About Vaping, How To Guides
How to store your vape juice correctly
How to store your vape juice correctly
Storing your vape juice correctly is important for a few different reasons, the primary one being you don’t want it to spoil and end up with bottles of unusable vape juice as that’s just a waste. I’ve written an article surrounding how to troubleshoot and solve your vaping device problems, and in this article I’m going to give you a few tips on how to properly store vape juice so you don’t end up with a hoard of unusable bottles!
What is in e-liquids that can go bad?
E-Liquid is made using food-grade ingredients that have a shelf life similar to that of actual food items, and they need to be stored in the correct way to avoid them becoming spoilt.
The two main ingredients that are a risk of this happening to is Vegetable Glycerine (VG) and Nicotine. Some vape juices do come without nicotine included, which eliminates one risk, but the VG can still turn without the Nicotine in.
What happens if these ingredients turn?
If either of the two above mentioned ingredients go bad, the e-liquid simply wont taste right, or like what you’re used to. It can become sour, or bitter to taste, and if the nicotine turns, the juice can become quite harsh on your throat when you have a vape. There’s no way to rectify spoilt juice, and once it’s spoilt, it sadly is spoilt for good, so dispose of it and grab yourself a fresh bottle!
What can cause e-liquid to go bad?
There are a few factors that can result in e-liquid going bad, I’ll list them below:
- Heat
- Air
- Light
Any of these 3 factors can lead to your vape juice becoming unusable, and I’ll explain how;
Heat
As with any perishable item, if it is exposed to heat for a prolonged time, it will perish quite fast. Therefore, I wouldn’t recommend leaving your vape juice in places like a windowsill, or in your car on hot days as this will likely cause your vape juice to spoil. I speak from experience here, as I left a bottle of vape juice in my car during the summer heatwave we had recently, and it turned to a very watery consistency as the heat from the sun had caused the VG to thin right down from it’s usual thicker consistency and made it completely unvapable…lesson learnt!
Air
The air getting to your vape juice can cause the nicotine to spoil due to the oxidation in the air reacting with it. I had a bit of a bad habit when I used to manage a vape shop which was leaving the lids off my vape juice bottles for prolonged periods of time, either forgetting to put it back on in busy spells, or I was just a bit negligent and I wondered why it tasted harsh when i filled my tank back up, yet another lesson learnt! So don’t be like me and actually remember to put the lid back on your juice after refilling your vape.
Light
This buddies up with the heat element of turning vape juice bad, as leaving juice in direct sunlight will cause it to spoil as I’ve mentioned above. Try and avoid leaving vape juice near any desk lamps or anything as this will be another combination of light and heat and could spell disaster for your vape juice!
How to correctly store your vape juice
Now we get to the question in topic, how do you correctly store e-liquids, so they don’t go bad? The straightforward answer is, avoid all of the above mentioned! But I’ll go into a bit more detail with it.
Keep in a cool place – Like you’ll see on most food packaging; it’s always advised to keep items with perishable ingredients in a cool and/or dark place to avoid perish. This can be done by finding a suitable place to store your e-liquid like in a draw, or a cupboard. Both of which are normally dark and cool, well they are in my house!
Don’t leave it in places it can be exposed to harmful elements – Pretty standard right? Keep it away from direct sunlight so not on your windowsill, or desk where the sun hits. Don’t leave it in your car or outside in the sunlight either!
Keep an eye on shelf-life dates – All vape juices have a shelf life, with a best before date printed on the bottles. Keep an eye on these, as I am yet again speaking from experience, vaping out of date vape juice is not a pleasant experience (it’s not harmful, the flavour just tastes vile!)
Keep your e-liquid in the fridge or freezer – This is a method I have never done in my 7 years of vaping, but some recommend storing e-liquid in the fridge or a freezer at a cool temperature as a long-term storage option and it avoids it becoming spoiled. Like I say, I’ve never done this and tend to store e-liquid at room temperature, but some people swear by this method, each to their own!
Keep out of reach of children and pets – Goes without saying, e-liquids should be treated like medicines, and kept well out of reach of kids and pets in your household so nobody gets their hands or paws on it! Putting it somewhere like a high cupboard or shelf is a good idea, and remember it’s important to keep kids and pets safe and keep your juices stored properly.
