Another Monday means time for another Juice Battle. Last week I only managed to get through 6 juices. I actually had a lot of hardware that desperately needed reviewing and that takes up quite a bit of my weekly bandwidth, so I didn’t get to review quite as many juices as I would like, but I have something really special planned for this week so it should more than make up for it.

This week’s contestants for the juice battle are: Mountain Oak Vapors- White Leaf Tobacco, AEro juice – secret garden, 2 from Roar Vapor – Bazingah and Screaming Mammaries, Hot Cinnamon from Vermilion River and Yaeliq’s English Toffee.

Let’s dive into this week’s battle…

#6 Mountain Oak Vapor – White Leaf Tobacco

White Leaf Tobacco from MOV is one of their synthetic tobacco blends in high VG. Here’s what they said about it:

White Leaf™ is a smooth & delicious vanilla tobacco e-liquid that is sure to please even the most fickle of taste buds. Bright vanilla high notes meld seamlessly with our sweet and robust Smooth & Mild Tobacco base. This E-Juice was made to be your all day vape, we hope you enjoy it as much as we do!

After Vanilla Dream easily won last week’s juice battle, I was super stoked to dive into their tobacco flavors, as that seems to be primarily what they are known for.

Unfortunately, White Leaf was a huge swing and a miss and easily qualified for last place in this week’s battle.

Vaping wise, it hits well and produces a good amount of vapor – particularly for a high PG blend. Taste wise, however, it is a total fail. This juice sadly suffers from a bad case of the dreaded “funk”. If you haven’t read many of my previous reviews, basically the “funk” is some kind of aftertaste that certain juices are afflicted with. It tastes very artificial, perfumey and strong. So strong that it basically mutes all the other flavors and leaves you with a pretty bad taste in your mouth. The “funk” is most common in tobacco flavors, particularly sweet tobacco flavors, and it was particularly prominent in this juice.

That basically made it unvapable for me. The tobacco notes I was able to pull from White Leaf were good, but they were so deeply smothered by the “funk”, that it was impossible to enjoy the juice at all.

So this one was a total fail. They have many better juices than this one, so I would advise completely avoiding it at all costs.

Read the full review.

#5 Vermilion River: Hot Cinnamon

At #5 this week we have Vermilion River’s Hot Cinnamon. Here’s what they say about it:

Like the red hots candy, an absolute flavor explosion of hot cinnamon fills your mouth.

This is only the second juice I have tried from Vermilion River, and so far I have been thoroughly disappointed by them. While Hot Cinnamon promises to taste like the classic Red Hots candy, all it really ends up tasting like is a hot mess.

For one thing, the overall experience is really unusual. The cinnamon has almost a menthol-like effect in that it puts off kind of a cooling sensation in the back of your throat. It feels very unnatural. The vapor production is quite poor, and the actual throat hit itself is weak for a hot cinnamon flavor in 20mg nicotine. The taste is artificial and awkward, and rounds this one out horribly making the overall fullness of vape very uneven.

Vermilion River is considered and marketed as a premium ejuice, and as such, this particular juice is not only horrible tasting and horrible to vape, it is also priced ridiculously high for how bad it actually is.

This juice definitely would have been in last place this week if MOV didn’t have the dreaded “funk” which makes the juice completely unvapable. Hot Cinnamon is bordering on unvapable as well, but not quite as severe as White Leaf.

Overall, there is really nothing good to say about this juice other than after reading this, hopefully you will know to stay far away from it.

Read the full review.

#4 Yaeliq – English Toffee

Another week, another disappointing performance from Yaeliq. This week I tried his English Toffee flavor. Here’s what he says about it:

Very natural flavor of toffe, Sweet and smooth

Yaeliq only managed to stay out of last place in this week’s battle by default basically. While this juice is just as deserving of a last place finish as Hot Cinnamon and White Leaf, it managed to beat both out by at least not being disgusting.

While English Toffee sounds like a perfect vape flavor, Yaeliq totally botched this one. My bottle had literally no flavor at all. I might as well have just loaded up a tank of straight PG/VG base and nicotine because it would have probably tasted and vaped exactly the same way. When I think of Toffee, I think of buttery, rich, sweet and nutty flavor. As a candy/dessert item, it is extremely flavorful and delicious. I would expect that a Toffee vape would be able to capture at least some of that essence but unfortunately this juice has absolutely no flavor.

This is probably the 3rd or 4th Yaeliq juice I have reviewed now that has little to no flavor at all. That is pretty disappointing and doesn’t speak highly to his quality control making just about any selection from there a potential risk of a dud.

Would absolutely not order this one again. Not recommended whatsoever.

Read the full review.

#3 Roar Vapor: Screaming Mammaries

I’ve been doing quite a few Roar Vapor reviews lately and they seem to be getting better and better as I go along. This week, Screaming Mammaries ended up at #3 in the battle. Here’s what Roar says about it:

This is a New Orleans stlye cappuccino that is very sweet and very creamy.

As I mentioned in my review, this juice was really tainted for me in that it inexplicably contained menthol. I certainly would have never ordered it that way myself, as I really don’t see much synergy between coffee and menthol, so I tried my best to ignore the menthol aspect and give an unbiased review. If I would have been reviewing the juice as a menthol juice, it might have been rated dead last this week because coffee and menthol have proven with this juice that they should never do business together.

Menthol aside though, it is actually a pretty good vape. A few weeks ago I reviewed organic turkish dark roast from Virgin Vapor, another coffee flavor, and this juice is nothing like it. While Virgin Vapor’s coffee was dark, contained no sweetness and had all the earthy bitterness of a nice black cup of good coffee, Screaming Mammaries tastes a lot more commercial, mild and neutral. It has a nice coffee aroma to it, but it’s like comparing Folger’s to an Artisan Dark Roast. They both have their place, however, and that’s why this juice ended up at #3 for me this week.

Not everyone wants a super dark and pungent coffee flavor. Some people like light with a dash of cream and sugar, and that is exactly what you get with Screaming Mammaries.

I wouldn’t say its among the best vapes I have tried, but I would really like to give this one a taste without the menthol because I would suspect it is quite tasty.

While I wouldn’t recommend it at all with menthol, sans-menthol I think it is a mild and tasty vape that should have a pretty broad appeal. Totally worth a look.

Read the full review.

#2 Roar Vapor – Bazingah

Coming in at runner up this week is another one from Roar Vapor. I believe this is the first time I have had the same company coming in back to back in a juice battle, and Roar was oh-so-close to a first place finish this week. Here’s what they say about Bazingah:

Usually we wait to release variations of flavors, but we made this and loved it so much that we had to release it now. This is the same Zingah flavor but with the addition of some Blueberry. It mellows out the vape just a hair and adds depth to the juice.

While Screaming Mammaries was somewhat marred for me because of the menthol, unfortunately my bottle of Bazingah is also somewhat marred because it is in 0mg nicotine. While it’s not a deal breaker, and luckily doesn’t effect the taste in any way, for me it does lower the overall vaping experience so it’s hard to give a completely unbiased review.

Taste-wise, I really liked this juice, a LOT. To me it had the sourness that I really like in a fruity or “green” vape. I have only ever had a couple really sour vapes, and they have been outstanding. Bazingah isn’t super sour, but it does have a prominent lime kick that gives it a great sourness and zest. On the inhale you get all the sourness and tangyness from the lime with blueberry weaved in throughout. The exhale is dominated by a pleasantly mild watermelon flavor. I was easily able to pick out the citrus and the watermelon before I even looked at the description of the juice, so I felt this one was spot on. It was sweet, but not overly sweet, which is something I always look for in a fruit vape.

For being a 0mg nic juice, it also hit admirably. Probably one of the best hits from a low to no nicotine juice I have ever had, so I can only imagine that it would be a near perfect vape at around 18mg and up. Vapor production was nice as Roar juices always are.

Highly recommended.

Read the full review.

#1 ÆRØ Juice: Sacred Garden

This week’s winner, by a mile I might add, was ÆRØ Juice’s Sacred Garden. Here’s what they say about it:

Devine sweet rose with traces of nectar from the garden.

I haven’t yet had the chance to try a ton of different floral vapes, but the ones I have tried so far have all been intriguing to say the least. While I thought their Aura juice, which contained a Violet extract was just OK, they really hit it out of the park with Sacred Garden.

It’s a flowery, bright pink juice that comes in a fancy bottle, so my first impression was that it seemed a little girly to me. In fact, I didn’t even like it that much after my first couple pulls. It does have a very strong rose presence that may seem a little unusual at first. I have had a lot of juices that are way on the perfumey side and almost unvapable. If you smell this one in the bottle, it does give off that kind of vibe. However, once you vape it you will find that it really is not perfumey at all. The rose flavor – while quite striking, is also fairly mild and mellow. To me, this is a very low key vape. It has a burst of sweetness, but at just the right level to balance out the rose perfectly so there’s no bitterness and the distinguished fragrance of the rose doesn’t overpower. I found this to be a perfectly balanced juice. I wanted to take it out with me to get some friends’ opinions, but I managed to go through the whole bottle in just around 24 hours. I literally could not put it down.

Not only does it taste great, it vapes great. Aero juice only offers nic levels up to 12 mg. While I thought Aura was somewhat lacking in the throat hit department, Sacred Garden did not let me down at all – in fact it provided just about a perfect all around vaping experience. Good, pronounced throat hit, plenty of vapor and a vibrant and interesting flavor that I absolutely could not get enough of.

Usually I am not super keen on the more expensive juices, but I can say definitively that this one is well worth it, and you can buy with confidence. I cannot recommend this one enough, it is fantastic.

Read the full review.

The Bottom Line

While I didn’t get through as many juices as I would have liked last week, I did find a couple gems and some clear losers. I am finding more and more that Yaeliq’s juices suffer from serious quality issues. I have tried a lot of Roar juices now and am finally starting to identify some real winners. So far Vermilion River has been a big bust for me – despite the fact that they are a hometown company, just down the road from me here in Minnesota. As much as I loved MOV’s Vanilla Dream, I learned that even high end companies still suffer from the dreaded “funk”, which I am still trying to wrap my head around. While I had almost written Aero Juice off as overhyped and overpriced, I found a real winner in Sacred Garden this week in a big time paradigm shift.

Big Things Next Week

A Reddit user gave me a great idea to do a tobacco themed juice battle and this week that is exactly what I intend to do. I have selected 10 different tobacco flavors from various vendors that will go head to head in next week’s juice battles. My aim is to try and get at least 2 tobaccos reviewed each day this week, so I will have a minimum of 10 tobacco flavors ready to go for next week’s battle.

If all goes well I have a lot more ideas along these lines for future battles, so it should be a lot of fun.

Stay tuned.