Wayne addresses the elephant in the room:
This is an interesting area for me. If you buy wholesale from the flavour companies, they deliver the flavour in a bottle that has an expiry date printed on it. When flavours are rebottled, as Wayne says, you get no indication. So there are always questions about the flavours we buy:
* Is it fresh stock or has it been sitting on the shelves at the vendor, possibly for more than a year already?
* Regardless of whether it's fresh or older stock, when can you expect it to degrade?
* What are the differences between the brands in terms of longevity? Will Flv last longer than TFA, for example?
I hear Wayne's advice about mixing it up and gauging whether it has lost oomph. But I would imagine that it's not an either or, that the flavour isn't 100% for ages and then suddenly falls off a cliff. I think it would degrade incrementally. Let's call that longitudinal degradation.
Then you have latitudinal degradation, i.e. the amount of fading that a flavour undergoes during the steeping process. There are some flavours which, regardless of how fresh they are, will fade and fade hard when they are mixed. As little as three days into steeping, the flavour might have faded to almost nothing.
And so to my question: to what extent can we replicate juices? Let's assume for the sake of illustration that Wayne releases a five-ingredient recipe, that he mixed with a batch of fresh flavours direct off the production line. He lets it steep for five days and is delighted with the result. I now mix that same recipe and my five bottles of flavour are as follows:
Flavour 1: fresh
Flavour 2: has degraded to 92% of its original potency
Flavour 3: has degraded to 80% of its original potency
Flavour 4: fresh
Flavour 5: has degraded to 88% of its original potency
Am I getting the same juice that he is? That's longitudinal degradation, now latitudinal. Flavours 2 and 4 fade somewhat during steeping. Not to nothing but certainly noticeable. I steep my juice for eight weeks, Wayne steeps his for five days. Are we again getting the same juice?
DIYers worry about things like scale inaccuracies affecting the final result of our juice. I would propose that is just one factor among many. As DIYers, we work blind most of the time. We only taste juices that are mixed with the flavours in our stash. What would be interesting for me is to have six DIYers all make the same recipe with the flavours in their stash. And then to taste all six juices in one setup to determine what changes, if any, could be detected by flavours of differing ages.
Can we ever expect anything other than a rough approximation of the original juice? And further to that, should it concern us? If we take the issue of Inw reformulation, this is the burning question: if DIYers weren't told, how long would it take them to realise? We know that perception and expectation play a big role in flavours. If we are told that a juice is strawberry and it looks like strawberry, we will often taste strawberry even if the flavour is something else. If I am not told that Inw Biscuit is reformulated and I use reformulated Inw Biscuit believing it to be the OG, will I detect a change? In Biscuit's case, I had my suspicions. I mixed up a batch of Simply Cannoli with a new bottle of Biscuit and it was definitely different and not as good. But there are other flavours, reputedly reformulated, where I can honestly say that I don't know.
We see a lot of experienced DIYers with very acute palates who are in two minds about whether a flavour has been reformulated or not. If it's that subtle, should it concern us? Then of course there are differences between batches of PG, VG and nic. We like to imagine that because we are working quite precisely down to the second decimal point, that we are we getting faithful representations of the recipes we mix. Honestly, I have to wonder if we are. And whether it really matters if we aren't.
This is an interesting area for me. If you buy wholesale from the flavour companies, they deliver the flavour in a bottle that has an expiry date printed on it. When flavours are rebottled, as Wayne says, you get no indication. So there are always questions about the flavours we buy:
* Is it fresh stock or has it been sitting on the shelves at the vendor, possibly for more than a year already?
* Regardless of whether it's fresh or older stock, when can you expect it to degrade?
* What are the differences between the brands in terms of longevity? Will Flv last longer than TFA, for example?
I hear Wayne's advice about mixing it up and gauging whether it has lost oomph. But I would imagine that it's not an either or, that the flavour isn't 100% for ages and then suddenly falls off a cliff. I think it would degrade incrementally. Let's call that longitudinal degradation.
Then you have latitudinal degradation, i.e. the amount of fading that a flavour undergoes during the steeping process. There are some flavours which, regardless of how fresh they are, will fade and fade hard when they are mixed. As little as three days into steeping, the flavour might have faded to almost nothing.
And so to my question: to what extent can we replicate juices? Let's assume for the sake of illustration that Wayne releases a five-ingredient recipe, that he mixed with a batch of fresh flavours direct off the production line. He lets it steep for five days and is delighted with the result. I now mix that same recipe and my five bottles of flavour are as follows:
Flavour 1: fresh
Flavour 2: has degraded to 92% of its original potency
Flavour 3: has degraded to 80% of its original potency
Flavour 4: fresh
Flavour 5: has degraded to 88% of its original potency
Am I getting the same juice that he is? That's longitudinal degradation, now latitudinal. Flavours 2 and 4 fade somewhat during steeping. Not to nothing but certainly noticeable. I steep my juice for eight weeks, Wayne steeps his for five days. Are we again getting the same juice?
DIYers worry about things like scale inaccuracies affecting the final result of our juice. I would propose that is just one factor among many. As DIYers, we work blind most of the time. We only taste juices that are mixed with the flavours in our stash. What would be interesting for me is to have six DIYers all make the same recipe with the flavours in their stash. And then to taste all six juices in one setup to determine what changes, if any, could be detected by flavours of differing ages.
Can we ever expect anything other than a rough approximation of the original juice? And further to that, should it concern us? If we take the issue of Inw reformulation, this is the burning question: if DIYers weren't told, how long would it take them to realise? We know that perception and expectation play a big role in flavours. If we are told that a juice is strawberry and it looks like strawberry, we will often taste strawberry even if the flavour is something else. If I am not told that Inw Biscuit is reformulated and I use reformulated Inw Biscuit believing it to be the OG, will I detect a change? In Biscuit's case, I had my suspicions. I mixed up a batch of Simply Cannoli with a new bottle of Biscuit and it was definitely different and not as good. But there are other flavours, reputedly reformulated, where I can honestly say that I don't know.
We see a lot of experienced DIYers with very acute palates who are in two minds about whether a flavour has been reformulated or not. If it's that subtle, should it concern us? Then of course there are differences between batches of PG, VG and nic. We like to imagine that because we are working quite precisely down to the second decimal point, that we are we getting faithful representations of the recipes we mix. Honestly, I have to wonder if we are. And whether it really matters if we aren't.
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