there is no market for it (yet). We found one local company that were willing to make flavours for us, but we have not tried them yet, mainly due to their customer service that completely sucks.

So if you want to buy flavours from flavour companies, find one that is willing to disclose all the chemicals he uses, then research all those chemicals to see if they are safe for inhaling (or at least has not been proven to be harmful) . And remember that if a certain chemical content is below a certain threshold then by law they are not required to disclose it. Companies like TFA and Capellas disclose their chemical contents because it is something the vapers would like to know and vapers make up a big chunk of their market these days.

Secondly - food flavours from supermarkets:
These flavours like your Vanilla extract etc., are heavily diluted forms of the concentrated flavours that are used in vaping - you will have to use 30% to 60% flavouring to get close to what the flavouring tastes like in e-cig liquids. So not only is it going to cost you more, it is probably going to taste awful, because you have no real idea what they diluted it with - if you are lucky, they used PG or alcohol.

If you want to make your own flavours then do some research on cold and hot extracting - you can extract some essence from actual vanilla pods for example, but still you will be hard pressed to get it to the strength that e-cig liquids need.

In my opinion, it is easier to just buy some flavouring from the assortment of local vendors here on the forum.

 

[toke]

Thanks for all the info derick. I love the concentrates i get from you and in planning on sticking with it. But its always good to have knowledge of whats going on. i can tell you have done your recearch on the subject and im very impressed. One of the things ive noticed is that some of the concentrates is very dull compared to others. Where i would need ALOT more concentrate for the flavour to come out nicely. I also notice that some of them are alot thicker and i struggle to suck it up in syringes whilst others are like water and seem more diluted(these generally have less flavour) perhaps you will be able to provide some sort of chart on which flavours are more "concentrated" than others

 

[Derick]

Usually with our flavours I will have some indication in the description on how strong the flavour is, but it is also something we update as we go on.

Generally though if a flavour is not very strong to start off with, it will improve with steeping - our Sweet Raspberry is a good example of this. Initially when the juice is freshly made, the raspberry flavour is very muted and also what we call 'fleeting' - as in, it does not stick around in your mouth after vaping, the flavour disappears very quickly.

But leave that guy to steep for a few weeks and the raspberry flavour becomes much more potent and tends to stick around on the palette a lot longer.

With our flavours, both TFA and Capella - we recommend starting out at an 8% concentration and then adjusting to taste.

As to the thickness of the liquid - I think it greatly depends on the chemicals they used to make the particular flavour - each flavour has a chemical that flavourists have identified to taste like a particular fruit or other subject, and these chemicals have their own viscosity, and will thus affect the viscosity of the final flavour.

If a flavour is very weak and even after steeping it doesn't improve, we generally decide not to stock those as it would just be a waste of everybody's time

 

[toke]

Thank you derick! Ive left a few bottles of the raspberry to steep and ill report back with my findings. Ive got a few mixes ranging from 20 to 40‰ mixes to experiment. (where as the menthol i have botles ranging from 1 to 2‰ mixes and double chocolate from 8 to 15%)

 

[Derick]

Generally when you go over 15% or so with these flavours you start getting a chemical/perfumy taste - sometimes this goes away with steeping because some of the flavouring will evaporate over time, but in a lot of cases it sticks around.

So 40% is quite high - I expect that to taste pretty soapy/chemically - if it does, all is not lost, you can just add some unflavoured PG/VG with nic to bring the concentration down again