Steeping means aging your e-juice so the flavor develops further. It is worth trying when a bottle you used to like tastes flat, or when you want more out of a flavor than it gives straight from the shop. The usual comparison is whiskey: time improves it, up to a point. Unlike whiskey, e-juice needs no barrel and nowhere near a decade.
The word may bring a cup of tea to mind, but nothing is soaked here. This guide explains what happens during steeping, the basic method, and two shortcuts.
What steeping does
Aging begins as soon as the liquid is bottled. The trip from the manufacturer to you is simply too short for a fresh batch to reach its fullest flavor, so the rest of the aging is left to you, if you want it.
The basic method: a box and some patience
- Put the bottles in a box and leave them.
- Shake each bottle once a day. Shaking helps the process along.
- Taste the juice when you think it might be ready.
Nobody can give you a fixed steeping time. Some vapers stop after a few weeks and others wait a few months, though around two weeks is widely seen as a sensible place to start. How good the result is comes down to taste, mainly how strong you like the flavor.
Flavors differ too, and some need longer than others to reach the strength you are after.
There is a limit. E-juice does expire, so a bottle left to steep too long may be past use before you ever try it.
Two faster options
If weeks of waiting does not appeal, these shortcuts take hours.
Let it breathe
Take the cap off and leave the bottle standing in open air for a few hours, the way you would air a wine. Keep an eye on the clock: after roughly 12 hours uncapped, the juice starts to turn rancid.
Use heat
Heat speeds the process up. On a hot, sunny day you can leave a bottle in the glovebox of your car for a few hours. Any hot, dark spot does the same job and can give results in hours that would otherwise take weeks.
Whichever shortcut you use, taste the juice before you fill a tank with it.
Something to practice on
If you need a bottle or two to experiment with, the new arrivals at ejuice.deals include dozens of flavors.