Juice review website from professional chef

[St. Nick]

Chefjosh, who do you believe makes a great straight strawberry flavor? A lot of them either taste metallic or medicinal. Any help would be greatly appreciated. By the way, I do use other flavors and am finding your site very informative and more useful than all the others I've found so far, COMBINED!! The work that's gone into it, well it sure has to be a labor of love.......Thanks again for doing something we've needed for a long time.

 

[chefjosh]

Chefjosh, who do you believe makes a great straight strawberry flavor? A lot of them either taste metallic or medicinal. Any help would be greatly appreciated. By the way, I do use other flavors and am finding your site very informative and more useful than all the others I've found so far, COMBINED!! The work that's gone into it, well it sure has to be a labor of love.......Thanks again for doing something we've needed for a long time.

You were next on my list to answer St. Nick.

Correct me if I'm wrong, but regarding your first comment, FA, TFA, and LA only make concentrates. I know FA has some premade stuff available, but it's not really their focus as far as their US operations are concerned.

Onto the strawberry...Strawberry is a very tough flavor, but over the past 12-18 months, flavor manufacturers have been getting quite a bit better at creating strawberry flavors that don't have that bitter, acrid tasting medicinal note. As far as the best straight strawberry, interestingly enough, I can't answer that. When I receive submissions, I don't request flavors. That serves two purposes. First it makes sure that (even subconsciously), I'm not creating any sort of bias and requesting only flavors I personally enjoy. Secondly, it allows vendors to put their best foot forward.

Few vendors opt to send me straight strawberry. I would guess it's for one of several reasons. Either the reputation it has of being a tough flavor to really get "right", because the vendor is not 100% confident in their strawberry, and/or more importantly, most vendors simply prefer to send me more complex flavors. These are usually the ones they've worked hardest on perfecting and are, (rightfully so) most proud of. As a result, I receive things like The Vapor Room's Strawberry Cheesecake (awesome sweet, jam-like strawberry flavor) and Mister-e-liquids Strawberry Angel (a great strawberry shortcake type juice).

While I would love to sit down and do a study in strawberry (and every other simple straight fruit flavor) the sheer expense of buying every strawberry, from every vendor, would be prohibitive when coupled with the cost of normal operations.

All that being said, certain flavors are practically begging for a straight up vendor to vendor comparison. Strawberry, cherry, and RY4 are only a few of those that immediately spring to mind.

Edit to add: I got all caught up in the strawberry talk I forgot to thank you for the kind words about the website, they are appreciated.

 

[Fisty]

vapor taste actually is subjective to its user.. some one will like this flavor and some will not .. so its the best to test it out 1st from samples before buyying it ..

Did you even look at the website before coming in here and being an ...?

 

[garymon]

Yup! Already talking to AiV and it looks like they have already, or will shortly be shipping some samples out for review. Heard a lot of great things about them so I'm eagerly awaiting their package.

As far as the "waiting for review" list, it's a great idea and already in process. It will almost certainly be a part of phase 2 of the upgrade. Phase 1 of the new VaporRater.com went live last night and included the handy-dandy sortable table, and a ton of work on the back-end (a complete and total re-coding of the entire website). As soon as I can get the last remaining bugs worked out, planning of stage 2 will fully commence.

Thanks again for taking a look and your feedback...Both of your recommendations were great, so good that they are both already in motion. Any other ideas or suggestions you've got, please don't hesitate to toss 'em on out!

This is great news times two.

I forgot to thank you you in my last post for creating this site and all the work that goes into the reviews. I have been so happy with AiV that I have been hesitant to try other e-juice makers. Trying to read all the reviews on ECF calibrate between different reviewers is daunting.

After looking over just a few of your reviews I feel confident about branching out and trying some new e-juice makers.

No more suggestions at the moment but I will let you know if anything comes to mind.

 

[RiverRat1]

Great reference guide. Thanks

 

[Horselady154]

ChefJosh, I hope you get the chance to review some from The Plume Room. Great site, by the way.

 

[chefjosh]

ChefJosh, I hope you get the chance to review some from The Plume Room. Great site, by the way.

Thanks Horselady! I recently received a good collection of TPR juice and already have 2 of those reviews in rough draft form, and am working on another one as we speak!

 

[cardocter]

Good read thanks for the info and all the time /money you have invested.

 

[chefjosh]

Good read thanks for the info and all the time /money you have invested.

I appreciate the kind words and after almost a year, I can tell you with some certainty, it truly is my pleasure.

 

[lhavelund]

These reviews are great. Fantastically nuanced, and so extremely detailed. Very, very good job.

 

[eratikmind]

chefjosh, thank you!

- Andy . . . Challenge the day.

 

[chefjosh]

These reviews are great. Fantastically nuanced, and so extremely detailed. Very, very good job.

Thanks for the kind words, they are very much appreciated!

 

[FoxVersusOx]

Very cool! So much better than the the tree word descriptions I often find.

 

[sadgirl]

Nice information.

 

[Patrick O'Brien]

Wow, thank you so much for creating this. This is just what I needed. Its hard to order based off reviews on the actual sites, and some sites dont even have enough reviews for me to lay down my money and trust I will like the juice. Can you do High Brow Vapors and Johnson's Creek? If you already did, ignore that request. I am off to check up on your site.

 

[chefjosh]

Very cool! So much better than the the tree word descriptions I often find.

Truer words, my friend. Thanks for taking a look, hope it helps you find some new things to try!

 

[Red_Bird]

I've spent the last several months ordering, sampling and reviewing juice...oh and putting it all together in this handy website for you all to take a look at. This should be very helpful to new vapers as well as old hands looking to check out some new juice. Each juice is reviewed for flavor accuracy, density of flavor, throat hit, and vapor production. There are about 35 reviews currently posted with more being added regularly. I have well over 50 more bottles waiting to be reviewed.
My review methodology is as follows:

I use an LT and start with a 3 hole dripping atty rated at 2.0-2.5 ohms. Each juice is then reviewed from 3.7v to 5v up until the best flavor, TH, and vapor production are achieved. Any juice that still comes out suspect is then reviewed with a standard 3ohm atty and also vaped along the entire 3.7-5v spectrum until I get a good result. If at that point, I still don't think I have achieved the best possible vape from any particular juice, I'll try a 1.5 ohm atty to see if I can squeeze a out a little more flavor. All the ratings are based on the best results I was able to achieve.

For the record, all juice reviewed at this point and all juices currently waiting to be reviewed were bought and paid for by me with the exception of the odd free sample that vendors occasionally toss in with any order.

I appreciate any feedback and am happy to field any questions you may have.

I'd read it if I ate eliquid.

I vape mine. Vape a few liters of eliquid and get back to me.

 

[chefjosh]

I'd read it if I ate eliquid.

I vape mine. Vape a few liters of eliquid and get back to me.

Wow...I appreciate the blast from the past. That post you quoted is 2 weeks short of a year old.

I'm not sure if you're trying to be silly or what, but for the record, I've been vaping since August 2009 and a member of this forum since January 2010.

At the very least you've given me a chance to update some of the dated info from the original post.

All juices are tasted on a mech mod w/ sub Ω coil and then given a full review with a ProVari V2, Vapage AMG UNI atomizer at 2.5Ω, with an Empire drip shield and BDS90 drip tip. Methodology is still the same and sweet spot is given in wattage calculated via the ProVari.

 

[Red_Bird]

Eating food and vaping eliquids are vastly different.

I thought u were just a chef expecting vapers to consider your opinion on eliquids.

Thats a my bad on me.

I don't watch juice reviews though, never have. I vape what tastes good to me. And its all I make is eliquids that I like, if others like them thats cool. If not I don't lose sleep.

 

[chefjosh]

Eating food and vaping eliquids are vastly different.

I thought u were just a chef expecting vapers to consider your opinion on eliquids.

Thats a my bad on me.

I don't watch juice reviews though, never have. I vape what tastes good to me. And its all I make is eliquids that I like, if others like them thats cool. If not I don't lose sleep.

First off, I write reviews. Aside from a single experiment, I don't make videos. I write, and I don't write "OMFG this tastes amazing" reviews.

Each juice is broken down to it's base flavor components, each component is then described in both quantity and quality (i.e. natural vs candy) and finally I state whether the overall juice is well balanced or leans towards a particular quality like a strong acidity, intense creaminess, etc

DIY is not for everyone...there are plenty of people who simply prefer to buy their juice. Whether they chose not to deal with the hassle, or don't want 100mg nic in their house around their children or pets.

The website is for those people, the majority of vapers who would prefer to have a general idea of what they're about to buy before spending their hard earned cash on something they may not like based on vendor reviews like "This is heaven in your mouth."

ETA: I also disagree with your statement that eating and vaping are different...tasting is tasting and a juice is either well made from quality components with a good balance or it isn't. Notice how some of the best vendors also happen to have a culinary past?