Inexpensive Nicotine Test That Doesn't Involve Titration?

[DeadbeatJeff]

With darker juices, I can only imagine spotting the color-change will be very difficult, if not impossible. So... what's a good, cheap way to test nic level that doesn't involve titration?

I've seen some test kits around... like pregnacy tests for nic, looks like... but they are pretty expensive, especially assuming a lot of testing over time.

 

[LucentShadow]

I'm not aware of any way, at a consumer level, to test for nicotine concentration, specifically.

I'm assuming that you want to test concentration, as you mentioned titrating. Titrating will indicate concentration of organic bases, such as alkaloids, of which nicotine is the major one. It only works on freebased alkaloids, and only if they aren't contaminated with any other acids or bases.

As far as I know, tests designed for detecting nicotine use in humans, actually test for it's metabolite, cotinine. That would not be very useful.

Speaking of testing a dark liquid implies that it's contaminated with flavorings/colorings, or possibly a simple tobacco extract. Simple extracts can't be titrated anyway, as the alkaloids would likely be mostly in salt form, and there would be other molecules that skew the pH. Other flavoring or coloring could likely have the same effect.

If you're curious about the nicotine content of a simple tobacco extraction, expect it to be low, such as in the 1mg/ml range, if it's diluted enough to be vapeable.

 

[Hoosier]

Nicotine titration tests are really for unflavored nicotine solutions. Flavorings may affect the pH and would impact the test results. Unflavored nicotine solution shouldn't be too dark.

 

[DeadbeatJeff]

Yeah... But I was just wondering if there's any other way (I couldn't think of one, at least), so I could just see how much nic is getting into the VG extract I'm making.

What I'd like is to determine a way to identify (a) specific flavor level(s) by quantifying extracted nic over time, given a consistent process. To identify the sweet-spot steeping times needed for different ideal results.