I’m back from a week-long hiatus. I would have loved to pinch out a Juice Battle last week, but my schedule ended up getting really messed up and on top of that I got a nasty bug that put me out of commission for a couple days, so since I couldn’t give each individual juice the attention it deserved, I decided to wait a week so I would be able to have ample time to evaluate each juice.

This juice battle was really something. There are a few real stinkers, but the top 4 in particular are all absolutely outstanding juices and it was really hard to pick a winner between them all.

So with that out of the way, let’s get right down to business…

#10 Mountain Oak Vapor: MOV Gold

Last winter I picked up a batch of MOV juices – I had heard nothing but great things, and the first couple juices I reviewed from them were really good. Unfortunately, I also got stuck with a couple bottles that I knew were going to be a bitch to get through because I could smell the overpowering stench of disgusting floral perfume notes as soon as I opened up the bottle.

This juice suffers from the dreaded “funk”. This is the second MOV juice I’ve tried that has been afflicted with this – the first was White Leaf Tobacco, which was equally disgusting.

Basically, it has an extremely overpowering perfume/floral overtone that completely takes over the entire flavor of the vape. On top of that, the stench will permeate anything it touches – your hands, atomizer, desk, purse or any other surface that is unlucky enough to get a dose of MOV Gold on it. If you put it in your atomizer, even just a couple drops, you will probably have to clean it with soap and water, then alcohol, then soap and water, then let it air out for a couple days to get the horrific smell out of it.

It’s sad because I can very lightly pick up a medium bodied, dry and earthy tobacco under the thick blanket of stench, so I could see where there might be some potential with this juice, but I can’t imagine anyone out there being able to tolerate the awful perfume notes that totally ruin this juice.

This one was absolutely unvapable, and I am glad to be rid of it.

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#9 Shark Juice: Liquid Gold

I had decently high hopes for Liquid Gold – one of the ambiguously flavored but highly self-touted juices from The Vapor Co. Here’s what they say about it:

Another hard flavor to describe but a must that you try. A very smooth and incredible flavor. Liquid Gold has a hint of hazelnut as well as several top-secret enhancers. Try some today, you’ll be glad you did!

In a nutshell, this juice basically tastes very similar to Mall Burro and Karma, except I found it to be richer and have kind of a strong buttery overtone. The more I vaped this stuff, the more I was disgusted with it. It has a richness to it that is so strong, when combined with the fact that this juice doesn’t really have a clear flavor profile, kind of makes the whole thing nauseatingly jumbled.

I didn’t get any hazelnut to speak of out of this one. It is mostly just fatty and rich tasting.

To be fair, I got an extra bottle of this stuff because they absolutely fucked my order up beyond belief, and I gave it to a friend, and I noticed he was still vaping it when I saw him again. Personally, I don’t know how he can handle the shit because I think it’s just plain nasty, but to each his own, I guess.

The one benefit of this juice over MOV Gold is that it is at least vapable – barely.

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#8 Nirvana Vapor: Vedic Vanilla

Ok from here on out, all the juices were actually pretty good – in fact pretty much any of these could potentially be top 5 given the right field, but this week the competition was fierce.

Here’s what Nirvana says about Vedic Vanilla:

Vedic Vanilla: If you have tried other vanilla’s and thought they were weak, THIS is the Vanilla for you!!! Vedic Vanilla packs a serious vanilla punch! Some say it has a vanilla icing taste to it! You have to try this one!

This was the first of two vanillas I tried this week, and as you can probably tell, this is the worst of the two.

Basically, this is an average to slightly below average vanilla.

The taste isn’t exactly bad, but it’s not super great. On the inhale, I get a mild vanilla overtone, however it has kind of an artificial note to it that is almost fruity – and in an odd, out of place kind of way. The exhale is mostly pure vanilla flavor, however I find it really light.

All around, it definitely has the vanilla flavor, but there is absolutely no wow-factor, and additionally, it has the artificial notes that make it significantly less pleasurable to vape.

Additionally, this juice is almost jet-black. I don’t know exactly what it is, but I am always just a wee bit put off by super black juices. I don’t want to say they don’t vape as well, because I’m sure there are some out there that are killer, but I can’t think of any crazy black juice that I’ve ever been a huge fan of.

Throat hit and vapor were both really good on this juice, so the performance was there. I just found the flavor to be underwhelming, and frankly if you want an average to below average vanilla flavor, you might as well get it from MBV and save yourself a few bucks.

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#7 Azure Vaping: Buttecream Cupcake

Taste-wise, I didn’t think this juice was that much better than Vedic Vanilla – they both suffer from the same kind of artificial undertones that don’t completely spoil the vape, but at the same time make it a lot less enjoyable.

Here’s what Azure says about it:

Vanilla cake topped with buttercream frosting.

Flavor-wise, much like their Butter Rum in the last battle, I thought this one left a lot to be desired.

It’s like… You can kind of taste the cake – very lightly, and you can kind of pick out some frosting, and it has kind of a very gentle vanilla undertone. Which is all good, but you really kind of have to stretch to pull these flavors out.

For starters, the flavor is really light across the vape. There’s no point where it kicks you in the face and lets you know you’re vaping a delicious buttercream cupcake. It’s all extremely subtle.

The second problem is, it is very dry. The flavor lacks fullness, and it vapes very dry, so it ends up leaving me a lot more unsatisfied than I would be were the flavor fuller.

Most importantly, it has a weird kind of artificial undertone laced through it on both the inhale and the exhale. Unlike Vedic Vanilla, the artificialness doesn’t have much of a pronounced flavor, but I think it’s more a combination of the dryness and the lightness of the flavor that really steals the authenticity of the flavor and makes it taste extremely artificial.

Now that said, it vapes decently well, and overall it doesn’t taste bad – in fact it is actually fairly pleasant. I rated this above Vedic Vanilla primarily because I actually liked vaping this one more. I have the same size bottle of both juices, and I plowed through the Buttercream Cupcake in 2 days, while I still have about half a bottle of the vanilla left, so that right there pretty much clinched it for me. Really, neither is that good, but both are vapable.

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#6: Yaeliq: Prickly Leaf Tobacco

Yaeliq has been having an amazing run with me as of late – ever since I sort of went off on some other bloggers for promoting his shit when I had never really had a juice that was that great from him, I have been impressed week after week with the juices I’ve sampled.

This week I’ve got his Prickly Leaf Tobacco at the 6 spot. Here’s what he says about it:

Sharp and strong tobacco flavor,

heavy one but very suitable for all day vape

I am really quite impressed by this juice. In fact, in a different week, I could easily see this being top 5 or maybe even top 3.

Basically, it is a really unique tobacco blend. I have tried a lot of tobaccos and I don’t think this is super close in flavor profile to any of them. It has kind of a faint RY4 attitude, but it doesn’t have the scotch-tape type flavor and overbearing richness that a lot of RY4s tend to have. It’s also very loosely similar to HHV’s Huntsman and Dark Horse, although it is a lot less sour, and I find the flavor of Prickly Leaf to be a lot less abrasive and a lot more smooth.

The best way I can describe it is a very green tasting tobacco. It has a slight peppery flavor, and it is very grassy and slightly nutty. I would put this as a medium bodied tobacco. The flavor is super consistent across the board, and it is surprisingly smooth for having a sharper flavor profile.

I really liked this one for the uniqueness. I wouldn’t say that it’s my favorite, but I have a feeling a lot of real tobacco fans out there would appreciate this one for the originality and quality you get for an extremely reasonable price.

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#5 503 – Caramel Apple Pie

The middle of the pack belongs to Caramel Apple Pie from 503 this week. Here’s what they say about it:

A baker’s delight packed full of caramel, pie crust and apples.

A buddy of mine picks these up from the Smokless Smoking shop over in Northeast MPLS, and he let me borrow this bottle to review.

This is the second juice I have reviewed from 503 now. Overall, I have been impressed with the quality and performance, however the price is fairly high for relatively pedestrian flavors.

This juice is really good, however it is extremely heavy on the butter component. I get that a pie crust is made with a lot of butter, so I understand why it is included as an ingredient. In this vape, however, I feel that it really dominates the flavor from start to finish and makes it particularly “heavy” to vape. It also tends to drown out the apple and especially the caramel.

Now all that said, this is still a pretty tasty vape. I have been vaping more and more juices with this strong butter component – usually in cereal, pastry or pie related vapes, and while I do think it is extremely strong, it is also growing on me a wee bit. The overall flavor of this juice is absolutely swimming in butter. You get it heavily on the inhale and on the exhale. It does have a nice apple flavor, but it is fairly light in comparison to the butter. I didn’t really think it had a ton of caramel.

Usually when I think about biting into a fresh delicious piece of apple pie, I think more of warm and moist apples and cinnamon and less about a strong buttery crust. Maybe I’m in the minority on that, I really don’t know. I just don’t think this one particularly reminds me of apple pie, despite the fact that it tastes pretty decent.

The real plus with this juice is the tremendous throat hit. I’m sampling a bottle at a 10mg nic level, and this stuff was hitting as hard as anything I had going this week. I was absolutely shocked by how well it hit. Honestly, I cannot even think of any juice I have ever tried below 12mg where the throat hit was strong enough for me to want to keep vaping it – this is literally the first one.

So overall this is a pretty good juice, although not completely accurate IMO and quite heavy.

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#4 Seduce Juice: Snake Oil

Out of all the Seduce Juices I’ve tried, I think Snake Oil is easily the best I’ve had so far. Here’s what they say about it:

Snake oil – Our best seller! Our signature cream base with emphasis on pear, and a hint of coconut.

What I found interesting about this juice, is that when I first tasted it it seemed to taste almost identical to Roar Vapor’s Truth Serum. Then when I went back and read the description, I noticed that the flavor profile is basically exactly the same as well.

So really, my thoughts on Truth Serum apply fully to Snake Oil as well, because I honestly can’t find any real difference between the two.

Just like Truth Serum, it is supposed to be a pear base – frankly I didn’t get a strong pear vibe from either. To me, it just tastes fruity with a slight hint of “tropical”, no doubt from the coconut.

Overall, I think it is a really nice flavor profile. I personally love coconut and tropical flavors. I know that coconut is one of those things that can be hit or miss for people, so if you aren’t into that whole tropical seen, there is nothing you will really get out of this juice.

It’s interesting that Snake Oil and Truth Serum are both signature flavors. While I really do like the flavor, they do also kind of lack that “wow” factor that really identifies a signature flavor, in my opinion. Don’t get me wrong, Snake Oil is a really good juice, I just don’t know if I would classify it as “great”.

On a different week with a weaker field, I could see this one finishing as high as second place, but the competition was quite stiff this week.

I really do like this juice a lot and definitely plan to finish my bottle. For sure, if you are in to coconut/tropical style vapes, this one is well worth a try and you can probably order a large bottle of it with confidence.

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#3 Alternate Cig: Chillin Chai Tea

These guys were having a crazy sale a couple weeks ago so I stocked up on a bunch of flavors to try out. Being that I’m kind of a Tea-Whore, I naturally gravitated to this one first. Here’s what they say about it:

Chill out and vape some chai tea.

It’s interesting because I have tried quite a few different Chai vapes and I haven’t even come close to liking any of them – until this one came along.

Chillin Chai Tea is a very solid Chai vape. The biggest pitfall I see with Chai flavored vapes is that they are usually way too heavy on the clove, which is an important component of Chai, but can easily dominate any juice it is added to because it is SUCH a strong flavor.

Chillin Chai Tea is the first Chai vape I have had that has really reigned the clove in perfectly to let the other flavors come out. I get hints of cinnamon, allspice and even a little star anise – which I am normally not crazy about but it is really worked into this juice beautifully. Of course the clove is also present, but like I said, it is quite a bit more subdued than I am used to from Chai vapes.

I couldn’t really figure out if this was supposed to also have cream in it or not. The picture on their site shows a creamy cup of Chai. I still kind of go back and forth on it, but I am pretty sure now that there isn’t any cream in this one. It vapes fairly dry, and doesn’t have that smooth, rich finish that you usually get from a cream component.

I thought that the flavors were perfectly balanced from the smell in the bottle all the way through to the aftertaste. While the overall vape is pretty dry, the flavor is plenty full, so it isn’t a problem at all.

I got this one at 24mg, and I have been getting amazing throat hit from this juice, and while I am pretty sure it is a higher PG blend, it still puts out a healthy dose of vapor.

Honestly when I first tried this one I was immediately thinking this could be the Juice Battle winner. Up until today I was still thinking that. I really like this juice a LOT, and I would definitely buy it again. This is the kind of flavor I personally really like to vape, and I could vape this all the time and never get sick of it. On a different week I could easily see this one winning it all but the competition was incredibly stiff this week.

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#2 The Plume Room: Arctic Cowboy

Coming in second place this week is a surprising one – Arctic Cowboy from The Plume Room. Here’s what they say about it:

Medium bodied tobacco with a touch of vanilla & cool mint. Mildly sweet with a full tobacco flavor and great throat hit.

As I mentioned in the initial review, I was quite put off by the name of the flavor. It’s pretty well known that I’m not a big menthol guy, and generally juices with the word “Arctic” in the name tend to have a pretty strong “icy” component to them whether menthol or mint or both. Couple that with the fact that I haven’t had a lot of great menthol tobacco vapes in general, I finally broke down and added this one to the battle this week almost just to get it out of my review box.

From the minute I smelled this stuff in the bottle, I knew it was going to be special. Normally with menthol vapes, that’s pretty much all you can smell. Not the case with Arctic Cowboy. This juice pops you in the face with an extremely strong and exotic tobacco aroma from the moment you open the bottle.

The flavor of the juice is one of the most complex tobacco flavors I’ve had in a while. It has kind of that Cuban-Tobacco style of peppery flavor to it, but it has an even more elevated spicy taste to it, to the point where I can almost taste a little jalapeno or something in there. It’s not acutally spicy – it won’t burn your throat or anything like that, but it has that spicy kind of taste to it. I would rate it as a medium bodied tobacco, just like they describe. I think it is more of a green tasting tobacco – really fresh and grassy with the strong punch of flavor from the pepper/spice.

Then you get to the exhale and the cool finish is artfully laced in with the tobacco flavor. It’s subtle to the point where it’s feasible that someone might not even realize this is a menthol/ice vape if they blind tasted it. Rather than dominating the flavor, it actually accentuates it, making the tobacco pop even more and really putting an exclamation point on the whole thing.

To top it off, it has an outstanding throat hit at 18mg, and excellent vapor production.

Considering I was expecting the worst before I bothered to take a whiff of it, I was absolutely astounded by how incredibly good this vape is. It’s extremely complex for a tobacco -to the point where I can’t even really categorize it with any other tobaccos – Cuban would be the closest, but I actually think this is quite a bit better than any Cuban I’ve tried, so it’s not even on the same level. The menthol/ice component was perfectly executed and it really caps off the vape beautifully. I don’t normally ever say this, but I actually think this vape is better because of the menthol. Then you have the superior performance – not only does it hit great at 18mg, but the menthol gives it even more of a punch, and the vapor production is really quite excellent.

All around, this is a perfectly executed tobacco vape. I’ve tried so many run-of-the-mill and uninteresting tobaccos lately that I have really been getting kind of bored with tobacco vapes in general, but this one completely impressed me. I would definitely recommend this one to anyone who likes tobacco vapes – and particularly, if you’re looking for a menthol tobacco vape that doesn’t taste like complete shit, this is exactly the juice I would tell you to start with.

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#1 Twisted Cigs: Vanilla Dream

This week’s big winner in an extremely competitive field is Twisted Cigs’ Vanilla Cloud. Here’s what they say about it:

A rich and hearty e-juice with a punch of custard cream vanilla.

Back near the beginning of the year, I got a hold of a bottle of Vanilla Cloud and Mili Vanilli ahead of the custard battle I was doing. They both technically could have worked for the custard battle, however I felt that Mili Vanili was more of a true custard, so I went forward with Mili Vanili and put this one on the shelf for a while, despite the fact that I thought both were excellent.

Finally, I decided to pull this one out for a review, and I instantly remembered why Mili Vanilli was my favorite in the first Custard Battle.

Both are absolutely top notch vanilla flavors. It would be nearly impossible to pick a better juice between the two of them, because they are both absolutely phenomenal.

Vanilla Cloud is like your perfect vanilla vape. It’s very warm and rich throughout the vape. The vanilla flavor has a lot of depth, but not too much to the point where it starts tasting like pure vanilla extract – it’s just the right level, and stays exactly the same throughout the entire duration of the vape.

Vanilla is one of those flavors that is tough to fuck up to the point where it doesn’t taste good. Basically any vanilla – even Vedic Vanilla above, is going to be a pretty solid choice because even the shitty ones are usually still pretty decent.

That said, vanilla is also one of those flavors where it’s easy to get a lot of artificial notes, and unevenness of flavor. A lot of times – especially with custards, the inhale will taste a lot different from the exhale, and be peppered with artificial notes – not enough to ruin the vape, or even make me not like it, but artificial tasting nontheless. You can go back and check out the custard battle to see more of what I’m talking about.

With Vanilla Cloud, you don’t have to worry about any of that bullshit. You get the perfect level of vanilla flavor that tastes EXACTLY the same from start to finish. It’s rich and full flavored without being overbearing. It doesn’t contain a single trace of artificialness, and of course it has a fucking crazy throat hit at 24mg and produces incredible vapor.

I’ve been vaping this in my Fogger V4 all week long, and I have to say I think this is about the closest I have ever come in my entire time vaping to actually having “the perfect vape”. I love this flavor because it is really rich and flavorful, and yet I can still vape it for days on end without getting sick of it. The performance is consistent – I can take this out and vape it for 10 hours, and my last throat hit will be just as potent as the first, and the flavor will still taste as good as the first hit did.

It’s really hard to find flavors like this that taste amazing and perform absolutely flawless every single hit, hit after hit.

With some of the other really amazing flavors this week, and coupled with the fact that Mili Vanili already took 1st place in a Juice Battle, I really had to think hard about picking Vanilla Cloud as the winner. But looking back at this last week, ESPECIALLY considering the exceptional pool of juices I had to choose from, I kept coming back to Vanilla Cloud again and again, despite the fact that it doesn’t have a super fancy flavor profile.

It’s just plain good. It’s consistent, it’s delicious and it performs beautifully. In my book, it’s totally deserving of this first place finish – particularly because of how often I was reaching for it despite having some incredibly good alternatives.

Honestly, if you like vanilla at all and haven’t tried anything from Twisted yet, I cannot recommend it enough. I’ve tried tons of vanilla flavors – practically on a weekly basis, and these two are without a doubt a cut above the rest.

Highly Recommended.

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The Bottom Line

Even though I have only missed 2 juice battles ever since I started doing this, I did feel pretty guilty about missing last week’s. I really just didn’t want to force one out without giving all 10 juices a fair shake. In retrospect, I’m glad it worked out the way it did, and it was actually an incredibly awesome 2 weeks for Vapecore despite not having a juice battle last week.

For starters, I finally started fucking around with dual coil builds more. Anyone who reads my stuff with any regularity knows I’m more of a single coil kind of guy, but that shit gets boring after a while, and I wanted to come with some fresh tutorials. I showed you how I set up a dual nano coil build on my Patriot. I finally got around to showing you 2 different ways I like to set up my Kraken for autodripping mode – one with 2 coils next to each other, and one with dual nano dragon coils parallel to each other. I also showed you how I like to set up my Taifun GT, which I have been absolutely loving and use all the time – it’s a simple build but it works like fucking clockwork. Additionally, I found a ton of hot new deals – production seems to be ramping up and there is constantly new and affordable stuff coming out on a daily basis – including the long awaited DNA30 clones, which are going to dramatically improve everyone’s vaping experience.

I finally got a Pinterest account setup as well as a Flickr account, and you can expect both will be updated daily with whatever new stuff I am working on.

As far as what’s coming up? After getting more pumped about dual coils, I finally decided to bust out my IGO-W3 again and start phreaking some quad coils. I will have a tutorial on that coming really soon as well as a review. I also started doing a lot of stuff with twisted kanthal, which is absolutely awesome, and I plan to have a lot more tutorials with twisted kanthal coming really soon. Additionally, I have been working on plans to make my own jig for building coils- and not just regular coils, but all different types of crazy shit, and I think it will be relatively easy to do, so expect to see more on that very soon.

Of course, I also have a shit ton of new juices coming in as well as many already lined up, so if nothing else, I will see ya for next week’s battle!