Points that make a great electronic cigarette experience

It has been 15 weeks since I left regular cigarettes behind and began my journey down the long winding path of electronic cigarettes.  With the help of other review websites, blogs and the electronic cigarette forum I have found my feet in my current awareness.  I know what I know and I’m eager to plod into the darkness of my unawareness.

I’ve found several answers to my first questions, and found rivers of other questions that keep broadening out like a mighty river.  I constantly keep an eye out for scientist and doctors to offer more information about electronic cigarettes, but they are either still testing or aren’t looking at all.  So those questions I will leave in the hands of the experts.

So, I delve into one question:

What makes a great electronic cigarette experience for me?

The answer is broken into four parts: Pull, Throat hit, flavor and Vapor.  A bit over simplified, I know, but at its heart these four little factors keep me vaping.  The second tier of concerns is important as well, but not as much as the first tier for me.  The second tier is: battery use time before needing to recharge, time between refilling/replacing cartridge/cartomizer, and portability/ease of recharge. Below this point are issues that are not as important if a product ace all the first tiers.  The third tier of concern is: Price per puff ratio, style/look of the e-cig and bulk/size of e-cig.

Tier 1

Pull:

Pull is what I call the resistance the e-cig gives when you draw on it.  Since moving away from reg cigs, my focus is on what I “remember” a regular pull is.  To light of a pull, and it feels like your pulling on a straw that is cracked on the side.  To tight and it feels like an ice-cube is stuck on in straw.  Each battery/cartomizer combo offers different ways to vent air and the design is usually shared among the battery types/threads.  The real pull is determined by the design of the batteries and cartomizers and the flow of air through them.  At the same time, I have seen similarly manufactured thread sizes give different results.  I began to rely on manufactures to deliver consistent results for my vaping needs.   The battery mAhs also give an insight into the pull.  I’m not an engineer, I’m more of a programmer, but from my readings and understandings, the volts of batteries play a reason in how quickly the battery builds up the atomizer on each draw to vaporize the e-liquid.  If the mAh is delivered in a consistent fashion, then the atomizer should be able to offer a constant steady flow of atomized e-liquid.  This helps decide if on every pull you get the same vaping experience, or if you have to wait till the cartomizer gets to a “certain level” of voltage before it begins to deliver a consistent pull-per-flavor ratio.  Some cartomizer-to-battery ratios need a “build up puff time” before it begins to give the flavor and vapor I have come to expect from it.

Throat hit:

Throat hit is the agitation in the back of the throat smokers are used to from regular cigarettes.  The “kick” a smoker gets when they pull in a mouth full of smoke, then inhales it all in is the throat hit.  The throat hit that almost brings a smoker to point of coughing is what each smoker over comes in time and is a part of a smokers experience.  The electronic cigarette can simulate this just like a cigarette and most e-cig users believe it’s associated with the amount of nicotine in each cartridge/cartomizer.   In most cases this is true.  But, there are some cases that this is just not the case.  Propylene Glycol e-liquids tend to have a strong throat hit and fewer vapors, where as Vegetable glycerin e-liquids have less throat hit and more vapor.  I tested this with Johnson’s Creeks smoke juice Tennessee Cured, which they have in a Propylene Glycol mix and a pure Vegetable Glycerin e-liquid in 18 mg (1.8%) nicotine.  The Red Oak version, which uses Vegetable Glycerin, had more vapor but less throat hit and the original version had more throat hit but less vapor.  Throat hit also plays a role in how the flavor is received.  The e-liquids with no throat hit has a different “taste” as opposed to the version with more throat hit.  I have purchased zero nicotine e-liquids of my favorite flavors and I can tell it’s the same flavor, but it still “tastes” different.  The kick from the throat hit becomes a part of it’s flavor.  This is why throat hit is a tier one concern for me.

Flavor:

Flavor is everything to me now.  In my regular cigarette days, when I only had the different flavors of tobacco and the few selections of menthol to choose from, I did a bit of searching.  When I was 21 and decided I was going to smoke, I started with Marlboro regulars, king size.  I was curious, so I began buying different packs from other manufactures:  Were they any different?  Isn’t tobacco, tobacco?  These are the questions I wanted to answer for myself.  Was I smoke the best available?  So, I went through every brand I found.  From Lucky Strike and unfiltered Camel to Capri, Salem, Winston and Dunhill I kept trying them.  All of the brands such as Newport and each variety of Camel gave way till I finally settled on Benson and Hedges Menthol Light as my brand for the last 15 years of my smoking journey.  Now that I am not limited to tobacco or menthol flavors, I can really explore this wide open world of flavors.  I stumbled upon Johnson Creeks Summer Peach and fell in love.  I never thought I would leave its side as I tested and discarded other flavors.  I was able to see the uniqueness and passion of the other flavors, but Summer Peach had my heart.  Until that day I stumbled into V2 Cigs Coffee flavors arms and realized… I had not known love, true love, until that moment!  Of V2Cig coffee flavor, how do I love thee.  We danced and… wait, I digress.  That one simple coffee flavor showed me there are still yet mountains to climb.  Still many more flavors that are fascinating, complex and alluring.  Halo G6 has a host of them, just waiting for me to further explore them.  I am nurturing Midnight Apple now, and it’s just amazing.  Dark husky scents play upon my palette with the hint of sweet apples lightly dancing in the background.    You can really taste the passion each inventor put into these flavors.  Oh, and Vapor 4 life has a host of flavors I look forward to devouring.   I can go on and on with this topic, so I better move on.

Vapor:

Vapor plays a major role in my e-cig experience and it can be over-looked if I’m not careful.  The mouth-full of vapor that is released signifies to me the end of a process.  That the puff has been completed and a step finalized in my e-cig vaping.  It is mentally satisfying and emotionally fulfilling.  The closing of a chapter as it was, all bundled up in a cloud of vapor.  This is what the part of vapor plays:  the conclusion to the act and it soothes the completionist in me.

There you have it, my top-tier in what makes my electronic cigarette experience complete.  I’ll put together another post on the next 2 tiers in another post.