I had to smoke a couple nails because I was without a battery a couple weeks ago, and I was pleased to find that I didn't like it. I was very happy to get home and grab my Silver Bullet and take a blast. As someone who has smoked a cigarette recently, I am pleased to be able to tell you that the right juice on the right hardware absolutely delivers more impact than smoking a cigarette does. The juice I vape on my Silver Bullet with a 1.5-1.7 ohm atty has better throat hit than a cigarette, not to mention not making you hack in the morning and stink like ashtray, and I guess it is just what my mind and body are used to and expect now.
This got me thinking about vaping and juice in general.
If you were a cigarette smoker, and I'm guessing that is about 99% of vapers, you need that nicotine and are used to lighting up a cigarette to get your fix. You need something to replace the things you got from that cigarette, otherwise you will not be satisfied and will return to cigarettes to get what you need.
There is snus and smokeless tobacco, but they bring the risk of mouth cancer, and they are still treated with all the chemicals that any other tobacco is treated with. Plus, you ingest quite a bit of that tobacco juice, so internal cancer is also a risk.
I smoke a pipe, and I have no interest in quitting. As far as pipes and cigars go, risk of mouth cancer is still a factor. While you don't inhale either, a pipe smoker breathes with their pipe, inhaling small amounts of tobacco smoke on a fairly regular basis. Enough to make me cough a little in the morning some days, but not to the extent or frequency that cigarettes do. Again, all the chemicals and additives that any tobacco has, which ultimately affects you in that they are toxins and consuming them makes you feel less well than you should. Besides, pipe and cigar just aren't for everyone, so they aren't a viable cigarette replacement.
Enter vaping. Steep initial learning curve in terms of hardware and technique, but after that it's a cheap, relatively benign way to be a nicotine addict. As far as I'm concerned, it's the best option short of quitting.
Now we need juice or the whole house of cards falls apart. I am concerned with the vaper who smoked for some time and needs that cigarette-like impact. Not everyone can start vaping pomegranate green tea menthol and be happy. Some people are going to expect or need something that approximates what they are trying to give up.
Just about any juice containing nicotine and a little throat hit will fool a newbie. That's why we end up thinking things like DK Tab are just like a cigarette. Eventually we all figure out that no, it isn't. Not even close. So we search for juice that will do the job we need done, which is to stay off cigarettes.
What do we need to do to make juice that will make successful vapers out of ex-smokers?
Leave the bottle of liquid smoke in the refrigerator, ok?
Yeah, this isn't the answer. For some reason making a smoke-flavored juice results in an abomination that no one wants.
Forget about off the shelf flavorings
Everything that can be done using commercially available flavorings has been done. It's not an invalid approach of course, because vendors turn up all the time that craft great recipes out of this stuff. But that's all they are, great recipes. You could make this stuff at home with the right ingredients and enough practice. Of course, the vast majority of people won't get that hands-on, so there will always be a place for this. It is not the road to take as far as making a satisfying cigarette replacement though.
Before I move to the next bullet point, I am not condemning this type of juice. I don't need a cigarette replacement anymore. I'd rather vape than smoke given the choice. The longer I vape, the more and more accepting of non-tobacco vapes I become. Recently it has come to my attention that there are some really great newer blenders out there, making juice with flavor and performance in spades. Juice I never would have liked 6 months ago, but that I really appreciate now.
If you are making juice via this school of thought, if you concentrate on performance and flavor, the juice is going to find an audience. I just didn't want you to think I was saying all juice made this way is garbage, because that was not at all my point. Both the needs and taste buds of a new vaper and a veteran vaper are different.
Natural Tobacco
If you want to capture real tobacco essence you use some of the genuine article.
Tobacco Absolute- this is a concentrate of natural tobacco extract. There must be something more to the process that makes it, because this is generally nicotine-free. It is extremely potent, and actually gives a somewhat ashy taste. Used with an extremely delicate hand, it actually imparts a sense of burning tobacco. Odd, because there is no reason it should, being a concentrate of tobacco extract. A vendor I really like makes juice that uses tobacco absolute to wonderful effect. I can't detect it, but I know it's a primary ingredient in all their tobacco vapes. Almost every other juice that uses tobacco absolute sticks out like a sore thumb, because used indiscriminately it makes the juice taste like straight ash tray.
Tobacco absolute is an important blending ingredient that, used well, adds a note that helps your brain accept vaping as a cigarette replacement. The problem here is that almost no juice uses it well, so most vendors would do well to steer clear of using it.
Tobacco Extract- anyone can make a tobacco extract. Almost no one makes a good one. This is a process that requires some craft, and a sloppily made tobacco extract is going to vape like a sloppily made extract.
Tobacco extracts generally have a somewhat grassy, hay-like quality to them. On the one hand, that's not such a bad thing. Bright, sugary Virginia tobaccos taste like that. I don't smoke much in the way of younger Virginias in my pipes, but when I do they have this golden, hay-like taste and aroma to them. Very summer-y. So, grassy, hay-like tobacco extracts aren't really off target, however, that is not what a cigarette smoker expects from their tobacco.
Smoking a pipe delivers a much more complex flavor from tobacco. You have a very cool, controlled burn rate, and the space and addition of the pipe to help dissipate the heat. A cigarette is a pencil shaped tube of tobacco that burns fast and hot, killing the flavor of the tobacco and delivering a hot, steamy blast of smoke and nicotine. So that grassy, hay-like tobacco extract isn't going to resonate with a cigarette smoker.
To deliver a tobacco extract that is deeper, more robust, and that captures more of the essence of the target tobacco, we need to get scientific and apply some existing technology toward sucking more of that essence out of the leaf and into the extract. This requires an investment in lab equipment that most vendors can't or won't foot the bill for. Additionally, a robust tobacco extract has its own set of issues. To get that much tobacco flavor into a juice also puts a lot of solid particles into the juice. You would think that you could get rid of them by filtration. You can get rid of most of them, but we're talking particles that are nearly microscopic and that thumb their noses at even the finest filter material. Particles that resist filtration via reverse osmosis, which is how your bottled water is purified. Particles that are tough on attys and make them fail prematurely if proper atty maintenance isn't strictly adhered to.
So again, even more technology and expensive lab equipment is required, not to mention a sharp mind and the ability to figure out how to accomplish this. Like I said, anyone can make a tobacco extract, but almost no one has the smarts, the bank account and the will to do it right.
Molecular compounds
Now we're really talking science. Forget about all the off-the-shelf flavorings, forget about natural tobacco absolute and extracts. We are going to figure out what molecules are responsible for the flavor and performance cues that make the brain think it's smoking. We're going to hire a flavoring chemist.
Even more expensive lab equipment than the previous example, plus we need an expensive, college educated flavoring chemist on salary. The Chinese do this, with mixed results. A lot of what they've made tastes crazy, but some of that Chinese juice does things that no US vendor has pulled off. On the whole, I don't like Chinese juice. There is only one that I vape with any regularity, and even that one is a mixed bag of blessings and weirdness.
This may indeed be the future of vaping, but you are going to have to throw much more money than almost any vendor can afford to attack the problem this way. I don't trust the Chinese to do it right, at least not in the short term. There is one high profile American vendor who is using this approach, but I suspect they have limited resources and will take a while perfecting their juice. Even so, their efforts early on have produced juices that perform like crazy, and if anyone is going to make this approach succeed it will be them. No other vendor is even in their ballpark, so it's their ball to run with, for now.
Screw it, let's start with a clean slate
The most overlooked aspect of making juice is performance.
Broken down to the most basic set of criteria, we need to provide an experience that will satisfy the recent ex-smoker. As good as some of the newer artificially flavored juices are, a Camel smoker is not going to jump the fence for Blackberry Lemonade Menthol. Maybe 6 months down the road, but for now we have to help them fool their brain so they can kick tobacco and stay off.
Forget about all the approaches. That's the repertoire you'll pull from to make your juice, but you need to concentrate on the basics. Two words. Performance and flavor.
Clean burning juice that provides satisfying throat hit is crucial. You have to feel like you're vaping something of substance, otherwise it's just eating a bag of Doritos to keep from smoking a cigarette and you're still thinking about that cigarette. All the time. You can not underestimate the importance of performance in your juice. Clean burning, because juice that is hard on attys means your atty is going to produce its best output for a very short amount of time, and then the vaper is stuck getting only a percentage of their juice's flavor and impact. I am very careful about how frequently I vape juice that doesn't burn well, and I really, really appreciate juice that doesn't make me have to think about it.
Throat hit. The law of diminishing returns kicks in quick, but smoking was like that too. If you chain smoke your cigarette doesn't have much impact, but if you haven't smoked one in 4 hours it's like sex. Nicotine plays a big role in that, but so does throat hit. I absolutely need awesome throat hit to keep me satisfied and I doubt that will ever change.
Good quality, pure PG plays a huge role in this. If your nic base turns yellow after a few weeks, you're using insecticide. Start over. Juices that significantly darken as they sit are made using subpar base. Good base stays clear. PG allergies aside, PG is the primary suspension agent in asthma inhalers. Don't worry about vaping it if you're tolerant. I have far more concerns about VG being a vegetable fat than I have about PG, which is in everything from commercial tobacco to candy to medicine.
Nicotine of course, but a vaper should stick with the nic level their body needs and not try to compensate for poor performing juice by overdosing themselves on nicotine to get more throat hit.
PGA. Hmm. I always said that I didn't trust someone who added PGA to their juice for added throat hit. I think I am going to reverse my position on that. One vendor I really like has juice that burns so clean I swear that it cleans attys. It must have added PGA, it just must. I happen to think that juice is really satisfying too, so don't rule out a light handed application of PGA.
Flavorings play a role in throat hit, but you're at the mercy of the flavorings used whether or not they will be a performance factor.
Lastly, we need a flavor that helps people make the jump, whether that means a natural tobacco or something that fools the brain into thinking tobacco. Whatever works. The really good ones capture some aspect that helps the illusion. A smoky exhale, a dry inhale with great throat hit, anything that helps people forget they aren't smoking anymore. Method doesn't matter here, it's about the end result.
What makes a successful vaper is performance. If the performance is there, people won't stray back to cigarettes. It's the elusive target of making juice that scratches the itch. Throat hit, flavor, that feeling of satisfaction in your chest when you inhale the vapor. The needs of the new vaper are quite different than the needs of the veteran. Apple pie ala mode with great throat hit will work once you've been vaping for a while, but the new vaper is too close to their last cigarette to accept something so alien when their brain is craving and expecting something so different.
E Liquid has limitations
At the end of the day, we are vaping a cocktail of PG, VG and flavorings. It's not tobacco, or 21 year old scotch, or wine, or good food. Some days all of my juice tastes like PG, VG and flavorings. No matter how much craft went into the juice, I don't really know if it's appropriate to throw words like "artisanal" around. Appreciate that the next time you vape a juice you really like. It isn't easy to make one that has depth and complexity given the limitations of our hardware and the ingredients we make the juice out of.
This got me thinking about vaping and juice in general.
If you were a cigarette smoker, and I'm guessing that is about 99% of vapers, you need that nicotine and are used to lighting up a cigarette to get your fix. You need something to replace the things you got from that cigarette, otherwise you will not be satisfied and will return to cigarettes to get what you need.
There is snus and smokeless tobacco, but they bring the risk of mouth cancer, and they are still treated with all the chemicals that any other tobacco is treated with. Plus, you ingest quite a bit of that tobacco juice, so internal cancer is also a risk.
I smoke a pipe, and I have no interest in quitting. As far as pipes and cigars go, risk of mouth cancer is still a factor. While you don't inhale either, a pipe smoker breathes with their pipe, inhaling small amounts of tobacco smoke on a fairly regular basis. Enough to make me cough a little in the morning some days, but not to the extent or frequency that cigarettes do. Again, all the chemicals and additives that any tobacco has, which ultimately affects you in that they are toxins and consuming them makes you feel less well than you should. Besides, pipe and cigar just aren't for everyone, so they aren't a viable cigarette replacement.
Enter vaping. Steep initial learning curve in terms of hardware and technique, but after that it's a cheap, relatively benign way to be a nicotine addict. As far as I'm concerned, it's the best option short of quitting.
Now we need juice or the whole house of cards falls apart. I am concerned with the vaper who smoked for some time and needs that cigarette-like impact. Not everyone can start vaping pomegranate green tea menthol and be happy. Some people are going to expect or need something that approximates what they are trying to give up.
Just about any juice containing nicotine and a little throat hit will fool a newbie. That's why we end up thinking things like DK Tab are just like a cigarette. Eventually we all figure out that no, it isn't. Not even close. So we search for juice that will do the job we need done, which is to stay off cigarettes.
What do we need to do to make juice that will make successful vapers out of ex-smokers?
Leave the bottle of liquid smoke in the refrigerator, ok?
Yeah, this isn't the answer. For some reason making a smoke-flavored juice results in an abomination that no one wants.
Forget about off the shelf flavorings
Everything that can be done using commercially available flavorings has been done. It's not an invalid approach of course, because vendors turn up all the time that craft great recipes out of this stuff. But that's all they are, great recipes. You could make this stuff at home with the right ingredients and enough practice. Of course, the vast majority of people won't get that hands-on, so there will always be a place for this. It is not the road to take as far as making a satisfying cigarette replacement though.
Before I move to the next bullet point, I am not condemning this type of juice. I don't need a cigarette replacement anymore. I'd rather vape than smoke given the choice. The longer I vape, the more and more accepting of non-tobacco vapes I become. Recently it has come to my attention that there are some really great newer blenders out there, making juice with flavor and performance in spades. Juice I never would have liked 6 months ago, but that I really appreciate now.
If you are making juice via this school of thought, if you concentrate on performance and flavor, the juice is going to find an audience. I just didn't want you to think I was saying all juice made this way is garbage, because that was not at all my point. Both the needs and taste buds of a new vaper and a veteran vaper are different.
Natural Tobacco
If you want to capture real tobacco essence you use some of the genuine article.
Tobacco Absolute- this is a concentrate of natural tobacco extract. There must be something more to the process that makes it, because this is generally nicotine-free. It is extremely potent, and actually gives a somewhat ashy taste. Used with an extremely delicate hand, it actually imparts a sense of burning tobacco. Odd, because there is no reason it should, being a concentrate of tobacco extract. A vendor I really like makes juice that uses tobacco absolute to wonderful effect. I can't detect it, but I know it's a primary ingredient in all their tobacco vapes. Almost every other juice that uses tobacco absolute sticks out like a sore thumb, because used indiscriminately it makes the juice taste like straight ash tray.
Tobacco absolute is an important blending ingredient that, used well, adds a note that helps your brain accept vaping as a cigarette replacement. The problem here is that almost no juice uses it well, so most vendors would do well to steer clear of using it.
Tobacco Extract- anyone can make a tobacco extract. Almost no one makes a good one. This is a process that requires some craft, and a sloppily made tobacco extract is going to vape like a sloppily made extract.
Tobacco extracts generally have a somewhat grassy, hay-like quality to them. On the one hand, that's not such a bad thing. Bright, sugary Virginia tobaccos taste like that. I don't smoke much in the way of younger Virginias in my pipes, but when I do they have this golden, hay-like taste and aroma to them. Very summer-y. So, grassy, hay-like tobacco extracts aren't really off target, however, that is not what a cigarette smoker expects from their tobacco.
Smoking a pipe delivers a much more complex flavor from tobacco. You have a very cool, controlled burn rate, and the space and addition of the pipe to help dissipate the heat. A cigarette is a pencil shaped tube of tobacco that burns fast and hot, killing the flavor of the tobacco and delivering a hot, steamy blast of smoke and nicotine. So that grassy, hay-like tobacco extract isn't going to resonate with a cigarette smoker.
To deliver a tobacco extract that is deeper, more robust, and that captures more of the essence of the target tobacco, we need to get scientific and apply some existing technology toward sucking more of that essence out of the leaf and into the extract. This requires an investment in lab equipment that most vendors can't or won't foot the bill for. Additionally, a robust tobacco extract has its own set of issues. To get that much tobacco flavor into a juice also puts a lot of solid particles into the juice. You would think that you could get rid of them by filtration. You can get rid of most of them, but we're talking particles that are nearly microscopic and that thumb their noses at even the finest filter material. Particles that resist filtration via reverse osmosis, which is how your bottled water is purified. Particles that are tough on attys and make them fail prematurely if proper atty maintenance isn't strictly adhered to.
So again, even more technology and expensive lab equipment is required, not to mention a sharp mind and the ability to figure out how to accomplish this. Like I said, anyone can make a tobacco extract, but almost no one has the smarts, the bank account and the will to do it right.
Molecular compounds
Now we're really talking science. Forget about all the off-the-shelf flavorings, forget about natural tobacco absolute and extracts. We are going to figure out what molecules are responsible for the flavor and performance cues that make the brain think it's smoking. We're going to hire a flavoring chemist.
Even more expensive lab equipment than the previous example, plus we need an expensive, college educated flavoring chemist on salary. The Chinese do this, with mixed results. A lot of what they've made tastes crazy, but some of that Chinese juice does things that no US vendor has pulled off. On the whole, I don't like Chinese juice. There is only one that I vape with any regularity, and even that one is a mixed bag of blessings and weirdness.
This may indeed be the future of vaping, but you are going to have to throw much more money than almost any vendor can afford to attack the problem this way. I don't trust the Chinese to do it right, at least not in the short term. There is one high profile American vendor who is using this approach, but I suspect they have limited resources and will take a while perfecting their juice. Even so, their efforts early on have produced juices that perform like crazy, and if anyone is going to make this approach succeed it will be them. No other vendor is even in their ballpark, so it's their ball to run with, for now.
Screw it, let's start with a clean slate
The most overlooked aspect of making juice is performance.
Broken down to the most basic set of criteria, we need to provide an experience that will satisfy the recent ex-smoker. As good as some of the newer artificially flavored juices are, a Camel smoker is not going to jump the fence for Blackberry Lemonade Menthol. Maybe 6 months down the road, but for now we have to help them fool their brain so they can kick tobacco and stay off.
Forget about all the approaches. That's the repertoire you'll pull from to make your juice, but you need to concentrate on the basics. Two words. Performance and flavor.
Clean burning juice that provides satisfying throat hit is crucial. You have to feel like you're vaping something of substance, otherwise it's just eating a bag of Doritos to keep from smoking a cigarette and you're still thinking about that cigarette. All the time. You can not underestimate the importance of performance in your juice. Clean burning, because juice that is hard on attys means your atty is going to produce its best output for a very short amount of time, and then the vaper is stuck getting only a percentage of their juice's flavor and impact. I am very careful about how frequently I vape juice that doesn't burn well, and I really, really appreciate juice that doesn't make me have to think about it.
Throat hit. The law of diminishing returns kicks in quick, but smoking was like that too. If you chain smoke your cigarette doesn't have much impact, but if you haven't smoked one in 4 hours it's like sex. Nicotine plays a big role in that, but so does throat hit. I absolutely need awesome throat hit to keep me satisfied and I doubt that will ever change.
Good quality, pure PG plays a huge role in this. If your nic base turns yellow after a few weeks, you're using insecticide. Start over. Juices that significantly darken as they sit are made using subpar base. Good base stays clear. PG allergies aside, PG is the primary suspension agent in asthma inhalers. Don't worry about vaping it if you're tolerant. I have far more concerns about VG being a vegetable fat than I have about PG, which is in everything from commercial tobacco to candy to medicine.
Nicotine of course, but a vaper should stick with the nic level their body needs and not try to compensate for poor performing juice by overdosing themselves on nicotine to get more throat hit.
PGA. Hmm. I always said that I didn't trust someone who added PGA to their juice for added throat hit. I think I am going to reverse my position on that. One vendor I really like has juice that burns so clean I swear that it cleans attys. It must have added PGA, it just must. I happen to think that juice is really satisfying too, so don't rule out a light handed application of PGA.
Flavorings play a role in throat hit, but you're at the mercy of the flavorings used whether or not they will be a performance factor.
Lastly, we need a flavor that helps people make the jump, whether that means a natural tobacco or something that fools the brain into thinking tobacco. Whatever works. The really good ones capture some aspect that helps the illusion. A smoky exhale, a dry inhale with great throat hit, anything that helps people forget they aren't smoking anymore. Method doesn't matter here, it's about the end result.
What makes a successful vaper is performance. If the performance is there, people won't stray back to cigarettes. It's the elusive target of making juice that scratches the itch. Throat hit, flavor, that feeling of satisfaction in your chest when you inhale the vapor. The needs of the new vaper are quite different than the needs of the veteran. Apple pie ala mode with great throat hit will work once you've been vaping for a while, but the new vaper is too close to their last cigarette to accept something so alien when their brain is craving and expecting something so different.
E Liquid has limitations
At the end of the day, we are vaping a cocktail of PG, VG and flavorings. It's not tobacco, or 21 year old scotch, or wine, or good food. Some days all of my juice tastes like PG, VG and flavorings. No matter how much craft went into the juice, I don't really know if it's appropriate to throw words like "artisanal" around. Appreciate that the next time you vape a juice you really like. It isn't easy to make one that has depth and complexity given the limitations of our hardware and the ingredients we make the juice out of.
Rechtt @vapetv and twitter 
