Time for another juice battle! I had a really nice selection of juices to choose from this week. In fact, only one of the juices I tried turned out to be unvapable and the rest were all pretty decent to some degree. I also got a chance to try out some new vendors, and my first ever WTA juice. If you’re wondering about the cigar box this week’s juices are pictured on, it’s an antique sliding cigar box. It’s not very tall and only designed to hold 5 cigars. I picked it up on eBay for about $7 total, and I use it for keeping all my RBA tools in – wick, wire, screwdriver, cotton. It’s a perfect way to keep your building gear organized and out of the way.

Anyway, without further ado, let’s get on with the countdown…

#10 The Vapor Co: Shark Daniels

Coming in dead last this week is Shark Daniels. No description, but based on the name and taste, I am pretty sure this is supposed to be a whiskey flavored vape.

I found this one to be awful in just about every possible way. I have it at 24mg, and I rarely ever encounter a 24mg juice that doesn’t have a strong throat hit, but this one was really pretty lame for a high nic juice – so that’s a BIG red flag for me. It didn’t produce a great amount of vapor either. Keep in mind I generally use the same 2-3 setups for testing all my juices this week, so I am getting these results on a setup that other juices have already performed well on. Specifically, in this case I am running it on a mini dripper on a Vaporshark DNA30 using a .6 ohm twisted kanthal microcoil. Generally this setup produces excellent vapor and flavor.

Aside from the performance issues, this juice just really does not taste good. It has kind of a faint whiskey vibe, but it mostly comes off as acidic and fermented. It doesn’t have a lot of the great character you get from a good whiskey, or a even bottle of Jack – if you aren’t into good whiskey. Not only was the flavor not good, but it was also very light and vapes hot and dry.

Not a recipe for a good ejuice. This one was a fail in just about every category.

#9 ECBlend: Dragon’s Apple

Compared to Shark Daniels, this juice is like fucking ambrosia. I mean really, the distance between the two is VAST so don’t let the 9th place finish fool you – there was really tough competition overall this week.

Here’s what ECBlend says about it:

ECBlend’s Red Apple, Green Apple, and a hint of English Toffee to top it off Blended into a Creamy version of our very popular Dragon Signature Series . “Oh! So Creamy!”®

I was initially pretty excited to try this one because so far the only juices I’ve vaped from their Dragon Series have been berry-type flavors, and I was curious to see how the apple would do.

This juice has kind of a unique apple taste. Unlike a lot of apple flavors that err more towards the candy-apple side, the apple flavor here is much more reminiscent of an actual real life apple. That said, it isn’t without its problems. This juice has a definite perfume undertone on the inhale. Normally I can’t stand any type of perfume notes at all in ejuice. In this particular juice, there’s no doubt that it’s there, but it isn’t exactly disgusting either. It did kind of put me off a little, but not enough to prevent me from wanting to vape the juice.

In addition to the apple flavor, this juice is supposed to have a toffee finish, and my understanding with the Dragon Series juices is that they are supposed to be creamy. I didn’t get a lot of cream essence from this one at all – in fact it tasted mostly of pure apple. I also didn’t get much of a toffee finish, which kind of sucks because it would have been nice. What I did get was kind of a rich and sugary aftertaste that actually did somewhat remind me of caramel, or I guess I could stretch it and say toffee.

Overall, I would have loved this one with a little less perfume, more noticeable cream, and a much more assertive toffee finish. This juice is vapable, but I think it could be a lot better.

#8 Alien Visions: Bees Knees

Coming in at the 8 spot this week is Bees Knees – another decent juice that could have perhaps finished higher on a less competitive week. Here’s what they say about it:

Flue Cured with a honey finish.

For starters, I didn’t realize this was supposed to be a tobacco vape until I had already been vaping this for quite some time and finally went to read the description. It doesn’t have a very strong tobacco presence at all. This juice has an extremely light and delicate flavor – that can be a big asset sometimes, particularly when you’re looking for a juice you can take with you and vape all day long without getting sick of it. It definitely would work great in that respect. For all around purposes, I thought the flavor was quite light.

Now the more important factor here, for me, was that this is actually a honey vape that tastes good! I have tried quite a few ejuices with “honey” flavor – primarily tobaccos, and all that I have tried have been disgusting. Now to be fair, I don’t intentionally go out and buy them hardly ever based on the fact that I haven’t had any good honey vapes – so it’s quite possible there are other good honey tobaccos out there, but I can say with 100% certainty that this is the best honey flavored vape I have tried to date – and moreover, the ONLY one I have tasted that isn’t disgusting.

For whatever reason, honey vapes seem to be the ones most likely to carry the strong perfumey and floral overtones that can totally kill the other flavors and render a juice unvapable, so I was really encouraged to actually find a honey juice that tastes good- because I actually really like honey and eat it almost every day.

The main issue I had with this juice is that it just didn’t hit well at all at 12mg. I know it’s going to be a little skewed for me because I generally vape 18-24 mg juices, but I’ve had some other 12mg juices this week that hit just fine, so this one clearly has a inferior throat hit.

Overall, it’s not a bad vape at all. If you’re looking for a super light tobacco with a little bit of fresh floral overtones from the honey, this one is a very nice choice. I would personally recommend getting the nic one level over what you would normally get if you are concerned about throat hit.

#7 Seduce Juice: Myrrh

I was really looking forward to trying this one. I didn’t know if it was supposed to taste like actual Myrrh or what the deal was, and I always like a mystery. After vaping it, I knew it definitely was not supposed to taste like actual Myrrh, but it did have an interesting fruity flavor to it, and finally I read the description:

Our signature cream base with an emphasis on blueberry, with a kiwi kicker.

Once I found out it was a blueberry vape, I could definitely taste the blueberry – however I didn’t identify it as blueberry beforehand, so you can take that however you want to take it. A lot of times, blueberry can be really strong in ejuices, so for me it actually worked that it was more of a mellow, less pronounced blueberry flavor. I didn’t find this juice to be particularly creamy – at least not to the point where you could actually taste the cream, however it did have a nice smooth finish on the exhale, where I am guessing the cream kicked in.

Again, this is another vape with kiwi that really doesn’t have any kiwi taste at all. I have yet to find a vape with kiwi in it that actually tastes like kiwi, so it doesn’t surprise me that this juice fell into that category.

After vaping this one for quite a while and then comparing it with some other juices, I came to the conclusion that it just really doesn’t vape very good. In fact, I probably rated the quality of vape higher than I should have on the initial review, because I don’t like the way this one vapes at all. It has good flavor, a nice throat hit and decent vapor so I can’t really say it is lacking in any of those, but it just doesn’t vape well. The closest thing I can liken it to is vaping a juice on an RDA with the airhole misaligned. It just doesn’t feel right.

Overall, this juice actually tastes quite good, but it didn’t perform well enough to make me want to keep vaping it over some of the other juices I had to choose from this week.

#6 Bombies: Seven Seas

I’ve been hearing tons of great buzz about Bombies, and have been wanting to try them out. I had to wait until their store opened up, and I managed to get in an order for one of everything. First on the chopping block is Seven Seas. Here’s what they say about it:

Seven different mixtures of fruits come together to leave your mouth gushing with delight. On the exhale, you may encounter both a blend of sweet and sour!

I was really quite underwhelmed by this juice. It’s just another fruit medley with no really discernible flavors that I seem to see all too often. It’s hard to even really describe it much because it’s basically just kind of a generic fruity flavor to it with nothing special one way or another. The one notable thing is that on the exhale it has an almost menthol-like quality to it. It’s definitely not menthol because it doesn’t have the cooling effect, but it gives me an unusual feeling in the back of the throat – not in a bad way either, I actually found it to be the most enjoyable thing about this vape. I’m thinking maybe it could be the sourness they described, although I’m not entirely sure on that.

Performance-wise, I was really happy with this juice. It hits just as expected at 18mg and puts out a nice cloud. If the flavor had been more interesting, I probably would have vaped it quite a bit more this week because I really liked the performance, but I just found the flavor to be very uninteresting. Just another typical fruit vape.

#5 Vapelicious: Blackjack

Kicking off the top half of the countdown this week is Vapelicious with Blackjack. Not only is this a tobacco flavor, but it’s also a WTA, and happens to be the first WTA I’ve tried. If you have never heard of WTA, it stands for “Whole Tobacco Alkaloids”. Now I am probably not the best person to explain the full details behind WTAs, but basically my understanding is that during the standard process where nicotine is extracted and turned to liquid, almost all the “alkaloids” are stripped from the juice. With the WTA juices, those alkaloids remain present. Now what they actually do is another question. From what I gather, they help make your vaping experience more fulfilling – for example, you should feel more satisfied after vaping it and less inclined to want to vape more. You might feel a buzz the first time you vape it just like you did the first time you smoked a cigarette. It might make your mouth and throat tingle slightly, and could possibly help enhance your mood.

Personally, I found it tough to tell if there was that much difference between this and a regular ejuice. Maybe that’s just because I already vape a pretty healthy quantity of high nic juice from optimal delivery systems. I’m not really sure.

I can definitely say that this juice hits EXTREMELY hard. So if nothing else, for me the WTAs definitely did seem to aid in creating a better throat hit. I was running this juice primarily in my copper Nemesis with a Crown RDA running a .5 ohm parallel coil – already a super hard hitter and cloud machine, but with this juice I was actually thinking I might have to try it on a weaker setup after I took my first couple puffs because the throat hit was seriously intense.

After a couple drags, my lungs got used to it and I was able to go on vaping it just fine. I had a buddy try this one – he still smokes cigs and doesn’t vape as much as he should, and he was coughing like a bastard and I had to have a mini debate with him just to take a second hit.

So this juice definitely nailed the performance end.

Taste-wise, I’m still trying to decide how I really feel about it. I guess a week wasn’t long enough on this one. It’s a pretty light tasting juice overall. It definitely does taste like a tobacco, but it isn’t a strong tobacco flavor, and it seems to have some almost floral undertones. Honestly the best thing I can compare it to is fabric softener – but not really in a bad way because I have been vaping a lot of it and haven’t gotten tired of it yet. It’s just a light, somewhat unusual tasting tobacco flavor.

Frankly, I haven’t had many tobaccos lately that have really impressed me, and this is the most interesting one I’ve had since I reviewed Smilin Tobacco a while back.

So while I didn’t completely love the flavor, I don’t dislike it at all, and I seem to be curiously interested in vaping more and more of it.

All around this is a pretty good juice, and for me I found it to be a great intro into WTAs. It was also an interesting take on a tobacco flavor that gave me something totally different from anything I’ve had before. This one is definitely worth a shot if you can get your hands on some.

#4 Alternatecig: Peanut Butter Cups

I’ve seen a lot of vendors carrying Reeses/Peanut Butter Cup flavors, and was always curious to try one. I finally got a chance with Alternatecig’s rendition. Here’s what they say about it:

That real peanut butter and chocolate taste packed into a double drip of premium e-liquid. It nutty, creamy and buttery and you can’t get enough. Remember licking the spoon full of peanut butter? Maybe you remember eating peanut butter candy spauares and cups while watching your favorite movie? We tried our hardest and have succeded to make a quality peanut butter tasting vape that succeeds your expectations. The flavor is spot on and once you vape it, it will take you back to the good ol’ days. Your favorite candy cups of peanut butter and chocolate are dripable and ready to vape. If you are looking for something sweet nutty and unique try our peanut butter cups.

I was pretty much expecting this one to be either really bad or really good. It turned out to be really good – but not in the way I was expecting. I found that it actually tastes identical to Ms. T’s Peanut Butter Cookie, a juice I previously reviewed that did quite well in a juice battle if I remember correctly.

The thing I like about it is that it is PACKED with peanut butter flavor, yet it vapes really dry. Now a dry vape can be either good or bad, depending on the juice. In this case I think it worked brilliantly. I always remember back to Peanut Butter and Bacon Milkshake as a good example of a vape that is so rich it will nauseate you. It’s not that the flavor combination of peanut butter and bacon milkshake was bad, it was that the juice was SO rich that it made it completely disgusting. After a couple puffs I wanted to go brush my teeth and drink a glass of water – and the primary contributor to that richness, in my opinion, was the peanut butter.

In this case, it comes across much more dry – so it still has an amazing peanut butter flavor, but none of the unnecessary richness. That made this one easy to vape all day long without getting tired of it at all.

I really didn’t get any chocolate at all in this one, and it even had the same slightly burnt tasting finish that Ms.T’s PB cookie had, which is why I originally felt it was so true to description. If you’ve ever baked a batch of plain old peanut butter cookies, you will know that unlike most, rich chocolate chip cookies, a good PB cookie is much more dry, crumbly and doesn’t really taste burned, but has a “well-done” vibe to it.

That is exactly how this juice tastes. In some ways I kind of wish it tasted more like a peanut butter cup just to see if it’s actually possible to make a good Reeses clone, but I love this juice just the way it is.

#3 Roar Vapor: Hawaii Sunrise

I try so many tropical flavored juices, you might think I would get sick of them after a while, but I never seem to. I know a lot of people either love tropical flavors or hate them and I am personally a big fan.

Here’s what they say about it:

Picture Hawaii, a tropical paradise. Sitting on the beach in the morning as the breeze rolls in from the ocean. No sounds except for the wind and the waves. The sun peeks at you over the horizon. We take all of that, add some tropical fruits, and bottle it up. Enjoy.

I wasn’t expecting much from this juice – maybe because the label was so faded I could hardly even read it, but I was really pleasantly surprised.

This juice jumps right out at you, smacks you in the face and screams “TROPICAL” at you. It has got to be one of, if not the fullest flavored tropical vape I have ever had. This is one of those fruit flavors that is so strong and tasty it actually makes your mouth water and just feels juicy from start to finish.

I found the most prevalent flavors in this juice seemed to be coconut and banana with maybe a little pineapple in there. It has a slight zing to it and I can’t tell if it’s from rum or pineapple or some other unknown fruit, but regardless of what it was, it just simply worked.

Even though they don’t mention any particular flavors in the description, I am pretty confident that this juice has bananna, and it actually comes through really nicely. Most banana vapes I have had have been pure banana – the banana basically steals the show from any other flavors in the juice. In this vape, it seems to meld really well with the coconut and it comes out just enough to let you know it’s there, but not enough to take over the whole flavor profile.

At 12mg, this juice had a pretty nice throat hit. I was vaping this in tandem with some pretty heavy hitters, and while it wasn’t quite up to that level, it was significantly stronger than Bees Knees, another 12mg from this week, so I was happy with it.

This is a great all around juice and definitely one to try if you are like me and really appreciate tropical flavors.

#2 Azure Vaping: Cherry Limeade

This is where it gets really tricky. I had 2 exceptional juices this week, and Cherry Limeade is one of them. Here’s what they say about it:

Tangy limes and sweet cherries make this drink a big hit with the hedgehog

I actually bought Cherry Limeade almost 3 years ago on my second attempt at quitting smoking – it is one of the first ejuices I ever bought, and the one that I liked the most out of that whole batch – so much so that I easily killed the bottle and had to order another bottle now to be able to do a proper review.

This is one of those juices that is what it says it is. Simple as that. It tastes just like cherry limeade. It’s got a nice mature flavor from the cherry that is fairly sweet, cut beautifully by the refreshing and zesty lime. That’s pretty much all there is to it. If you’ve had cherry limeade in real life, then you already know what this juice tastes like.

It also hits great at 16mg, which I LOVE, and for a 20% VG juice, it pumps out a lot of vapor. The performance is exactly what I like to see out of an ejuice, and it has amazing flavor to boot.

For a juice that did so well this week, I really don’t have much else to say about it. If you like cherry limeade, you are going to love this one. Personally I love this juice, and this is one of those juices that I reach for when I’m about to head out and I need something reliable. You can count on it to perform for you again and again.

#1 Smokecignals: Cookies n’ Cream

To beat out Cherry Limeade, one of my favorite juices, you know this one had to be good, and I was thoroughly impressed with it. Here’s what they say about it:

We love cookies. We love ice cream. We love vaping. Doing all three at the same time? Heaven.ies. We love ice cream. We love vaping. Doing all three at the same time? Heaven.

A lot of times, these dessert vapes are totally hit-or-miss. I’ve had a lot of dessert juices that sound absolutely amazing and end up not even coming close to what they are supposed to taste like – a good example is basically any cheesecake vape.

This on hit the mark on every cylinder. It vapes great – super strong throat hit, very nice vapor, full flavor, balanced flavor. What’s more, it actually tastes like cookies and cream – you know the cookies and cream ice cream you get in the clear gallon bucket at the grocery store – just like that. It’s got a perfect balance of cookie and cream. Neither outshines they other – they perfectly combine to create a delicious and accurate vape.

I had a lot of great juices to vape this week, but this is the one I just kept on coming back to. Not only did it constantly and consistently pump out satisfying throat hits, but the flavor is incredibly good and STAYS good. I vaped this one all day long yesterday and the flavor didn’t back down at all – my last hit was just as good as my first.

It seems like of all the dessert vapes I’ve tried, there really aren’t any that I keep going back to again and again because many of them frankly just don’t live up to their name. This one is perfect in just about every way.

It’s also worth noting, the flavor is fairly similar to MBV’s Cookie Blaster, however I found that this one performed markedly better for me. I might try to get another bottle of Cookie Blaster in the future to compare the two more closely because it’s been a while since I’ve had it, but that’s what I would most compare this to.

The Bottom Line

This was a really competitive week with a lot of good juices. The way I go after juices I don’t like, you might think I enjoy giving out negative reviews, but I really don’t. I just try to call things as I see them. Personally, I wish more weeks were like this with a solid lineup of juices that are all pretty good in their own right.

While I was a little underwhelmed by Bombies, the performance was there and I look forward to trying their stuff. I was really intrigued by the WTAs in Blackjack, and I am definitely interested in trying more WTA juices, although I don’t know if the WTAs really lived up to the mystique that surrounds them.

I found a couple of go-to juices in Cherry Limeade and Cookies n’ Cream. 2 totally different types of vapes that both performed incredibly well – AND are reasonably priced to boot. The only thing I like more than a low nic juice with a strong throat hit is an affordable juice that performs like a champ, and I found 2 this week.

In other news, I didn’t get time to do a ton of hardware reviews or tutorials, however I do have some really interesting stuff in the pipeline. I’ve been working a lot with parallel coils and twisted kanthal and I have come up with some new builds that I am really liking. I just want to perfect them before I start doing tutorials on them.

I got a Lotus RDA in this week and it was about 3x bigger than I was expecting. It’s really an unusual piece, but very nice for building crazy coils. I’m not sure if I love it yet or not, but expect to hear more on that soon.

Mostly this week I spent using my Copper Nemesis with a .5 ohm parallel microcoil on a crown atomizer, and it is probably the best performing setup I’ve ever had. I also have a nice mini dripper I plan to review soon that I’ve been using on a Vaporshark DNA30 with a twisted kanthal microcoil. My last setup I was using a lot of this week is a custom DNA30 box mod with a Lotus RDA using a 2-tier 1/16 diameter parallel microcoil setup that has been putting out some redic throat hit and vapor. I will definitely show you guys more on that one once I have it totally perfected.

Vape on!