If you’re new to vaping, you’ve no doubt noticed one thing when shopping for e-liquid online: There is a huge selection of vape juice in the world. It’s possible to visit a single online vape shop and find hundreds of different e-liquids, all available and ready to ship to your door. That can be a pretty overwhelming experience if you’re new to vaping and aren’t really sure what your preferences are yet.

 

Taste is subjective, and you’ll ultimately need to decide for yourself what your favorite e-liquids are. This article, however, is going to provide some initial pieces of advice that can help you get off to the best possible start in your exploration of the wide world of vape juice. What product will end up becoming your favorite e-liquid? These pointers will help you in your search.

Think in Terms of Flavor Profiles Rather Than Individual Flavor Notes

 

Aside from basic flavors like tobacco and menthol, most of today’s e-liquids are not designed to capture individual flavor notes. It’s rare, for instance, to find e-liquids named just “Cherry” or “Grape.” Instead, a modern vape juice usually tastes like a specific food – a jelly-filled doughnut, for instance – or a blend of different flavors. To narrow down the selection of e-liquids at a vape shop to just a few that interest you, it’s helpful to think in terms of wider flavor profiles rather than individual flavor notes. Some of the most common flavor profiles in the e-liquid industry include:

 

  • Baked Goods
  • Beverages
  • Candy
  • Cereal
  • Cream/Dairy
  • Fruit

 

You can find an enormous selection of flavor profiles at any well-stocked vape shop; those are just a few ideas to get you started. Instead of searching for individual flavors like “strawberry,” try searching for wider categories of treats and snacks. Once you’ve discovered a general flavor category that appeals to you, you’ll find it much easier to narrow your search down to a few specific products that you’ll be likely to enjoy.

Choose Between Sweetened and Unsweetened E-Liquid

 

One thing that you’ll quickly learn as you try various e-liquids is that it is incredibly common for vape juice makers to add sweeteners to their products. People love sweet flavors, and e-liquid makers are only too happy to oblige by sweetening their products with heavy doses of sucralose. Sucralose is incredibly sweet. It can be a great addition to an e-liquid intended to taste like candy, for instance, because it’s the sweetener that’s usually used in sugar-free candy.

 

So, sucralose is a good thing in e-liquid, right? Actually, that isn’t necessarily the case. Sucralose tastes nice, but it also leaves dark, sticky deposits on the atomizer coil of your vaping device. Those deposits eventually become so thick that they create an unpleasant flavor – like burned sugar – when you vape.

 

Are you currently using an e-liquid that tastes extremely sweet? Do you find that your device’s atomizer coils or pods seem to burn out after just a day or two? It doesn’t have to be that way. If you avoid sucralose-sweetened e-liquid, you’ll get dramatically better life from your coils. Some people who use unsweetened e-liquids find that they can use their coils for weeks with no loss in flavor quality.


 

E-liquid makers who add sweeteners to their products don’t necessarily advertise that fact, so finding a vape shop that specializes in unsweetened e-liquid isn’t always easy. Pure E-Liquids is one vape shop with a wide selection of sucralose-free vape juice.

Understand How Your Vaping Device Affects Your Choice of Nicotine Strength

 

In the past few years, a new type of nicotine – nicotine salt – has become increasingly popular among vapers. There are plenty of good reasons for nicotine salt’s popularity, but this new type of e-liquid has the potential to create a great deal of confusion for new vapers.

A lot of different vapesare so powerful that if you use a device with a large glass tank, the correct nicotine strength is almost always 3 mg.

How can nicotine salt e-liquid cause a problem for a new vaper?

 

In the United States – which has no restriction on nicotine strengths for e-liquid at the time of writing – the two most popular nicotine strengths for e-liquid are 3 mg/ml and 50 mg/ml. One strength has almost 17 times as much nicotine per milliliter as the other. Imagine what might happen if you selected the wrong one.

 

So, how do you know whether you should be looking through the standard e-liquid section or the nicotine salt section when you’re shopping for vape juice? You’ll get the answer to that question by looking at your vaping device.

 

  • Do you have a device that stores its e-liquid in a clear removable plastic pod? Is the device small enough that you can conceal it in your closed hand? You’ll probably have the best experience with nicotine salt e-liquid.
  • Do you have a device that stores its e-liquid in a glass tank with a removable atomizer coil? Is the device large enough that concealing it in your hand would be difficult or impossible? You’ll probably have the best experience with standard e-liquid.

 

With those pointers in mind, the next thing to do is select the correct nicotine strength for your needs. In the United States, the most common nicotine strengths for standard e-liquid are 3 mg and 6 mg. Nicotine salt e-liquid, on the other hand, usually comes in strengths of 20-25 mg and 40-50 mg. Choose the correct nicotine strength with these tips.

 

  • The more vapor your device produces, the lower your nicotine strength should be. Modern vaping devices are so powerful that if you use a device with a large glass tank, the correct nicotine strength is almost always 3 mg. Try that nicotine strength first and increase your nicotine strength only if you’re certain it’s necessary.
  • If you’re using a pod system and have just converted from smoking to vaping, the correct nicotine strength is usually 40-50 mg. Those are the strengths that deliver nicotine to the body with efficiency similar to that of a tobacco cigarette. If you have been vaping for a while and are trying a pod system for the first time, choose a nicotine strength in the 20-25 mg range instead.

 

Image Source: BigStock.com (licensed)

 

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