Hi there InfoJunkie!
Before I actually began vaping, I totally thought I would only (or at least, primarily) want a 'cigarette smoke' flavour. I was wrong (as the 99% full bottle of tobacco flavour e-juice sitting in my cupboard, unwanted and untouched, will attest).
Nowadays when I walk down the street and accidentally catch a whiff of someone's vile second-hand smoke, it disgusts me.
The first flavours that arrived (along with my first e-cig) were things like
Root Beer Float...a natural
Watermelon, and so forth. They were the first ones I tried. And I can honestly say that I'm a thousand times happier now with these non-tobacco flavours than I ever thought I'd be. My vaping feels just like smoking but it isn't. And it's more delicious & pleasurable than smoking ever was. Once you quit smoking - I know this sounds like a cliche but it's true - your tastebuds will really start to come back to life. And so will your nose. You'll smell plants & flowers on the breeze with clarity & loveliness you never thought possible. I never realized what I was missing when I was a smoker.
So now that your sense of taste has become clearer (and from the sound of your post, it has), you should have a reasonably good idea of flavours you'll probably like. Once you find a few that really do it for you (good throat hit, good flavour, good vaping all round) you'll be rockin'.
Now
this is key...to experiment with different flavours affordably
and effectively, I totally recommend that you DIY. I've DIY-ed my own juices from day one and never regretted it. The few experiences I had with premixed juices were awful, placing me even more firmly within the DIY camp. I bought the following (all from Toronto area suppliers) for my needs:
- a 30mL bottle of PG with nicotine (28mg strength) from
Evapers (approx $30)
- a bottle of plain PG from
Shoppers Drug Mart (which was actually kind of a big hassle; Jack at
Happyvaper has plain PG too for only a few bucks, best to get it from him)
- several 3mL bottles of concentrated flavour drops (from various flavour makers, through Jack at
Happyvaper - approx $2 to $3 each)
- a few glass dram bottles (
Happyvaper - like $1.25 each)
- some disposable, blunt-tip luer-lock syringes (
Happyvaper - $2 for four of 'em)
- and of course, my 510 batteries, 510 cartomizers, and charger (
Happyvaper all the way!)
Using this e-juice calculator, mixing your own juices could not possibly be any simpler:
todmuller.com/ejuice/ejuice.php
For example, say I want to make a small 2mL batch of juice. (Remember my flavourless PG with nicotine is 28mg strength.) Say I want to lower the nicotine level in this batch to be 18mg...and the flavour to be 15%. Well I just type this stuff into the e-juice calculator, and voila - it tells me exactly how many drops of what to mix together.
PG or VG with nicotine = 26 drops
PG or VG without nicotine = 8 drops
Flavour = 6 drops
Total = 40 Drops / 2mL. Enjoy!
My PG with nic, plain PG, and concentrated flavourings are all in their own plastic squeeze bottles. So all I need to do is squeeze & carefully count the drops as they plop into my empty dram bottle! Then I stir it all together using the blunt syringe (that's just what I prefer to use; anything will do really), put the cap on the dram bottle and there's the juice! I usually let it sit for awhile before using it, but again that's not always necessary (though with some flavours it definitely helps...but yeah).
There's absolutely nothing complicated or difficult about DIY.
It's counting drops and stirring! With that e-juice calculator, it's even easier. As long as you use common sense and only order PG with nicotine at safe levels (the 28mg does me nicely & even that I dilute with plain PG) then you have every reason to embrace DIY.
DIY lets
you be in control of the nicotine level, the flavouring level, the inclusion or exclusion of VG and the level thereof...all of that.
You're in control with DIY and in a great position to fine-tune your juices to your personal taste. This is important because with different flavours, you're inevitably going to want to adjust the amounts. But
most importantly - with DIY, you can make as small or as large a batch as you desire; mixing up a 1 or 2mL batch is a great way to test flavours. If you find a flavour you don't care for, you've lost almost nothing.
Alternatively, with premixed juices you have no idea how much flavouring has gone into it - and worse, you may end up buying some bottles of juice only to find you hate the flavour(s), leaving those
entire bottles of juice a total waste. Premixed means your experimentation becomes remarkably more expensive & frustrating. Which doesn't really make up for the minute or so of convenience saved by not having to mix your own.
It sounds to me like the samplers you ordered were premixed, and not very satisfying.
But yeah...taste is different for everyone. One person may love coffee; another (imbecilic) person may hate it.
And yet both those people may love the taste of strawberry. So I don't think anyone can say
"if you like A, you'll like B" - at least, not with any guarantees.
I've tried a few flavours from
Capella - one from
FlavourArt - and a ton of flavours from
Perfumer's Apprentice. I've been
very pleased with
Perfumer's Apprentice and would say they're my favourite flavour supplier. In fact I'm about to place a new order with them for the following flavours (only 2 of which I've tried yet):
Bacon, Blackberry, Blue Cheese, Butter, Double Chocolate, Gingerbread, Maple Flavour, Peach, Pizza, Pumpkin Spice, Ripe Banana, Strawberry, Sweet Cream, Waffle, Watermelon (oh and their new
Cola with a Triacetin base, too)
I'll probably add even more to the list before finalizing the order.
Pizza and
Watermelon (the two I've already tried) are my two favourite flavours ever, to date. (I reviewed them both on
perfumersapprentice.com in more detail.) The Watermelon is so natural & pure, which isn't surprising since it's made with natural extracts. It's not a candy taste at all. And the Pizza is not only spot on just like a fresh slice of great pizza, but it vapes really well too. Don't know why...it just does.
Oh -
Capella's
French Toast is pretty awesome too, I very quickly went through my first 3mL bottle of this flavouring because it was so tasty.
Linda (the lovely lady who runs
Perfumer's Apprentice) also offers free 3mL samples from her Flavours in Development, with the understanding that you will give a review/offer feedback re: said flavours, to see if they're worthy of inclusion in her main list. A nicer lady you won't find, and she really knows her stuff re: flavours too.
Sometimes you go out on a limb: sometimes you find a flavour you don't like. For example, I was very displeased with the
Gingerbread flavour from
Capella. It tasted like they had completely forgotten to add
any of the spices that one would expect from gingerbread. Being a gingerbread lover, I originally thought for sure this would've been a favourite flavour. Now, it's on my
avoid list. (I'll try Gingerbread from
Perfumer's Apprentice soon - I have good reason to believe theirs will be remarkably better.)
But when you're DIY-ing, you don't lose much even when a flavour is disliked. For example, one 3mL bottle of flavouring from Jack at
Happyvaper (he carries flavourings from several makers) will cost you between $1.99 and $3. That's an incredibly good deal. With that kind of price, you can afford to try all kinds of flavours.
So yeah - DIY is affordable, easy & fun. Premixed is costly & much less likely to satisfy. There are surely some folks who will say
"hey Rachel, don't tar & feather every premixed juice supplier with the same brush" and they'd be right. Certainly there are some good juices & good suppliers out there. But with the ease & affordability of DIY, I have yet to see any premixed worth risking my money on.
P.S. On a side note, if you vape with a 510, I totally recommend using 510 cartomizers.
Happyvaper has them - it's just so much simpler to use them rather than fiddle about with separate atomizers + cartridges. Plus each cartomizer contains a new atomizer built-in. So yay.
Hope some of this helped!
