Picking Your First E-Liquids - Tips From a Pro

So you're really ready to put the cigarettes behind you - or you've found vaping for whatever reason. Now you're confronted with choices - so many choices! Without even getting into the hardware you can use to vaporize your liquid, there are hundreds, if not thousands, of premium quality liquids to choose from, all jumping off the pages here at Breazy, begging you to take a taste! What to do?

First, let's talk about nicotine. Are you a former or current tobacco user (this includes cigar smokers and users of chewing tobacco)? No? You probably don't need any nicotine - while the jury is certainly out on whether nicotine has any medical value (and there are indeed camps that say it does, when separated from all of the toxic and highly-addictive additives in cigarette smoke), suffice it to say that if you don't use nicotine now at worst it'll make you sick and at best you probably won't notice its effects, so there's really not much point in going down that road.

You do use tobacco, you say? For a rough starting point, users of middle-generation devices that vape at 15 watts or less on eGo style batteries or low-power mods topped with tanks like the Aspire Nautilus or Kanger Aerotank series will generally start with vape juice at a 12 mg/ml nicotine strength if they're smoking a pack of cigarettes a day or less. For users smoking more than a pack a day, 18 mg or stronger juice may be what you need to power through the cravings when you're first putting the stinkies down.

Users of new-generation devices like any of the popular sub-ohm tanks will generally find they only need half the nicotine strength, and most experienced users begin tapering down their use of nicotine the farther they are from their tobacco use. Everyone goes at their own pace, however - it may help to try a couple different strengths if you're not sure where you fall.

'I want my e-cigarette to taste like my favorite cigarettes.'

Ah, the refrain we've heard so many times from aspiring quitters (don't worry, we felt the same way once too). The first thing you're going to have to realize is that while master liquid mixers can blend some tasty tobaccos, it's pretty difficult to mimic the flavor of thousands of chemical additives and smoldering paper wrapping to add to that tobacco. So try out a tobacco (we did say they're quite tasty), but venture out too - simple flavors like fruits are nice for healing taste buds, though for some a favorite dessert is what helps turn vaping into a more enjoyable experience than you'd have ever imagined smoking could be.

The most important thing to take into your new juice experience is an open mind - don't buy into a huge jug of one flavor right off the bat, try a few smaller bottles of a variety of flavors until you get an idea of what your 'vape palate' looks like. For most of us it's actually quite different from what we like food-wise. And if you don't like a vape juice on first try, don't toss it! Not only do the taste buds of former smokers evolve quite rapidly in the first 60 days after quitting, some fresh-made vape juice gain complexity through aging in a process known as 'steeping.' Virtually every experienced vaper has thrown a terrible juice in the back of their closet, disgusted, only to pull it out a few months later and, on a whim, discovered a new favorite.