Soaking boilies/bait preservatives

[RedBeard89]

Intro coming soon(tm) but in the meantime...

Nearly 2 years ago I bought a big bag of cheap boilies and decided to soak them in a mix of glug and oil. They smelled absolutely amazing and I had a fantastic 24 hours in them (on a fairly easy water, it has to be said) but they soon got rock hard. The other layers would dissolve off in water and soften but the core was like a stone so I decided not to use those in case they case they caused the fish any issues. Turns out I know have about 5kg of amazing boilie crumb instead ? anyway.....

I figured it was the oil causing the issue and the core was very dark, a little bit of Googling however says that glycerin (the main component of the glug) makes boilies harden. Having bought another 10kg of boilies and a bottle of glug I'm now questioning my approach. Do the other gkig bases like the alcohols cause the same problem with boilies? I plan on keeping these in a bait bucket with a light coating of flavouring permanently until they're used up.

Similar, related question... I'm going to be boiling up a small batch of tigers to blend up into the crumb and aa a bonus I'll get half a cup of amazing, sticky tiger juice which would be absolutely perfect for soaking boilies in. The problem of course is that the juice simply won't last more than a week or so before becoming rancid and disgusting. No good for long term soaking, are there any fish friendly preservatives that could avoid that? One option is freezing the boilies which is fine but I fear that they won't be able to absorb the liquids as of course they'll all be ice.

A third option has just occurred, using nut oils eg tiger nut, it seems that oils soften boilies?

Decisions, decisions... Any advice?

 

[Frothey]

Dry for a day or two, freeze, then add whatever your choice of liquid when you take them out of the freezer, they’ll suck it up.

Tigernut ”oil” (Horchata de chuffa if you want to avoid the carp tax) isn’t really an oil, its a nut milk. They’re a tuber, rather than a nut.
Most nut oils will also go off over time if put on bait and left open to the air (unless the bucket is rammed)
I wouldn’t keep coating with flavour as a preservative, you’ll overflavour them - fine a single hookbaits but not freebies. Hutchy/Nash’s original Chocolate Malt is about the only flavour I can think of that this might wok with. But pointless!

Glycerin is about as close as you’ll get as a short term preservative - they‘lol soften up in water, and sugars are attractive in their own right.....