What e-juice is right for me?

[nickanthony]

Hello all. I'm new the forums here and started vaping about 3 weeks ago. Been a smoker for 19 years and have my second baby on the way due Oct 2nd. My girlfriend was a smoker as well and she managed to quit cold turkey once we found out she was pregnant so that was nice but I was still stuck with my bad habits. Anyways I started out with a V2 vaping pen after doing some research online and all the advertised reviews pointed towards V2 being a great company for vaping. That dumb thing lasted 5 days before it died and no way to change coil, battery or anything. Luckily the day it died I found out I had a local vape shop right next to my house so I went there to talk to some people that actually know what they're talking about.

I told him about my first week experience and said I just needed something with a good hard hit that gives me that smoking sensation and something that's reliable or at least lasts longer than a week. He recommended the eleaf icare which he had out and had been testing for the last couple of weeks. I bought that and everything was great. I was buying their house juice with I believe is a 50/50 mix at 18mg. I liked the flavor and the throat hit I got from it but after a couple of days it started to leak a little. I asked about a thicker juice to help with leaking and was recommended Ruthless so I tried Swamp Thang. Absolutely love the flavor! but I couldn't get a good throat hit to save my life. I'm sucking on this thing until I nearly pass out and I can't feel anything even with the same nicotine level.

Well later last night after doing some online researching I find out that vg/pg levels can also dictate throat hits and that the Ruthless brand is 85/15. Wow so that's where my problem is. I've probably got about $70-$90 worth of worthless e-juice at this point because I kept on trying different types and brands and the damn guys at the shop kept wanting to push me towards 30 and 50ml bottles when I haven't even tried it yet. I went online before bed last night and was determined to find a good reasonably mixed juice maybe a 60/40ish that wouldn't leak and still have a good throat hit but very quickly realized how hard it is to find the vg/pg ratio on any products looking online. To make matters worse, I can't trust my local shop because they told me that the Ruthless was 70/30 then I see online that it's actually 85/15.

Sorry for the long novel. I'm a little on edge right now. Haven't had a smoke in 3 weeks now and feeling good about that but when I'm at home at night and trying like hell for hours to get a good hit so I can feed my addiction but can't for the life of me, I start getting stressed out.

Anyways, I'm just looking for any recommendations on a good throat hitting juice that is around the 60/40 ratio or any recommendations from previous long term, full time smokers who are using the eleaf icare and what they like to use in it.
Thanks

 

[Whiskey]

Hi Nick and welcome to VU, So many juices, so little time (wink)
I'll move this to a great area for you to get member responses!!

 

[nickanthony]

Awesome, thanks Whiskey

 

[fartbubble]

Your main problem is Ruthless only goes up to 6mg nic and in a iCare, that's not sufficient because the coils have a higher ohm. What you need is either 12mg or 18mg which kinda sucks as a lot of juice companies have moved to the lower nic since people have stopped buying as majority of people moved to subohm.

TMaxx is a good cheap juice company that makes it that high http://vaping.watch/eliquid/tmaxx-s-no-frills-ml-s

you can also do a search on that strength at ejuices.com if you want something more complex in flavor. https://www.ejuices.com

Can't really give you any particular juices to try as you haven't built up a profile in flavors you like (at the start, it can get pricey as you figure that out)

 

[nickanthony]

Your main problem is Ruthless only goes up to 6mg nic and in a iCare, that's not sufficient because the coils have a higher ohm. What you need is either 12mg or 18mg which kinda sucks as a lot of juice companies have moved to the lower nic since people have stopped buying as majority of people moved to subohm.

TMaxx is a good cheap juice company that makes it that high http://vaping.watch/eliquid/tmaxx-s-no-frills-ml-s

you can also do a search on that strength at ejuices.com if you want something more complex in flavor. https://www.ejuices.com

Can't really give you any particular juices to try as you haven't built up a profile in flavors you like (at the start, it can get pricey as you figure that out)

Hi, thanks for the reply. I'll have to check out that tmaxx. At the shop i bought the ruthless from it had 0 nic and they added it in themselves. I asked for 12 but i suppose i have really have no idea what they gave me. Does that sound right or am i being cheated?

Okay so I'm using an ohm and most people are using a subohm? I'm assuming based on what you're saying that with a subohm you don't need the higher nicotine to get a good throat hit? I'm gonna have to research what an ohm and subohm is and maybe i can get a better idea of what I'm getting myself into here. I know a lot of people do this more as a hobby but i really wanted to keep it as simple as possible. Just have a device that feels like a cigarette when you hit it and maybe blows out some smoke (or smoke like anything) to keep the visual simulation.

 

[fartbubble]

The iCare is a great device to start with. For the ohms aspect, the higher it is, the less efficient the nic delivery is which is why you need a higher strength and vice versa. And the iCare is a MTL (mouth to lung aka smoking analogue) which hampers it a bit. The pg/vg ratio you should use is either 40/60 or 30/70 as any higher and it can't keep up the wicking in the device.

As for a store adding nic to a bottle, run far away from that place. That's not normal

 

[nickanthony]

I've heard that it's a mouth to lung device but the first time i took a hit, it nearly knocked me on my ass. I took a few more and pretty quickly realized i was hitting it differently than i hit a cigarette. I had no way to explain it and certainly no name for it. I asked the guy who helped me set it up at the shop and he told me it's because i was doing direct lung hits. I've messed around since then and i can do mouth to lung hits with it if i really try but it doesn't naturally happen using this. The airflow is just way to lose. So whatever this was intended for, I'm doing direct lung hits with it.

Why would it be bad for a vape shop that makes their own house juices to add nicotine to the other juices? They're already adding nicotine to their own juice so what's the difference? I find it hard to believe this rare with established vape shops. Maybe I'm wrong.