Ever try a new recipe that everyone else raves about and it doesn't taste right at all to you? Having verified that you mixed it correctly, it could be that your vaping conditions are different enough from those other folks to cause it to taste very different to you. The following odyssey will illustrate the point.
Bill of E-Cigarette Forum - Bill's Magic Vapor - Blogs has published many recipes. I have tried a dozen or so of them and they were all quite good though, as is to be expected, some of them needed to be slightly tweaked to suit me. One however, his personal favorite Cinnamon Danish, had an overwhelming earthy taste, literally like inhaling a clay flower pot. Bill is a proponent of the High Flavor Mix and Vape at Time of Mix school of juice mixing as opposed to the Low Flavor Mix and steeping from days to weeks school of mixing. I don't purposely practice either but what often happens is that I wind up making more trial juices than I can vape at a time so they wind up sitting a few days to a week before I get around to them.
Some juices change a little with aging; some change a lot. I thought that might be the problem so I made a fresh mix and tested it immediately. It was slightly less earthy but still not at all pleasant. Then it struck me. I had read that vaping conditions can affect flavor and had experienced that to some degree in my journey from Ego-type pens to Nautilus/iTaste to drippers on a Sigelei 100 watt. While flavor changes along the way had been noticeable, none had been all that dramatic. Maybe this would be the exception.
My current go to rig is a Mutation x with dual coils yielding around 0.4-0.5 ohms which I generally run at 25-50 watts depending on the juice. I read that Bill favors the taifun tank in the mid-one ohm range and, as best I could recall mid-teens wattage. I didn't have anything that high on hand but I did have a Magma rigged up at around 1 ohm so I used that at 17.5 watts. From the first draw I could taste a huge difference. It was still a touch strong but tasted like, well, Cinnamon Danish. It then occurred to me that I run the Magma on the largest air holes and a taifun can't get near that volume so I cranked it back to the smallest air holes and dang, there it was: Cinnamon Danish in all its glory.
To round out the experiment I tried another RDA, a Veritas single coil at about .7-.8 ohms, with the air hole almost closed at 25 watts and there was the flower pot taste again. Dropped the wattage down to 15 and the good flavor was back. I opened up the air hole a bit and it was still good. I kicked the wattage up to 20 and the flavor started to deteriorate. Back to 25 watts and the first flower pot flavor was reproduced. I could dial in whatever taste I "wanted" simply by adjusting the wattage.
While this is hardly an exhaustive, carefully controlled study, one thing has been verified in the extreme: vaping conditions can drastically affect flavor for some juices. Others may change a little but not much while some are very sensitive. While this fact has been known for some time I had never found such an acute example. It appears from this single test series that at least for this juice, Bill's Cinnamon Danish, wattage seems to be the most important factor though air flow may have some additional effect.
While every juice has its sweet spot where it is the best it can be, I had never found a juice before that changed from terrible to excellent simply based on wattage. Low air flow RDA's tend not to work well at higher power so I'll be keeping one rigged to try out if a juice doesn't taste good in my regular rig. Good thing I didn't retire the Magmas.....
Bill of E-Cigarette Forum - Bill's Magic Vapor - Blogs has published many recipes. I have tried a dozen or so of them and they were all quite good though, as is to be expected, some of them needed to be slightly tweaked to suit me. One however, his personal favorite Cinnamon Danish, had an overwhelming earthy taste, literally like inhaling a clay flower pot. Bill is a proponent of the High Flavor Mix and Vape at Time of Mix school of juice mixing as opposed to the Low Flavor Mix and steeping from days to weeks school of mixing. I don't purposely practice either but what often happens is that I wind up making more trial juices than I can vape at a time so they wind up sitting a few days to a week before I get around to them.
Some juices change a little with aging; some change a lot. I thought that might be the problem so I made a fresh mix and tested it immediately. It was slightly less earthy but still not at all pleasant. Then it struck me. I had read that vaping conditions can affect flavor and had experienced that to some degree in my journey from Ego-type pens to Nautilus/iTaste to drippers on a Sigelei 100 watt. While flavor changes along the way had been noticeable, none had been all that dramatic. Maybe this would be the exception.
My current go to rig is a Mutation x with dual coils yielding around 0.4-0.5 ohms which I generally run at 25-50 watts depending on the juice. I read that Bill favors the taifun tank in the mid-one ohm range and, as best I could recall mid-teens wattage. I didn't have anything that high on hand but I did have a Magma rigged up at around 1 ohm so I used that at 17.5 watts. From the first draw I could taste a huge difference. It was still a touch strong but tasted like, well, Cinnamon Danish. It then occurred to me that I run the Magma on the largest air holes and a taifun can't get near that volume so I cranked it back to the smallest air holes and dang, there it was: Cinnamon Danish in all its glory.
To round out the experiment I tried another RDA, a Veritas single coil at about .7-.8 ohms, with the air hole almost closed at 25 watts and there was the flower pot taste again. Dropped the wattage down to 15 and the good flavor was back. I opened up the air hole a bit and it was still good. I kicked the wattage up to 20 and the flavor started to deteriorate. Back to 25 watts and the first flower pot flavor was reproduced. I could dial in whatever taste I "wanted" simply by adjusting the wattage.
While this is hardly an exhaustive, carefully controlled study, one thing has been verified in the extreme: vaping conditions can drastically affect flavor for some juices. Others may change a little but not much while some are very sensitive. While this fact has been known for some time I had never found such an acute example. It appears from this single test series that at least for this juice, Bill's Cinnamon Danish, wattage seems to be the most important factor though air flow may have some additional effect.
While every juice has its sweet spot where it is the best it can be, I had never found a juice before that changed from terrible to excellent simply based on wattage. Low air flow RDA's tend not to work well at higher power so I'll be keeping one rigged to try out if a juice doesn't taste good in my regular rig. Good thing I didn't retire the Magmas.....
