Comment · Fri, May 28, 2021 · ND Owner
This tub of Nootropics Depot L-theanine smells like musty pizza (confirmed by wife).
Original post in this thread
Happy_Stardust · 0 points
This l-theanine has a very strange smell. I’ve been buying l-theanine powder for years from multiple vendors and never had it smell like anything at all, so I’m quite hesitant to use this product, and it makes me question all the claims ND makes about purity testing (which is a bummer, because they are always coming out with interesting compounds). I tasted a small amount to see if it was in fact l-theanine, which I believe it is—it has the normal slightly sweet umami taste—but something is definitely off. In all fairness, I did contact ND support, and they provided the certificate of analysis showing it passed, along with an offer to return the product (it wasn't expensive enough for me to even bother boxing it up and returning it). Nevertheless, you can show me COAs all day, but if a regularly odorless compound smells like weird a musty pizza restaurant, I ain't puttin' it in my body, and I'm certainly going to question the other products. Anyone else had this issue? Lot number is LTHS1081720.
​
EDIT: Apparently this may be due to ND l-theanine particle size being very small, making it easier to smell compared to other brands.
​
What they were answering
Happy_Stardust · 6 points
Thanks for the detailed response! Yep, I was the annoying customer from 5 months ago! I just ran out of my other theanine and found this one in the back of my cabinet, which reminded me to ask about it here. It's definitely super fluffy, so that makes sense that more particles would be nostril-bound, making it easier to smell than larger particle size batches. Faith restored.
u/MisterYouAreSoDumb · ND Owner
My pleasure! Trust me, we have a panel of people who smell every product of ours. I am one of them. We have these retention tubes for every single product we have ever sold, and we use those as references for what a product should smell like. We also came up with descriptions of what everyone thought best fit the smells. Those are subjective, but there were 6 people on our organoleptic panel that all collaborated on what they thought things smelled like. Our lab uses that to determine if a new batch of product meets our organoleptic specs, and compares the smell to the reference tube of powder for that raw material. If anything doesn't match, they hold the batch and get me involved. We are on top of things!