Choosing the Right E-Liquid

Choosing the Right E-Liquid: Complete Buying Guide

During the early years of the vaping industry, there simply wasn’t much out there for people who wanted to experiment with different flavours. If you were using a cigalike, the only thing that you could do to change flavours was to buy a different pack of cartridges. In some cases, it might be possible to find cartridges from a third-party company that worked with your e-cigarette – but that was pretty much your only option. If you bought your e-liquid by the bottle, your options weren’t much more attractive. Most companies in the vaping industry didn’t bother to sell bottled e-liquid at all, and those who did were mostly selling mediocre products imported from China.

Today, buying e-liquid is a completely different experience because companies in the vaping industry now have something available to please absolutely everyone. That’s a great thing for the vaping community as a whole, but it can make shopping for e-liquid an intimidating experience for newcomers.

Are you new to vaping and trying to decide which e-liquid you should buy first? This article is for you. In this e-liquid buying guide, we’re going to explain all of the different types of vape juice along with the occasionally confusing terms that you’ll encounter when you shop for e-liquid. When you’re done reading, you’ll be well on your way to full e-liquid expertise. Let’s begin!

Vape Juice Glossary: Common E-Liquid Terms

• Mouth-to-Lung (MTL): Drawing vapour into the mouth before inhaling it into the lungs. This is the inhaling style used by most smokers and new vapers.
• Direct-to-Lung (DTL): Drawing vapour directly into the lungs. This inhaling style works best with lower-nicotine e-liquids that produce little throat hit.
• Nicotine Salt: A form of e-liquid with an added acid that makes the vape juice less alkaline. The reduced alkalinity of nicotine salt e-liquid makes it possible to create a juice that causes no throat irritation even when it has a high nicotine strength.
• Hybrid E-Liquid: An e-liquid containing both freebase nicotine and nicotine salt.
• Propylene Glycol (PG): One of the base liquids used to make most e-liquids. PG is thin and helps an e-liquid’s flavour profile come through clearly.
• Vegetable Glycerin (VG): One of the base liquids used to make most e-liquids. VG is thick and helps an e-liquid create large, creamy vapour clouds.
• Short Fill: A bottle of nicotine-free e-liquid with empty space for adding a nicotine shot. Since short fill e-liquids contain no nicotine, they can be sold in large bottles in regions where local laws prohibit large bottles of nicotine e-liquid.
• Nicotine Shot: A small bottle of e-liquid with nicotine. Adding one or more nicotine shots to a short fill e-liquid creates a large bottle of nicotine e-liquid.

How to Choose the Right Nicotine Strength

One of the first things you’ll see when you shop for e-liquid for the first time is that vape juice is available in an incredibly wide range of nicotine strengths. With the most popular nicotine strengths ranging from 3 mg all the way up to 50 mg and higher, your e-liquid choice can obviously have a dramatic impact on the type of vaping experience that you have.

One of the top reasons why people sometimes find it hard to switch successfully to vaping is because they start with a nicotine strength that’s too low for their needs. If your first e-liquid doesn’t deliver nicotine as efficiently as a tobacco cigarette, it’ll make the switch more difficult because you’ll need to adjust to lower blood-nicotine levels while you’re already adjusting to vaping.

If you’re a current pack-a-day smoker of “full-flavoured” or “light” cigarettes, an e-liquid with a nicotine strength of around 50 mg (5%) is probably right for you. You’ll find that strength in the nicotine salt e-liquid section of our website.

In addition to a higher strength around 40-50 mg, many nicotine salt e-liquids are also available in a lower strength of around 25-35 mg. The lower strength is appropriate if you’re an infrequent smoker or have already switched to vaping and aren’t getting your desired level of satisfaction.

The type of vaping equipment that you use can also have an influence on the nicotine strength that’s appropriate for you. We’ll discuss that shortly.

E-Liquid Factors That Affect Throat Hit

In vaping, the term “throat hit” refers to the sensation that you get in your throat when you inhale the vapour from your e-cigarette. A cigarette produces a slightly irritating feeling in the throat when you inhale, and many people who switch to vaping want to recreate that sensation because that’s what helps them feel satisfied with their vaping experience.

The four factors that most strongly influence throat hit are:

• The e-liquid’s nicotine strength: A higher nicotine strength will result in a stronger throat hit.
• The e-liquid’s VG/PG ratio: An e-liquid with a higher percentage of PG will create a stronger throat hit. The most popular VG/PG ratio for new vapers is 50/50.
• Whether the e-liquid uses nicotine salt or freebase nicotine: Freebase nicotine creates a stronger throat hit. However, the fact that nicotine salt is smoother and easier to inhale makes it possible to create high-nicotine e-liquids that would be too unpleasant to use if those e-liquids contained freebase nicotine. Confused? As mentioned above, we suggest nicotine salt e-liquid for most new vapers.
• Your inhaling style: You should use the mouth-to-lung inhaling style – the same way you would inhale if you were smoking – to produce the strongest throat hit.

How to Optimize Your E-Liquid and Vaping Device for Throat Hit

If you want a vaping experience that delivers cigarette-like throat hit and satisfaction, you need a higher-nicotine e-liquid and a vaping device that’s optimized for mouth-to-lung inhaling. There are four types of vaping devices that can deliver this type of experience. Some are extremely simple to use. Others are a bit more complex but offer greater flexibility in terms of the e-liquid flavours that you can choose.

Those options are:

• An EasyPuff e-cigarette kit. Our e-cigarette kits start at just $19.99 and provide the perfect introduction to vaping. Just charge the battery, twist on a cartridge and enjoy. Our e-cigarette looks and feels like a real cigarette. You can hold it between two fingers and mimic your usual smoking rituals. Our refill cartridges are available in 5 different flavours. We recommend the high (2.0%) or Full (2.4%) nicotine strength for full-time smokers.
• A pod vaping system with pre-filled nicotine pods. The pod system doesn’t look like a cigarette, but you won’t notice that when you’re using it. A pre-filled pod system uses nicotine salt e-liquid to deliver nicotine concentrations up to 5%, and it’s just as easy to use as a traditional e-cigarette. Just charge the battery, drop in a pod and puff away.
• A pod vaping system with refillable pods. With a refillable pod system, you’ll fill your own pods with nicotine salt e-liquid rather than buying pods that are pre-filled and ready to use. You’ll get the same satisfying throat hit that you would get with a pre-filled pod system, but you’ll enjoy a much larger flavour selection since you’ll be buying your e-liquid in bottled form.
• A small vape pen designed for mouth-to-lung inhaling. When you use a vape pen, you’ll generally have a larger tank and a more powerful battery compared to what you’d get with a pod system. As a result, your device will produce bigger vapour clouds than a pod system would. For that reason, nicotine salt e-liquid isn’t always the best choice for use with a vape pen. Our E-Liquid is available in lower nicotine strengths ranging from 0 - 6mg, making it a perfect choice for smaller vape pens. Vape pens are the most complex vaping devices among those that beginners typically use. Using one means that you’ll need to refill the tank and replace the atomizer coil periodically. However, a good vape pen also delivers substantially more vapour and better battery life than other types of small vaping devices.

How to Optimize Your E-Liquid and Vaping Device for Flavour

If you want to experience the richest possible flavour when vaping, you’ll need to use a higher-output vaping device such as a box mod or a larger vape pen. A high-end vaping device includes a large tank with a wide mouthpiece and open airflow vents to facilitate the best possible vapour production. When you use such a tank, you’ll inhale the vapour directly into your lungs – and because a high-output device produces such large vapour clouds, you’ll want to use a device of that type with a lower-nicotine e-liquid. The most popular nicotine strength for direct-to-lung inhaling is 3 mg, although some people prefer a nicotine strength of 6 mg with this type of device.

When you use a vaping setup designed for direct-to-lung inhaling, you’ll experience almost no throat hit due to the low nicotine strength of the e-liquid. You’ll still get enough nicotine to feel satisfied, though, because you’ll use much more e-liquid than you would with a smaller vaping device. You also won’t taste the peppery flavour of nicotine as you would with a higher-strength e-liquid, so the flavour of the e-liquid itself will come through clearly.

How to Choose the Right E-Liquid Flavour

The most important thing to remember when you buy e-liquid is that taste is subjective. An e-liquid that’s popular among other vapers may not be to your liking, and you may try several vape juices before you find one that you truly love. Many new vapers start with tobacco e-liquids or menthol flavours because they want to replace the flavour of the cigarettes that they’ve given up.

Before you buy your first e-liquid, it’s important for you to know that a tobacco e-liquid doesn’t taste like a cigarette because it contains no tobacco and doesn’t burn. Many people prefer sweeter e-liquids for that reason, and you can find a wide selection of fruit and dessert e-liquids here at EasyPuff. Fruit and dessert flavours are the most popular e-liquids on the market. Whether your favourite vape juice turns out to be a tobacco flavour or something that tastes like a handful of rainbow candy, though, we encourage you to continue experimenting until you find the e-liquid that’s perfect for you.