Spent most of today cooking (pasta sauce, meatballs, apple pie, etc.) plus cleaning and rewicking the Berserker RDA.
After the first attempt, I kept getting a burnt taste when it would get hot. Pulled the wick out, and it was immaculate.
Pulsed the coil, and it started to smoke near the coil ends. I'm guessing broken tufts of cotton got stuck under the captive screws that hold the coil in (these cotton balls are messy to work with). They must have gotten enough juice on them to not burn immediately, but when it got hot enough they started to smoke.
Hopefully the second rewick today sorted it out. So far so good.