One of the many advantages to vaping over smoking is that you can get your nicotine fix in a wide variety of fun flavours. When your favourite flavour starts to get boring, you can easily switch.
If you’re one who likes to change flavours a bit, you’ve probably found that you have several partially used bottles of E Liquid lying around. If you’ve ever gone back to an old flavour after a while, you may have realised that the taste is no longer as good as you remembered it to be. It’s not a memory issue, storing E Liquids incorrectly can cause them to lose their flavour.
The effect might be that it’s slightly blander than you remembered, or it might even taste completely disgusting. That’s because to get the flavours just right, requires quite a bit of complex chemistry and those chemical compounds can break down over time—especially when you’re not taking care to store your E Liquid properly—resulting in diminished flavour.
The following tips can help you store your E Liquid safely and in such a way that you can go back to them days, or even weeks, later and enjoy the same great taste that you remember.
Three Factors that can Compromise your E Liquid flavours
The three things you want to be mindful of concerning the flavours of your E Liquid during storage are heat, sunlight and oxygen.
When a liquid reaches higher temperatures the molecules that make up the liquid have more energy and can react and interact with other molecules in different ways leading to a breakdown of chemical compounds into smaller components which can, in turn, affect the flavour.
Keeping oxygen out of your E Liquid completely is impossible. Even a full bottle has some air in the top and as you use up your Liquid, the ratio of oxygen to E Liquid in the bottle goes up. The problem is when your E Liquid is exposed to sunlight. The sun’s UV rays energise oxygen molecules causing them to interact with the nicotine in your bottle. So, keep it out of the sun as much as possible.
Glass vs. Plastic
If you’re going to be storing E Liquids at all, make sure you’re using higher grade plastics—or even better—glass. The lower the grade of plastic, the more permeable it is which means more exposure to outside air and more lost flavour. Plastics can also interact with chemicals in your E Liquid affecting the flavour. Glass is less permeable than even the highest-grade of plastic which makes it superior to any other bottle for the storage of your Liquids.
Short vs. Long-Term Storage
For short-term storage (think several days rather than weeks), keeping your E Liquids in a dark, cool place like a cupboard should be fine and you won’t notice much, if any, difference in flavour when you come back to it.
If you want to set aside particular flavours for longer periods of time, like weeks or months, then you’ll have to store them in the fridge where the molecules will have much less energy and won’t react with each other and break down nearly as fast.
Keep out of Reach of Children
E Liquids are for adults only. Nicotine is an addictive substance and should be kept out of reach of any children who may be in your home. In concentrated amounts (which is what children would get if they drink E Liquid right from the bottle), nicotine is even more dangerous. As vaping becomes more popular, accidental nicotine poisonings do too. Wherever you’re storing E Liquid, make sure children can’t gain access to it.
Remember, out of heat and light and please keep them out of reach of little hands.
Happy Vaping!
