E Juice Steeping Chart
Why Cant I Taste My Juice?
I'm sure like most of you, there is nothing worse than receiving your long awaited vape mail only to discover upon firing up your favourite vaping device, the e liquid recipe you've spent the last 24 hours thinking about tastes nothing short of bland and somewhat flavourless. Why is this?
Well for one, everyone’s taste is different. What may be full of flavour for those with 10000+ taste-buds, may not be for others with 2000. This is true for almost all types of consumables and something “we” as vapers will have to deal with throughout our entire vaping career. Those of you purchasing the same liquid regularly maybe experiencing another temporary, but re occurring phenomenon known as “Vaper's Tongue” more on this here.
More than likely though, the main reason for this atrocity is simply because you started vaping it too soon. E liquid is like a fine wine and takes time to nurture. No, not years, but at least a few days to 1 week before the flavour starts popping out.
Below is a chart illustrating the typical time you can expect your Ichor Liquid e liquid to reach maturity. The time in days is taken from the bottled date displayed on your e juice bottle.
I personally wait until at least 50% maturity. Flavours at this time are well on their way to balancing out and an enjoyable vape can be achieved. Things only get better from here!
It is important to note that some flavourings; especially the menthol variants, blend into the electric cigarette liquid much faster than others, and thus masks other flavours until a maturity over 50% is achieved. While this may not be a problem for some, we highly recommend you wait until the 50% mark has passed to ensure you get the most out it.
Different mixes take different times to steep. Why is this? VG and PG both have their own properties. VG is a thick and dense substance making it harder for the flavour molecules to penetrate, whilst PG is a thin, runny substance that blends the flavourings a lot easier. By adding different variants of these into mixes, you are effectively creating liquids with different densities and textures. Therefore different steeping times are required for each e liquid mix to achieve the same level of effectiveness.
We personally recommend the following as a minimum steeping time (50%) for each mix.
- 100% PG - 2Days
- 70% PG / 30% VG - 2-3 days
- 50% PG / 50% VG - 3-4 days
- true 100% VG - 5 days
The chart below illustrates this in more detail.
I cover various methods of accelerating the steeping time in this section, but with simple planning and stocking up for a period of time. You can quite easily purchase enough e liquid to overlap the steeping time required and theoretically ignore this article completely. Good luck to all
