Naturally extracted tobacco (NET) flavours

[funkymeatball]

As a chemist I started mixing my liquids pretty soon after neginning with vaping.
Currently I'm sticking to tobacco liquids as all fruit flavours taste much too artifical for me.
Recently, I discovered "House of liquid" (HOL) liquids.
There are made of naturally extracted organic tobacco and to my taste are a completely different league than all artificially flavoured tobacco liquids I tried.
Out of curiosity and not to save money (the HOL liquids are sold for a fair price) I did my first NET extract.
I simply covered "no-additives" tobacco inteded for cigarette rolling with zero nic PG/VG/H2O 60/30/10 base.
Already after a day at room temperature the eaxtract had a pretty dark brown colour.
So I removed about 10 ml and filtered it with a syringe through cotton.
Then I centrifuged it in the lab for 15 min at someting like 4000g.
Finally I passed it through a 0.22 µm filter.
So I can be sure that there were no particles larger than 0.22 µm left.
I addeed the extract to my 12 mg/ml base at about 20%.
Although the taste is really nice the wick gets clogged pretty fast.
For my second test I used pure PG with 10% ethanol.
Results are still pending. ;-)
Any ideas?

I guess there is a lot of information in a subforum here dedicated to DIY NETs.

What do I need to do to get access to this subforum?

Peace

 

[lamarrk]

Welcome to ECF, funkymeatball! One more post will get you access to post into the other areas of the forum. The "5 post" rule is in place to weed out spammers. Once you have the 5 posts, the access is updated 25 minutes after the hour, every hour.

Replies count on the "post count" total. You don't have to open new threads. Enjoy ECF!

 

[Deatach]

I have tried HOL Virginia prime and it really gunks up the coils on the nautilus. Flavour is the closest thing to anologs I've tried, even has a smoky hint to it. Had to stop vaping it though, cant afford to be changing coils every day! Tried cutting it with unflavoured PG but still gunked like crazy. I just got a Kayfun clone so I will give it a go again in the next few days.

 

[funkymeatball]

Welcome to ECF, funkymeatball! One more post will get you access to post into the other areas of the forum. The "5 post" rule is in place to weed out spammers. Once you have the 5 posts, the access is updated 25 minutes after the hour, every hour.

Replies count on the "post count" total. You don't have to open new threads. Enjoy ECF!

Thanks a lot for the clarification!

 

[funkymeatball]

I have tried HOL Virginia prime and it really gunks up the coils on the nautilus. Flavour is the closest thing to anologs I've tried, even has a smoky hint to it. Had to stop vaping it though, cant afford to be changing coils every day! Tried cutting it with unflavoured PG but still gunked like crazy. I just got a Kayfun clone so I will give it a go again in the next few days.

Give the HOL "Cigarillos" a try. The coil should last much longer. Taste is also a bit more intense than Virginia.
I also like the HOL "Puros" a lot. I doesn't gunk up the coils as fast as "Virginia". However, I fear it's still worse than "Cigarillos".
No long time experience with "Puros" though. Up to now I ran about 2 ml of Puros though a modified Aspire K1 (standard 1,8 ohm coil with cotton, 6-7W). So far no problems. Also works nicely to mix Puros at 10-20% to an artificial tobacco liquid (e.g. Flavourart Tuscan). Really adds something
With "Virgina" and the same setup after 1/2 ml there it already started to taste like real cigarettes (which I hate in the meantime ;-) ). The cotton wick was totally covered with black gunk. I could barely remove it from the coil...

 

[Bunnykiller]

I soak/steep my tobacco in 100% PGA.... then after filtering, evaporate off the alcohol leaving about 10-20% of the original liquid volume... makes for a less gunky juice. The concentrate is added to VG and nic base...

 

[funkymeatball]

I soak/steep my tobacco in 100% PGA.... then after filtering, evaporate off the alcohol leaving about 10-20% of the original liquid volume... makes for a less gunky juice. The concentrate is added to VG and nic base...

Thanks! I will give it a try!
How is flavour compared to PG or VG extracts?

 

[funkymeatball]

I soak/steep my tobacco in 100% PGA.... then after filtering, evaporate off the alcohol leaving about 10-20% of the original liquid volume... makes for a less gunky juice. The concentrate is added to VG and nic base...

Forgot to ask: how much PGA do you use per g or ounce tobacco?

 

[Bunnykiller]

I cover the tobacco with PGA... never measured how much I used. Flavor is "brighter" not so heavy... but good

 

[funkymeatball]

I cover the tobacco with PGA... never measured how much I used. Flavor is "brighter" not so heavy... but good

Thanks!
How long do you perform the extraction? At room temeprature, in a fridge or do you heat it?

 

[Bunnykiller]

crockpot 120-140F 4 - 12 hrs depending on volume and blend....

 

[funkymeatball]

crockpot 120-140F 4 - 12 hrs depending on volume and blend....

Thanks a lot!

 

[evolvelove]

hey sorry when you say pga you mean pg and alcohol? what type of alcohol and how much a to pg? will vodka work?
thankyou for your help

 

[eric5037]

i've got the same issue here with HOL "guevara". speaking with a french forum mate who is into NET extractions, he said to me that i had to filter at 0.25 µm but it seems not to be the solution. don't you think you could get something better with more filtering? 0.15 µm ? 0.10 µm or even less? is that even possible ?

and, when you filter, do you do it with metal or with paper?

thanks

 

[funkymeatball]

hey sorry when you say pga you mean pg and alcohol? what type of alcohol and how much a to pg? will vodka work?
thankyou for your help

PGA is "pure grain alcohol" which to my knowledge is 95% v/v.
Vodka is only 40%. I don't think it will work as it has too much water.

 

[funkymeatball]

i've got the same issue here with HOL "guevara". speaking with a french forum mate who is into NET extractions, he said to me that i had to filter at 0.25 µm but it seems not to be the solution. don't you think you could get something better with more filtering? 0.15 µm ? 0.10 µm or even less? is that even possible ?

and, when you filter, do you do it with metal or with paper?

thanks

Good question.
For my first NET is used this filter for the final 0.22 µm filtration (I have them in the lab).
http://www.merckmillipore.com/waroot/medium/M9685_110120_053-06%5BM9685_110120_053-06-ALL%5D.jpg

From what I read so far going down to 0.1 µm wont help as it will not remove e.g. sugars that are at least partially responsible for the gunk on the coil and wick.

The HOL liquids are filtered down to 5µm.
So I will give it a try to run them through 0.22 µm.

 

[eric5037]

Good question.
For my first NET is used this filter for the final 0.22 µm filtration (I have them in the lab).
http://www.merckmillipore.com/waroot/medium/M9685_110120_053-06%5BM9685_110120_053-06-ALL%5D.jpg

From what I read so far going down to 0.1 µm wont help as it will not remove e.g. sugars that are at least partially responsible for the gunk on the coil and wick.

The HOL liquids are filtered down to 5µm.
So I will give it a try to run them through 0.22 µm.

thanks for your quick reply. you are very lucky to be able to do that kind of experiments and access to those kinds of filterings. i'm getting mad looking for this on the internet and i see prices i can't believe in but it's another matter. we'll see.

i am pretty convinced that the ennemy is sugar in any form: VG level mainly.

i've been doing myself NET extraction with "no-additives" tobacco "fleur de pays, nº2". i steep it each day, i stir it 2 mn and i let it breeze for 2 hours. i've been doing this for a month now and it looks pretty great. i've tried it 2 weeks ago (so after a 2 weeks extraction) and it was pretty great, it tasted good but... i think that the problem is the VG level (30%). i tend to think that NET extraction is better without VG, so next time i will try with PG only.

so, what i think is the following:
- NET extractions must be done with PG only
- filtering must be as thin as it can be
- some tobaccos are more prone to clog the coils than others, so we have to make experiments on a lot of tobacco to know what will be better.

and now comes the big question and i envy you as a chemist:
is there a way to extract sugar from our extraction? chemical way or not?

tobacco by its own contains sugar. VG contains sugar. so, when we extract, mixing tobacco and VG, we mix sugar with more sugar. do you imagine a good extraction with no sugar at all? it would a heavenly extraction.

as a chemist, what do you think/know about it?

and of course, keep us posted about your experiments, i'm really looking into it!

thank you

 

[funkymeatball]

thanks for your quick reply. you are very lucky to be able to do that kind of experiments and access to those kinds of filterings. i'm getting mad looking for this on the internet and i see prices i can't believe in but it's another matter. we'll see.

i am pretty convinced that the ennemy is sugar in any form: VG level mainly.

i've been doing myself NET extraction with "no-additives" tobacco "fleur de pays, nº2". i steep it each day, i stir it 2 mn and i let it breeze for 2 hours. i've been doing this for a month now and it looks pretty great. i've tried it 2 weeks ago (so after a 2 weeks extraction) and it was pretty great, it tasted good but... i think that the problem is the VG level (30%). i tend to think that NET extraction is better without VG, so next time i will try with PG only.

so, what i think is the following:
- NET extractions must be done with PG only
- filtering must be as thin as it can be
- some tobaccos are more prone to clog the coils than others, so we have to make experiments on a lot of tobacco to know what will be better.

and now comes the big question and i envy you as a chemist:
is there a way to extract sugar from our extraction? chemical way or not?

tobacco by its own contains sugar. VG contains sugar. so, when we extract, mixing tobacco and VG, we mix sugar with more sugar. do you imagine a good extraction with no sugar at all? it would a heavenly extraction.

as a chemist, what do you think/know about it?

and of course, keep us posted about your experiments, i'm really looking into it!

thank you

Thanks for sharing your experience!
VG does not contain sugar, at least it should not if you buy decent quality. It tastes sweet though.
Extracting sugar from VG or PG NETs is not an easy task. Don't think it can be done at home.
I guess it's much easier to go for a NET that does contain only small amounts of sugar.
To my knowledge ethanol extracts should contain much less sugar.

Have a look at:
http://www.e-cigarette-forum.com/forum/liquid-extraction-tobacco/
There has a lot of research been done already.
Maybe you will also find a more clear statement whether sugars can be extracted from PG or VG NETs.

 

[funkymeatball]

i am pretty convinced that the ennemy is sugar in any form: VG level mainly.

.. i think that the problem is the VG level (30%). i tend to think that NET extraction is better without VG, so next time i will try with PG only.

VG is a little bit more polar than PG. VG has two -OH groups and two carbon atoms, PG also has two -OH groups but three carbon atoms.
Ethanol is even less polar than PG, it has one -OH group and two carbon atoms. (Water is more polar than all of them).
So in theory sugars - that are pretty polar - should have lower solubility in PG than in VG (and even less in ethanol) and therefore PG should extract less sugar from tobacco than VG.
However, I don't know if the difference in solubility between PG and VG is large enough for us to make a difference.
A mixture (eg 50/50) PG and ethanol in theory should extract even less sugars.

For my next tests I will go for a pure ethanol extraction ( as suggested by Bunnykiller and Str8vision) and a 50/50 PG/ethanol mixture.
Will take a couple of weeks to find out how it works though as I will steep (thanks Bunnykiller and Str8vision for the clarification on terms! ) at room temeprature.

Str8vision was so kind to post his experience with various extractions in this thread:
http://www.e-cigarette-forum.com/fo...est-extraction-method-minimise-coil-gunk.html
It's definitely worth a read!

 

[eric5037]

Thanks for sharing your experience!
VG does not contain sugar, at least it should not if you buy decent quality. It tastes sweet though.
Extracting sugar from VG or PG NETs is not an easy task. Don't think it can be done at home.
I guess it's much easier to go for a NET that does contain only small amounts of sugar.
To my knowledge ethanol extracts should contain much less sugar.

Have a look at:
http://www.e-cigarette-forum.com/forum/liquid-extraction-tobacco/
There has a lot of research been done already.
Maybe you will also find a more clear statement whether sugars can be extracted from PG or VG NETs.

thank you for you reply and link. i will look into it!

i've just watched my VG and i've seen that it expired 2 years ago. great! so i must go for a new one to see and compare the level of sugar in both. the fact is that my actual expired VG has really a lot of sugar and i don't know if it's due to its expiration or not. i bought it 2-3 years ago in a pharmacy so it is USP quality... but expired. so i have to do somethinh here, no doubt !! you gave me the clue, thanks for that!

supposing VG doesn't have any sugar, it shouldn't matter if the sugar extraction process is hard to do because we shouldn't have to do it, right?

what i'm pretty sure of, is that tobacco contains sugar in its additives (cocoa, coconut oil...) but i'm not sure it contains sugar in its natural composition. it's logical to think that if we macerate "free additive tobacco", we will have at least less sugar. that's a beginning!!

so, if VG doesn't have any sugar, i learnt 2 things today:
1- i have to buy a new bottle of GV, hoping it won't have any sugar
2- i have to macerate "free additive tobacco" (i thought my "fleur de pays, nº2" had to additives and it has 3%)
TABAC à ROULER: Pourcentage d

i will have a look into ethanol extraction too and it seems clear to me that sugar in the enemy of my coils.