Since fixing my issue with my browser after losing the entire review I wrote for one of the Mad Vapes juices I was reviewing, I've sinced tried another flavor. Since it was similar to the other one, I'm going to cover both juices in one review. The two juices I'll be reviewing in this blog (a double feature! Yay!) are Hazelnut Caramel Macchiato and Chocolate Macaroon, which are both from TopVapor, which is MadVapes' own juice line.
The main reason I'm reviewing these together is that they taste almost identical to each other, at least to me. When I was in my 20's I was really into coffee. I ground my own beans and made my own blends and generally loved coffee. As I got older, not so much. In fact, I can't go near coffee anymore, though I still love the smell of it. But I just found the bitterness of coffee or espresso to be too much for me, unless it was loaded with sugar or chocolate. And the caffeine made me very cranky and irritable. I've heard many mixed reviews of coffee flavored e-juice over the last year, with complaints about the easily gunked up coils and the bitterness and all the other things that make vapers universally dislike a certain flavor, no matter who makes it. Since I'm not a fan of the bitter taste of coffee in general, I figured I'd probably be one of the ones who didn't like it, so I avoided it completely. When I won a bunch of free juice in a contest, however, I figured what the heck and ordered one just to check it out.
And boy am I glad I did. The Hazelnut Caramel Macchiato is superb. It's nutty and sweet and tastes more like the way coffee smells than the way it actually tastes, if that makes sense. It's a fairly dark juice and does gunk up those coils pretty quick, so don't put it in a tank. From what I've found on the net, it looks like TopVapor's juices are all roughly 20% PG and 80% VG. Again, not good for tanks, since juice that's much above a 50/50 blend will often be too thick to wick correctly. But in a dripper, this juice is amazing. Not a big throat hit, but respectable at 6mg nic dripped on a dual coil setup at around 0.9 or 0.8 ohms resistance. The vapor production is stellar. Interestingly, the flavor holds up just as well with massive, wide open airflow as it does with a tighter, more restrictive draw. This was somewhat of a shocker, and at first I thought my new CLT was the greatest dripper in the world because of this. But no, it was the juice. Which I recommend without reservation or qualification.
Chocolate Macaroon was a no-brainer for me when choosing flavors. If you've never had a macaroon, it's a confection made mostly of sweetened coconut in the form of a little cake, usually dipped partway in a thick, rich chocolate. Macaroons to me are like pizza or sex. When it's really good, it's the best thing you ever experienced. When it's the worst you've ever had, well, it's still pretty awesome. Sadly, TopVapor's Chocolate Macaroon is not so hot. Like I said, it tastes nearly identical to the Hazelnut Caramel Macchiato, with one major difference: much less flavor. Like they just took the HCM and watered it down with vanilla or milk. I don't taste the coconut hardly at all. Which, for a macaroon flavor, is incredibly disappointing. Don't get me wrong, it's not a bad vape. It just doesn't taste a whole lot like a macaroon. If it was called Hazelnut Caramel Macchiato Without a Lot of Macchiato and Just a Hint of Coconut, I'd be raving about it. But with the flavor so weak I need to tighten the airflow way down to get a nice flavor and actually taste some of the way-too-subtle coconut. So it's salvageable and not something I will throw away. I really do like the flavor, it's just not very accurate to the description. The chocolate is not very pronounced, either.
Edited to add an update on Chocolate Macaroon. I tried this again on 2/25/2015, this time on a dual coil, 24 gauge build that came out to about .38 ohms (wrapped six times on a 3mm screwdriver), on my CLT V1 RDA. The higher heat of the lower resistance build brought out the sweet coconut and chocolate notes, and made the whole experience much better. So much better, in fact, that I'm now totally reversing my 'meh' review of this juice. It's phenomenal and very tasty. I've found more and more that higher VG juices just taste much better to me in the .32 to .40 ohm range. Give this juice a chance if you commonly build that low. Highly recommended.
Further edit addition on 3/4/15 - When I first did this review, I had read somewhere that Top Vapor juices were 80% VG. This morning I watched it soak into my new Rayon wick and realized that NO WAY is this juice that high in VG. It went into the wick immediately. High VG juices usually sit on top of a new wick for a second or two before being absorbed. This is at least 50/50, maybe even more PG than that. I stand by my earlier edit that it tastes much better at high wattage/low resistance, though. But now I know why it's getting used up so quickly.
The main reason I'm reviewing these together is that they taste almost identical to each other, at least to me. When I was in my 20's I was really into coffee. I ground my own beans and made my own blends and generally loved coffee. As I got older, not so much. In fact, I can't go near coffee anymore, though I still love the smell of it. But I just found the bitterness of coffee or espresso to be too much for me, unless it was loaded with sugar or chocolate. And the caffeine made me very cranky and irritable. I've heard many mixed reviews of coffee flavored e-juice over the last year, with complaints about the easily gunked up coils and the bitterness and all the other things that make vapers universally dislike a certain flavor, no matter who makes it. Since I'm not a fan of the bitter taste of coffee in general, I figured I'd probably be one of the ones who didn't like it, so I avoided it completely. When I won a bunch of free juice in a contest, however, I figured what the heck and ordered one just to check it out.
And boy am I glad I did. The Hazelnut Caramel Macchiato is superb. It's nutty and sweet and tastes more like the way coffee smells than the way it actually tastes, if that makes sense. It's a fairly dark juice and does gunk up those coils pretty quick, so don't put it in a tank. From what I've found on the net, it looks like TopVapor's juices are all roughly 20% PG and 80% VG. Again, not good for tanks, since juice that's much above a 50/50 blend will often be too thick to wick correctly. But in a dripper, this juice is amazing. Not a big throat hit, but respectable at 6mg nic dripped on a dual coil setup at around 0.9 or 0.8 ohms resistance. The vapor production is stellar. Interestingly, the flavor holds up just as well with massive, wide open airflow as it does with a tighter, more restrictive draw. This was somewhat of a shocker, and at first I thought my new CLT was the greatest dripper in the world because of this. But no, it was the juice. Which I recommend without reservation or qualification.
Chocolate Macaroon was a no-brainer for me when choosing flavors. If you've never had a macaroon, it's a confection made mostly of sweetened coconut in the form of a little cake, usually dipped partway in a thick, rich chocolate. Macaroons to me are like pizza or sex. When it's really good, it's the best thing you ever experienced. When it's the worst you've ever had, well, it's still pretty awesome. Sadly, TopVapor's Chocolate Macaroon is not so hot. Like I said, it tastes nearly identical to the Hazelnut Caramel Macchiato, with one major difference: much less flavor. Like they just took the HCM and watered it down with vanilla or milk. I don't taste the coconut hardly at all. Which, for a macaroon flavor, is incredibly disappointing. Don't get me wrong, it's not a bad vape. It just doesn't taste a whole lot like a macaroon. If it was called Hazelnut Caramel Macchiato Without a Lot of Macchiato and Just a Hint of Coconut, I'd be raving about it. But with the flavor so weak I need to tighten the airflow way down to get a nice flavor and actually taste some of the way-too-subtle coconut. So it's salvageable and not something I will throw away. I really do like the flavor, it's just not very accurate to the description. The chocolate is not very pronounced, either.
Edited to add an update on Chocolate Macaroon. I tried this again on 2/25/2015, this time on a dual coil, 24 gauge build that came out to about .38 ohms (wrapped six times on a 3mm screwdriver), on my CLT V1 RDA. The higher heat of the lower resistance build brought out the sweet coconut and chocolate notes, and made the whole experience much better. So much better, in fact, that I'm now totally reversing my 'meh' review of this juice. It's phenomenal and very tasty. I've found more and more that higher VG juices just taste much better to me in the .32 to .40 ohm range. Give this juice a chance if you commonly build that low. Highly recommended.
Further edit addition on 3/4/15 - When I first did this review, I had read somewhere that Top Vapor juices were 80% VG. This morning I watched it soak into my new Rayon wick and realized that NO WAY is this juice that high in VG. It went into the wick immediately. High VG juices usually sit on top of a new wick for a second or two before being absorbed. This is at least 50/50, maybe even more PG than that. I stand by my earlier edit that it tastes much better at high wattage/low resistance, though. But now I know why it's getting used up so quickly.
