Want2Vape Managua

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luceblueboy

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About a month ago, Vapenstein announced to the vaping world about his new blends with want2vape. There is cigar (managua), pipe (london), and snuff (stockholm). I bought Managua and London. After seeing a good amount of London reviews on here, I decided to review the Managua cigar.

When I first opened it up, it smelled awful. However, I'm not drinking this stuff so the smell of the liquid isn't an issue for me. I loaded this up in an ikenvape v2 carto and put it into my trusty jazz cartopipe. First draw delivers a somewhat bitter but full flavor. It's definitely cigar. Not a swisher sweet/black and mild/gas station cigar. It doesn't resemble cigar either. It is a premium cigar. This is the kind of cigar I would smoke at a nice cigar shop. It's a maduro flavor rather than connecticut so I don't recommend this if you like natural cigars. There's no flavor, such as in Blondie or Tabac, so don't expect a sweet factor. This tastes like a real man's cigar (use of speech, not sexist if you're a woman). It's described to have chocolate/leather/etc nuances and I really can't tell (as I can't tell with real cigars either unless they're flavored). It's a premium cigar. If I were to have a cigar taste like this at a shop, I'd give it a 7/10. Since it's a vape, it's a 10/10. The vapor production is fantastic. I get plumes and plumes every time I put this one in. The only downside is the smell of the vapor is nasty (my wife gives me a looks when I vape this). I highly recommend this
 

billherbst

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When I received my 30ml bottle of Managua (I figured I'd better buy a big bottle since this juice is a one-time deal---when the 4 liters or however much Donely made are gone, it's gone forever), I dripped it into a 1.5 ohm LR510 atty powered by a Little Sister VV set at 3.9 volts. My expectations were very high, in part because I love Donely's want2vape juices in general, and in part because of the pre-availability hype among the extracted-tobacco-flavor club here on ECF.

During my four decades of tobacco addiction---now ended, thankfully---I was never a cigar smoker. Straight cigs, all the way, from roll-your-own succulent Virginian to the cheapest ultralight factory-mades I could get, once my lungs got cruddy and cigarettes became ridiculously expensive. I think I recall Swisher Sweets and a couple other flavored cigarillos way back in college during the late-1960s, but that hardly counts. Basically, I have no experience with the artistry of quality cigars and their many varieties and nuances. By contrast, I know what REAL Boston Cream Pie tastes like (both in authentic gourmet freshly-made versions and the crap frozen el cheapo imitation fake food stuff), so I can judge a Boston Cream Pie e-liquid on the basis of how close it comes to the real thing. My only basis for judging a cigar vape, however, is whether or not I like the flavor.

So, on the basis of flavor alone, my first reaction to Managua was lukewarm at best. A kind of "Eh?" Having read various posters' glowing beta-test praise, I don't know exactly what I was expecting, but this wasn't it.

I left the bottle open to steep, put it away in a dark, cool kitchen cabinet, and let it steep for a week or so.

Tonight I got it out and tried again. Same set-up, very different result. While the flavor is still slightly unusual to my palate, it now tastes rich, complex, and satisfying. I don't think the week of steeping changed much of the flavor profile, though. The change is in me. I've been vaping a bunch of new juices recently, among them Prime Vaping's Natural Tobacco and Nostalgia, and Vermillion River's Kentucky Premium. Each is a macerated/extracted natural tobacco base with other flavors added. All of them are rich and dark (in flavor, not juice color, which is more golden in all three). My guess is that these somewhat more accessible juices prepared me to make the leap to Managua successfully.

The cigar tone is not as emphatic in Managua as in, say, w2v's ACID Blondie. That greater subtlety allows the other flavors to blend and move forward, sort of shining through. In those other flavors, I get tones of chocolate and a slight note of liqueur tang. The overall flavor is still unusual, but now it's a good unusual. I like Managua today, and suddenly I'm very glad to have that 30ml bottle.

By contrast, London still eludes me. I can tell that it's a pipe rather than cigar tobacco, but the flavor still doesn't please me the way Managua's now does. Oh well, I'll give London another month and see what happens.

Whether I like them or not, I am very impressed by all of Donley's juices. I've tried my hand at DIY juice-making with mixed results---some modest successes and some dreadful failures---and that experience has made me appreciate all the more the sensitive creativity and patience of true artisan juice-makers. Happily, their ranks are growing quickly.
 

billherbst

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I'm curious about what I presume to be the fine particulates in Managua (and in most tobacco juices made with natural tobacco extracts produced from maceration).

Except for atty dripping to sample a new liquid or test for a review, I use Smoktech mega dual coil cartos almost exclusively these days---clear ones, mostly. I notice that after a couple weeks, the dual coil I keep loaded with Managua undergoes a color shift. The bottom third of the filler material darkens markedly to a deep brown, almost a brown-black. The top two-thirds of the filler remain lighter brown. As this color intensification occurs, the draw stiffens on the carto, and the sourness (inherent in the flavor mix of Managua) intensifies, to the point eventually of outweighing the sweetness and adversely affecting the overall flavor.

I assume that what's happening is the fine particulate solids suspended in the extract are settling to the bottom of the filler, eventually clogging the carto and degrading the flavor.

Anyway, I've taken apart and cleaned two of the darkened/stiff draw Managua cartos. The first time, about two weeks ago, cleaning the filler (by rinsing it out under hot running water until the filler turns white again, then patting dry between layers of paper towels) didn't improve the draw, so that carto got tossed into the trash and a new one loaded with fresh juice. The second time, yesterday, disassembly and thorough filler cleaning of the clear dual coil carto plus a dry burn before reassembly of the wicks/filler/tube worked nicely to restore the original draw. That carto now works as well as when it was new, the only waste being about 1.5 mls of Managua that got washed down the drain when I cleaned the filler pad.

Now I notice this darkening effect not only with Managua (which is just about the darkest, soupiest juice in my entire stash---probably implying a higher density of solids in suspension) but with other extracted tobacco juices as well---Natural Tobacco and Nostalgia by Prime Vaping, and Kentucky Premium by Vermillion River. It's not as obvious with those as with the Managua, but it's happening. Interestingly, the striated darkening doesn't occur with any of my Backwoods Brew tobaccos. Maybe Don filters his extracts with a finer mesh sieve or, more likely, through more layers of cheesecloth...

For $2, dual coil cartos don't really justify the hassle of disassembly/cleaning/dry burn/careful reassembly, but I like doing it every now and then. You know, messin' with the toys is part of the fun of the hobby. And it's nice to know that they can be renewed to restore the wonderful flavor of Managua.
 

Vapenstein

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I will address this issue, which is not specific to any product I am involved with, but applies to all natural tobacco extract juices. Natural tobacco extracts contain more solids than any other juice ingredient. Even with aggressive filtration, and I mean as good as current technology allows, natural tobaccos are still chunky juices. The more robust the extract, the more solids and thus the darker it will be.

ECF rules prohibit me from saying any more than that.
 
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