Botanika™

MIXING
Botanika is a highly concentrated blend of herbal extracts that consists of organic green tea, yerba mate, kava, and burdock. These herbs represent two gentle stimulants plus two herbs for mood support and one for appetite and detox.

Botanika tastes like a very light, sweet tea with notes of brown sugar. As you increase the concentration of Botanika, the flavor will become more prevalent. We suggest you find a happy medium between effect and flavor. And, we typically see manufacturers producing 5% and 10% versions of their Made with Botanika liquids.

You can formulate using existing 0mg liquid flavors or you can formulate new flavors from scratch. Either way, Botanika will take up between 3% and 10% of the total volume of liquid. For reference, Botanika is 90% VG and 10% purified water.

Botanika is nontoxic, so you can literally eyeball mixing without causing harm. For simplicity, we mix to overall concentration. For example, if you have a 30ml 0mg juice, you simply multiply by the desired concentration percentage (5%,10%). 30ml x 0.05 (5% desired percentage) = 1.5ml. So, take out 1.5ml of your 0mg liquid and discard, put in 1.5ml Botanika. This will give you a 5% total concentration (equivalent to 3mg nicotine). Simply adding small amounts of water decreases viscosity.
We recommend 5% and 10% concentrations. You may choose to go higher, but we do not recommend going above 15% as it will be more difficult to work with the flavor and it can have a strong stimulant effect that may be unpleasant to some consumers.

Existing 0mg liquids mixed with Botanika need to steep for at least one week to return to their original flavor, as do original flavors made from scratch.

THE EFFECT

Botanika delivers a boost of energy plus support for mood, appetite and detox. It does not impact dopamine levels like nicotine, so the same strong head rush that nicotine has is not typically present. That said, this is what makes Botanika non-habit forming.
The desired effect of Botanika for the first week or two is low or no nicotine cravings and no withdrawal symptoms. Most people are used to the nicotine jolt caused by artificially high dopamine production. Botanika does not cause overproduction of dopamine like nicotine does, so they will not feel that jolt initially. They will however, have their nicotine cravings satisfied by Botanika.
Increasing the concentration of Botanika will increase the stimulant effect as well as provide more of a calming effect along with appetite support. You'll want to test the concentration at different levels and determine your specific target. This will help differentiate your brand.

WITHDRAWAL PROCESS
For maximum efficacy, we recommend that the consumer only uses Botanika or 0mg products during the withdrawal period. Any nicotine usage will continue dopamine overproduction and prolong the process.

Once dopamine levels return to normal (typically 1-2 weeks), the customer will then start to feel more of the powerful effects of Botanika. Reports and personal experience say the Botanika effect is much more pleasant than the nicotine effect overall.

THE FLAVOR
Again, Botanika tastes like a very light, sweet tea with notes of brown sugar. As you increase the concentration of Botanika, the flavor will become more prevalent. This is, in part, why we recommend using 3% to 10% and limiting to a maximum of 13%.

Flavorists can achieve any mainstream flavor with Botanika and often enjoy the natural edge that Botanika can provide when used with artificial flavors. Elixir uses all natural flavors and can recommend a vendor for these if you desire to create an all natural version of your liquids.

Botanika does not burn the back of the users throat like nicotine does, so it does not have a strong "throat hit". With the recent addition of kava, which contains capsaicin, we have increased the throat hit a bit. We find that most users enjoy this lighter aspect of Botanika and it allows them to vape more of the liquid without throat irritation. If more throat hit is desired, we recommend "ice" flavors, or we encourage liquid makers to get creative and design their own in- house effect, which would make a great differentiator for brands.