New Juice Line Coming ADV NETs

[YeOldeOke]

We've been so active in hardware lately, it occurs to me people may forget that we are primarily a juice company.

So just to highlight that we have not let the juice side of things slip into the background, I will mention that we have been working diligently on developing an exciting, completely different new juice line.

This takes a lot of time, but we hope to launch it early January.


For the same reason maybe it's time for another little competition, in the spirit of the season!

 

[YeOldeOke]

Our new juice line is nearing it's launch, and I am really excited about it. It is a special challenge that required/requires a lot of development and care.

Our tobaccos have seen substantial growth in popularity over the past 6 months, and I have always had a special interest in tobacco juices. They pose some real challenges in producing good products, not easy to work with.

So I was keen to take it up to the next level, naturally extracted tobaccos (NETs). These take many moons of careful crafting, processing and blending to extract the beautiful notes that Burley, Virginia, Latakia, Perique and it's many curing variations and blends offer.

Something no 'tobacco' concentrate can emulate.

 

[YeOldeOke]

Creating good NET's are, IMHO, an artform. Which is why I am attracted to it in the first place. It's more than just a technical challenge, much more.

There are a lot of technical challenges attached to NETs. The various extraction processes employed to extract the desired flavour notes are just the beginning, the purifying process must be balanced to rid the extract of undesirable elements without losing or diffusing the character of the juice.

You want a safe juice which has as light an impact on coils and wicks as possible, but you don't want to strip the expression of the juice and make it sterile.

So it's a balancing act. Reduce coil/wick buildup but retain the reason you are producing the NET in the first place, the complex interplay of the beautiful notes.


Which is why NET juices are so expensive. It is a long, careful painting of your masterpiece. No quick and easy fixes to be had as can be done with regular juices. If it's sub-par, it's months wasted as it heads for the drain.

 

[YeOldeOke]

I'd love to create some special packaging for the NETs, they deserve it. But wooden boxes, fancy labels that have to be separately managed etc. will push up prices considerably. NETs go for around R10-R15 / ml internationally, and with fancy packaging we'd have to join that choir.

It defeats what I like doing, offering the best I can at the lowest price I can. So maybe we will just integrate their packaging into our existing processes.

That does NOT mean they're inferior. It simply means that I think pretentiousness in marketing is a rip-off. In the end the customer pays for your pretentiousness.

IMHO if you buy vaping equipment / consumables that come in fancy boxes, wooden or otherwise, with a lot of accompanying fanfare you have been suckered. The box is probably worth more than the product. And congratulations, you've just encouraged all the other producers to waste YOUR money on fancy presentation.

 

[ddk1979]

Naartjie please, please, please, naartjie.

.

 

[YeOldeOke]

Naartjie please, please, please, naartjie.

.

@ddk1979 Naartjie? NET? Please expand.

 

[YeOldeOke]

If you're talking about a normal e-liquid, we had a very good naartjie many moons ago but killed it for lack of demand.

Problem with citrus is it is very tank-unfriendly.

 

[ddk1979]

@ddk1979 Naartjie? NET? Please expand.

Sorry if I posted in the wrong thread, but I'm looking for plain naartjie, no NET.

.

 

[ddk1979]

If you're talking about a normal e-liquid, we had a very good naartjie many moons ago but killed it for lack of demand.

 

[YeOldeOke]

Citrus kills tanks. So we will not go there again. You can use them as a background note but anything pronounced will attack seals, tubes etc.

 

[DavyH]

Creating good NET's are, IMHO, an artform. Which is why I am attracted to it in the first place. It's more than just a technical challenge, much more.

There are a lot of technical challenges attached to NETs. The various extraction processes employed to extract the desired flavour notes are just the beginning, the purifying process must be balanced to rid the extract of undesirable elements without losing or diffusing the character of the juice.

You want a safe juice which has as light an impact on coils and wicks as possible, but you don't want to strip the expression of the juice and make it sterile.

So it's a balancing act. Reduce coil/wick buildup but retain the reason you are producing the NET in the first place, the complex interplay of the beautiful notes.


Which is why NET juices are so expensive. It is a long, careful painting of your masterpiece. No quick and easy fixes to be had as can be done with regular juices. If it's sub-par, it's months wasted as it heads for the drain.

That’s a big ‘yes, please’ from me.

 

[YeOldeOke]

That’s a big ‘yes, please’ from me.

@DavyH There hasn't been much of a reaction to this thread, not sure there's much interest locally in NETs.

 

[DavyH]

@DavyH There hasn't been much of a reaction to this thread, not sure there's much interest locally in NETs.

Strange. Let's face it, most tobaccos are okay at best and one always gets the feeling there should be better out there.

 

[Intuthu Kagesi]

@DavyH There hasn't been much of a reaction to this thread, not sure there's much interest locally in NETs.

In spite of me having smoked probably the stinkies of stinkies for years, (Camels), I , like a lot of ex. smokers, now have an aversion to their smell ... however I do enjoy just a smidgen of a tobacco taste, (distinct from smell), in my vapes. I'm also concerned that NETs may have some of / all of the tar(s) that stinkies have.
I'm not sure what you're trying to achieve with your NET's, however if you could alleviate my concerns, I may just give em a go

 

[YeOldeOke]

In spite of me having smoked probably the stinkies of stinkies for years, (Camels), I , like a lot of ex. smokers, now have an aversion to their smell ... however I do enjoy just a smidgen of a tobacco taste, (distinct from smell), in my vapes. I'm also concerned that NETs may have some of / all of the tar(s) that stinkies have.
I'm not sure what you're trying to achieve with your NET's, however if you could alleviate my concerns, I may just give em a go

@Intuthu Kagesi
That I will do, keeping in mind this is not a DIY project, it is a commercial one so processes are sensitive issues.
That will be addressed pre-launch.

What I'm trying to achieve with NETs is a much better experience than 'tobacco' vapes, with as little added risk as possible. If they're rough 'n' dirty, the size of the potential market would not justify the effort and very long time of development.

 

[Intuthu Kagesi]

@Intuthu Kagesi
That I will do, keeping in mind this is not a DIY project, it is a commercial one so processes are sensitive issues.
That will be addressed pre-launch.

What I'm trying to achieve with NETs is a much better experience than 'tobacco' vapes, with as little added risk as possible. If they're rough 'n' dirty, the size of the potential market would not justify the effort and very long time of development.

Thanks for the reply ... I look forward to hearing more and possibly sampling them in the future

 

[YeOldeOke]

In spite of me having smoked probably the stinkies of stinkies for years, (Camels), I , like a lot of ex. smokers, now have an aversion to their smell ... however I do enjoy just a smidgen of a tobacco taste, (distinct from smell), in my vapes. I'm also concerned that NETs may have some of / all of the tar(s) that stinkies have.
I'm not sure what you're trying to achieve with your NET's, however if you could alleviate my concerns, I may just give em a go

@Intuthu Kagesi

Actually, I have to expand a bit on my reply. I understand your concerns fully. On the other hand, I've never been one to try and convince others of something. I state the facts as well as I can and they have to make up their own mind on which way to go.

NETs by their nature contain more plant material than lab-created flavourings. Unless you want to sink a few million $ in lab research over a few years, that is the real world. Any vape is arguably detrimental to your health, that is a fight the industry has been fighting for years.
It's a case of balance between what you enjoy in life, risk to enjoy it, and the price your willing to pay for an ultra-safe, multi-million dollar extensively lab researched and developed product. We tend to forget perfection is unattainable but follows an exponential cost curve the closer you get.

There are various processes that can be used to extract flavour from tobacco, each one will extract a different set of components from the leaf, and it also depends on the leaf used.

What I use will be proprietary info at this stage, as it is not a DIY but a commercial product. So again a balancing act, how many certificates of purity does the customer demand vs what price he/she is willing to pay.

Suffice to say I have studied the various processes and settled on one that extracts the most flavour and least tars, resins, nicotine, chlorophyll and other alkaloids. It is not the quickest and easiest process, but it yields the purest flavour extract. I aim to extract flavour, not nicotine etc. This extracts almost zero nicotine.
I do not use alcohol in the extraction process for a variety of important reasons.

One of the quick and rough guides to how pure an extract is, is how quickly it will gunk up coils and wicks with tars, resins, plant material etc. Again a balancing act, you want to retain as much flavour as you can else what's the point of the exercise

I understand the concerns, I'm trying to gauge the average tobacco vapers' position re flavour, coil and wick life, safety and price.

I may just launch one flavour as a test, or I may ditch the whole issue as not worth the investment.


As an indicator, coil gunking is a good measure, though not perfect. Here is a quickly-and-badly-wound coil (not wound to test flavour, just gunking) after vaping 5ml Black Cavendish over two days. Cavendish carries a lot of sugars created by the curing process, so it is a very good test.

Various contrast/colour/brightness to highlight any impurities on the wick. The coil is naturally discoloured, but no gunk, a very quick dry-burn cleared it with no typical gunk vapour coming off it. The wick is naturally discoloured as would be expected, but no bits of gunk in it.


I'll see, the final decision is yet to be made.








Anyone who has run a pipe cleaner through a pipe stem after just one bowl will know what tars do. That coil and wick is free of tar.

 

[Intuthu Kagesi]

Thanks for the reply ... now you have my intrigue going 10 to the dozen and that's to your credit ... (in my previous life, I was inevitably thrown into new product presentation with the label of convince him and the rest of the board will back you )
I can't speak for all, however my major reason for dumping stinkies was health, and reading between the lines on various posts on this forum, think that's certainly one of the more common points, so with reference to your wishing to gauge the average vapers' position on flavour, coil and wick life, safety and price ... you're going to have some challenges, (as it will be skewed by price in current times, and for obvious reasons), however;

With enough fact to support any claims, don't see that as too big a hurdle to jump ... Health and safety I would say are the major door openers alongside flavour, (ie. taste, distinct from nose, and certainly excluding flavones and flavanoids, which you may want to highlight, as that'll tie back into the tar(s), and other nasties that are created when tobacco is heated / burnt) ... Then onto wick and coil life ...

At times I've had to do daily wicking, (and a quick coil glow and strum to burn off residue) ... that is hardly a trainsmash, nor is a few cents worth of cotton, however having to replace fancy coils that may have gunked up might be a fairly substantial handbrake, and again ...
If you back up your claims with real data comparing it to typical commercial juices, you nullify any opposition, which brings us back to price ...
Maybe you need to look at a market entry strategy of reduced profits?

Incidentally ... you have my details on file if you wish to chat about process offline

 

[YeOldeOke]

@Intuthu Kagesi Market entry at reduced profit is what I do best, again a balancing act of projected volumes vs price vs long-term potential vs cost.

I do however, as usual, have more than a handful of projects in the pipeline, both vaping related and non-vaping. The non-vaping one is by FAR the most potential profit, by a zillion country miles. That one I am developing for my family, more than myself, because beyond the interest of the challenge it holds very little interest to me. Money per se has never been one of my interests or motivators.

So I spend a hell of a lot of time and effort on the other projects, coz I enjoy them. They don't pay much, but as I'm nearing EOL I'm more about enjoying what I do than ever before. That is where the NET challenge comes in, not much money but a decent challenge with a lot of interest. True for all my vaping-related projects.

 

[Intuthu Kagesi]

@Intuthu Kagesi Market entry at reduced profit is what I do best, again a balancing act of projected volumes vs price vs long-term potential vs cost.

I do however, as usual, have more than a handful of projects in the pipeline, both vaping related and non-vaping. The non-vaping one is by FAR the most potential profit, by a zillion country miles. That one I am developing for my family, more than myself, because beyond the interest of the challenge it holds very little interest to me. Money per se has never been one of my interests or motivators.

So I spend a hell of a lot of time and effort on the other projects, coz I enjoy them. They don't pay much, but as I'm nearing EOL I'm more about enjoying what I do than ever before. That is where the NET challenge comes in, not much money but a decent challenge with a lot of interest. True for all my vaping-related projects.

Welcome to my world ... I go for the challenge and the learning nowadays, to which a gazillion projects sounds about right , (so much for my claimed retirement )

 

[Iceman@11]

Here in the uk, I have been using the @juicecabin range of NET. 12mg. Very enjoyable.

 

[YeOldeOke]

Welcome to my world ... I go for the challenge and the learning nowadays, to which a gazillion projects sounds about right , (so much for my claimed retirement )

Retirement is not something I have ever thought of as a positive, to me it is a horror. Go sit down and wait for death. I'd prefer to die on my feet if I can.

 

[YeOldeOke]

Here in the uk, I have been using the @juicecabin range of NET. 12mg. Very enjoyable.

@Iceman@11 How do they do on coils and wicks. Do you use RDA, RTA, MTL, DL?

 

[Iceman@11]

Mtl tanks.
Bezerker v2.
Augvape
Expromzer
Pioneer
Siren 3
0.8 ohm coils
Cotton last about 3 tanks. The coils just a quick burn and ready to go.

 

[YeOldeOke]

Mtl tanks.
Bezerker v2.
Augvape
Expromzer
Pioneer
Siren 3
0.8 ohm coils
Cotton last about 3 tanks. The coils just a quick burn and ready to go.

@Iceman@11 When you say about 3 tanks, what would that be in ml. 6 to 15?