Man, these weeks just seem to go by so fast. I’m getting in so much juice, I am probably going to have to expand to more than 10 juices in each juice battle, but at the same time, I have been enjoying some of these so much this week that it’s a shame I’m going to have to shelf them for all new juices this week. For this battle, I have a nice diverse group of vendors from Dekang to AIV and a ton of interesting ones in between including 2 brand new vendors this week.

This juice battle really boils down to the top 4. The first 6 I didn’t really care for, the top 4 was very hard to rank because I really enjoyed the hell out of vaping all of them this week, so this should be a good one!

#10 Mountain Oak Vapors: Smoky Mountain 555

Last week I had their MOV Gold, and it also came in dead last in the juice battle. The big problem I had with it was that it suffered from the dreaded “funk”, and awful perfume/floral overtone that absolutely took over the entire flavor of the vape, and basically rendered it unvapable. Mercifully, this is the last juice I have from MOV. They had 1 tobacco out of 4 that I tried that didn’t have the funk – Hey Jack, and it was above average. The rest, including Smoky Mountain 555, have been absolutely horrid and unvapable. It’s really a shame because their Vanilla Dream is still my favorite true vanilla flavor out there, so I know they have quality stuff, but these last few tobaccos have been so incredibly bad, it is very off-putting to say the least.

Just for kicks, here’s what MOV says about it:

Smoky Mountain 555 is our unique and original take on a Nutty Tobacco Blend. We start with our Smooth & Mild tobacco base, add a helping of hazelnut and finish it all of with a pinch of toasted almonds. We hope you enjoy this E-Liquid as much as we do.

As far as I’m concerned, it’s all bullshit. Any semblance of tobacco flavor is absolutely doused with an awful floral overtone. There’s not really anything else I can say about this one that I didn’t already say about MOV Gold in last week’s juice battle, because they are practically identical in awfulness. It’s simply unvapable.

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#9 High Desert Vapes: Bananas Foster

Honestly, I am really starting to wonder why vendors seem to insist on including a Banana’s Foster rendition in their repertoire. Banana vapes are generally really tough to make palatable – at least in my opinion, and for as many banana’s foster renditions there are out there, I have yet to find one that is anywhere close to being good.

Here’s what HDV says about it:

Organic banan’s foster flavor is spot on the famous dessert. Best when steeped for at least 2 weeks.

I would say personally, I found this to be a very far cry from the famous dessert. Definitely not spot on. To me, it tasted like a really high pitched banana flavor – sweet and acidic to the point of almost tasting like alcohol. Maybe Banana Moonshine would have been a more fitting name for it.

The flavor was really not good, fairly light and didn’t seem to vape particularly well. The throat hit and vapor were both relatively decent, but the flavor was bad on this one to the point where it was very close to being completely unvapable. All around, I really did not enjoy this one at all.

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#8 Dekang: RY4

I’ve been needing to get this one out of my review box for a LONG time now, and I finally decided to get it over with. First off, the bottle I had was 0mg, so I did not enjoy vaping it at all. However, throat hit aside, the flavor of this one was actually not half bad.

It’s no secret that I think RY4 tastes a lot like scotch tape – in some cases, like this one, it is very light and more of an undertone and actually quite palatable. In other cases it can be extremely heavy and the thick flavor and smell seems to seep into everything.

So I give them much credit for keeping this one very palatable. To me, this is exactly what a generic RY4 should taste like – and I don’t think there is a more generic juice on the planet than Dekang RY4. You could almost call it a classic.

At any rate, I really didn’t vape this one a ton because it had no nicotine, and thus no throat hit. That said, I’m quite sure the throat hit would be fine at anything 12 and above, so I wouldn’t knock this one for having poor throat hit.

As far as RY4 flavor goes, I actually prefer this to many of the other ones I have tried recently. It is a super light flavor, which would definitely be suitable for all day vaping – just maybe a little on the boring side.

There’s nothing really wrong with this juice, but nothing special about it either. Probably the best thing you could use it for is cutting super strong juices to water them down a little bit – I actually think it would be excellent in that application. On its own, it’s not especially great.

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#7 ECBlends: Dragon’s Passion

The last juice from ECBlend’s Dragon series that I reviewed ended up winning a juice battle. I was hoping to have equally great results with this one, but it did let me down a little bit. Here’s what they say about it:

ECBlend’s Passion Fruit and other delicious fruits Blended into a Creamy version of our very popular Dragon Signature Series . ”Oh! So Creamy!”®

To be perfectly honest, I’m not exactly sure what passion fruit is supposed to taste like in real life. I don’t think I’ve ever had it in its raw form, and any candy flavored passion fruit type beverage or food I’ve had hasn’t been particularly memorable.

So really, I can’t say how accurate a passion fruit flavor this is.

I found this juice to be very candy-like – and with no particular flavor profile. Just kind of a very general sweet red candy flavor. I was also under the impression that the Dragon Series emphasized a creamy undertone, and while the first juice I reviewed definitely had one, this particular juice really wasn’t creamy at all to me.

It performed pretty well – at 18mg, I was getting very nice throat hit and a sizeable amount of vapor. Unfortunately I just really didn’t think there was anything special about the flavor. Just another typical red candy flavor juice. While it did vape quite well, it didn’t taste good enough to keep me interested throughout the week so I ended up spending a lot more time vaping other juices that had a little more character.

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#6 Sleeping Dragon Vapor: Tattoo

Rounding out the bottom half of this week’s countdown is Sleeping Dragon Vapor’s Tattoo. Here’s what they say about it:

This is a Fantasy Island kiwi mix. Boss! De Plane!

The first 2 juices I reviewed from Sleeping Dragon were both excellent finishing 2nd and 1st in juice battles respectively.

This particular one was not my favorite. It’s supposed to be a kiwi flavor. I really didn’t find it to have much of a kiwi personality at all. To be fair, I don’t think I’ve ever had a kiwi juice that actually tastes like kiwi (which I do know what it should taste like in real life), so they didn’t totally blow it or anything, I just think kiwi might be one of those tricky flavors to pin down in an ejuice.

Not only did it not taste like kiwi, I thought the flavor was quite light. To me, it was really just a very mild, fruity tasting vape that much like Dragon’s Passion, doesn’t particularly taste like much of anything. It doesn’t taste bad by any stretch, and I actually liked the flavor better than Dragon’s Passion, but not by that much.

Additionally, I didn’t really care much for the throat hit on this one. I felt it hit pretty light at 12mg, and I’ve had some other 12mg juices this week that have really hit well, so there is plenty of contrast.

It’s not a bad juice, but I didn’t find anything particularly special about this one.

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#5 The ECig Shop: Blueberry Muffin

Coming in at number 5 this week is Blueberry Muffin by the eCig Shop. Here’s what they say about it:

A spectacular rendition of the popular muffin!

I actually bought this juice well over a year ago when I was still quite new to vaping – this is one of only a small handful of juices I’ve ever personally bought from a brick and mortar – in fact I have only been to 2 brick and mortar shops ever even though there seem to be like 100 of them within a 50 mile radius of my house now.

This one has been sitting in my review box, pretty much as long as I have had a review box, and I finally decided I needed to push this one through – I never thought that it would end up finishing as high as it did. The last time I remember trying this was probably close to 6 months ago in a Protank, and it didn’t hit well at all for me.

This week, I set it up in a really nice 1 ohm twisted kanthal coil at 30 watts and it had enough throat hit to the point where I could actually vape it. At 16mg, I was still a little disappointed in the lack of throat hit, but overall it was passable for me – if not by much.

Really, where this juice shines is the flavor. It tastes incredibly accurate. I haven’t tried a ton of different muffin flavored juices, but this is easily the most accurate I’ve had. It really, truly tastes like a blueberry muffin – to the point where it’s almost uncanny.

I think the problem with this juice is that the overall quality isn’t great, but the flavor is really good. If you could take this exact flavor and use better quality ingredients, I think it would be an absolutely amazing vape.

As it is, it’s a pretty damn tasty juice. If it hit 30% harder, I probably would have killed the entire bottle of it by now. The flavor is great, and it really makes me want to track down some other blueberry muffin flavors and see how they measure up because a lot of times these confectionery vapes tend to be all fruit and no pastry, but you can really taste the muffin in this one and it is quite delicious.

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#4 Azure Vaping: Hazelnut Coffee

The one thing I can really appreciate about Azure juices, is that even if they aren’t amazing, they haven’t really let me down yet. They are almost always pretty good, perform consistent and are quite vapable. This week their Hazelnut Coffee lands at #4. Here’s what they say about it:

Roasted hazelnuts meet fresh brewed coffee

I kicked off the week vaping this one, and I really quite liked it. It has a definite coffee flavor to it, at least for me, and even though they don’t mention it, I found that it had kind of a creamy undertone that really did a nice job of softening the coffee flavor and giving this vape a really smooth finish.

On top of that, I seemed to get slightly different flavors every time I vaped it – everything from chocolate to coconut seemed to creep in as gentle undertones and actually made it even more enjoyable to vape.

Interestingly enough, the one flavor that I really didn’t get a lot of was the hazelnut. Considering this is a hazelnut coffee flavor, I was expecting a heavy dose of hazelnut. If you’ve ever gone into a gas station and bought a cup of hazelnut coffee, it is almost always loaded with hazelnut flavor to the point where you can hardly even taste the actual coffee. Based on that, I was surprised that it was so noticeably absent in this vape.

That said, I really enjoyed this one without the hazelnut. In fact early in the week I even thought this one could be a serious contender for first place this week, however there was some really stiff competition in the top 4.

In addition to being quite delicious, this juice also vapes really well. I got perfect throat hit from it, a nice amount of vapor and relatively full flavor across the board. Not only that, but this is a super affordable juice. If you’re ordering from Azure, this is a very safe choice and you will almost surely be able to vape the whole bottle. I definitely think this juice has a nice mass appeal.

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#3 Vapors Anonymous: Milk of the Gods

Coming in 3rd this week is another vendor I’ve never tried before – Vapors Anonymous with their Milk of the Gods. Here’s what they say about it:

A splash of flavor from the drink beholden to the Gods as sacred! For millions of years this drink has enriched the youth and has re-vitalized the elder. The Gods have once again given us a extrodinary drink to quench our thirst and better yet our vape. A creamy cinamon flavored rice milk passing to your lips and touching the tip of your tongue is something your taste buds will crave. Experience a flavor made for the Gods. Flavor Description:

This juice tastes like the famous mexican drink, horchata with a hint of caramel and our secret nectar potion.

I was really excited to find out this was a Horchata flavored ejuice. I’ve obviously never had any other horchata ejuices in the past, but I think it’s a flavor that would translate brilliantly to an ejuice.

This juice turned out to be really good. In fact this was another one that I thought early on in the week might be able to take the whole juice battle, and it was close.

This juice does have a very creamy milky base, and you can actually really taste the rice milk – I had several friends try this one and they all confirmed.

In addition to the cream/milk, it seems to have kind of a very light, fruity undertone. No particular kind of fruit flavor, but rather an air of fruitness to it that does lighten it up quite a bit.

The one thing I really didn’t get much of at all is the cinnamon. I would have loved to have a little less of the fruit and a little more of the cinnamon – I think that it would have made it taste a lot more like an authentic horchata and quite possibly put it over the top this week.

As it is, I had a great time vaping this one. I got it at 24mg, so it packs a fuck of a punch, and the flavor itself is very smooth and mellow so it’s great for extended vaping. I think just about everybody could find something they like about this juice.

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#2 Alice in Vapeland: Mind Toulouse

This week’s second place finisher is Alice in Vapeland’s Mind Toulouse. Here’s what they say about it:

A green fairy vape,

A Moulin pair of lenses,

To tickle your mind,

And trick all your senses!

When I first got my AIV stuff in, I gave this one a sniff and instantly recognized a strong anise/absinthe smell, and being that I don’t particularly care for that flavor I put this one on the shelf. If you’ve followed many of my juice battles, the last 3 or 4 AIV juices I’ve tried have been in their small sample size, and they were literally all flavorless to the point where there was really nothing I could even say about them, and they had no vaping value to me at all. So I figured I better whip out a full sized bottle because the sample size juices I got from them are just not cool at all.

I wasn’t expecting much from this one at all, but I was extremely impressed once I tried it. I’m not a huge fan of this kind of flavor. In non-vaping life, I hate black licorice but I have put down a few shots of Jagermeister in my day, and I love fennel seed (which also has a similar flavor) in cooking. So while I don’t really care for the overall flavor, I can tolerate it on some level.

This juice, however, is so good that I haven’t been able to put it down. The flavor is incredibly clear and crisp and it vapes fantastically. The taste stays exactly the same from start to finish. It seems to have a little touch of lightness to it – I’m thinking maybe just a slight bit of citrus or something that really lightens it up quite a bit. You can’t actually taste any citrus in it, but it has that kind of bright zing to it that you would get from a splash of lemon or lime.

Really, the only flavor you get is s super crisp absinthe flavor, and it comes across beautifully.

On top of that, the throat hit is absolutely superb at 18mg, and the vapor is as good as anything, making this a very complete vape.

The one thing I find kind of weird about this is that on their site, they don’t mention anywhere in the description that this is an absinthe vape, opting for some kind of poetic gibberish instead that doesn’t describe the flavor of the juice at all. I really don’t like that aspect, and I probably would have been pissed if I ordered this off the site not expecting it to taste like absinthe only to have it be a pure absinthe vape.

That said, now that I have it here, I can say without a doubt that it is a fantastic vape, and even for someone like me who doesn’t care for this particular flavor in general, I think this juice is absolutely delicious and totally worth a shot.

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#1 Vaporshark: Peach Buzz

This week’s big winner is Peach Buzz from Vaporshark. Here’s what they say about it:

Imagine taking a mouthwatering bite into a succulent Georgia peach while escaping the hot sun under a shaded tree somewhere among the multiple acres of a fragrant papaya farm. Our Peach Buzz Ultra Premium E-Liquid will have you relaxing and enjoying the breeze while the two fruit flavors play bongos on your taste buds. Don’t believe us? Try this delicious Peach and Papaya fruit blend. It will have your taste buds begging for more!

A couple weeks ago, I didn’t even know Vaporshark made ejuice – in fact, I only knew about them because I owned a Vaporshark DNA20 device.

Once I found out they had juice, it piqued my curiosity. This is the first juice I have tried from them, and I am really impressed by it. I can say without a doubt, this is by far the best peach flavor I have had so far.

It’s juicy, succulent, full flavored and will leave your mouth watering. It has a slight kick of papaya in it, and while I don’t think it does anything to take away from the peach flavor because you really do get 100% pure peach goodness from this juice, I do think it helps lighten the vape a little and give it a little “something” extra.

The throat hit and vapor are both excellent on this juice. I’ve been running it both in tanks and dripping atomizers and it vapes great in absolutely everything. The flavor is super crisp and strong, and I was able to vape this all day long easily, and the last hit tasted just as good as the first, so no degradation of flavor whatsoever.

I had a really difficult time picking between the top 4 this week. I thought all were generally good flavors and performed well. The thing that really set Peach Buzz apart from the rest was that it was totally spot-on accurate, and the flavor is done so well that it actually tastes juicy and will seriously make your mouth water – kind of similar to the way Melon vapes from The Vapor Chef taste.

This one is really a cut above the rest. I have tried quite a few peach vapes and usually they are laden down with other flavors or heavy cream bases. While they are good, none have really been “great” like this one. You really get pure, delicious peach out of this one and I can’t imagine any peach fan not being able to appreciate what they’ve done here.

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The Bottom Line

This week went really well overall. While there were some pretty shitty and boring juices that popped up in the lineup this week, the top 4 was extremely competitive and I thoroughly enjoyed vaping all 4 of them plentifully. I also managed to free up some space by getting some of my older and more boring juices out of my review queue so the way can be cleared for more interesting stuff next week. I have been getting a ton of new juices in to review – including the full line of Bombies that I just got in yesterday, so the coming weeks should be really good as far as new and interesting stuff goes.

I spent most of the week vaping these juices out of a Kayfun with a twisted kanthal setup – I may be doing a tutorial on that soon if I can get it to a point where I am 100% happy with it, a Crown RDA which I will be doing a review and some tutorials on soon – I primarily used that on a Panzer, and a mini dripper on a Vaporshark DNA30 which I have been using a lot – particularly when I am on the go. Now that spring is FINALLY here in Minnesota, I’ve been doing a lot more outdoor stuff, and have really been enjoying the portability.

In addition to juice reviews, I also reviewed the Panzer, Hana DNA20 mod and the Kato Hammer clone. Next week I am going to be doing more stuff with the Vaporshark DNA30, and I’m also going to be putting my Panzer back on the shelf in favor of a copper Nemesis clone I’m going to be trying out. I’ve been doing a ton of new coil builds, including a bunch of stuff with twisted kanthal, and I plan to hopefully start getting some tutorials out on those because the early results have really been fantastic.

Also, I can’t promise it will be this week, but I am working on a Drip Tip Battle and a Mech Battle that will both be structured similarly to the juice battles I’ve been doing, so keep your eyes peeled for that.

In case anyone is wondering what my opinion is on the news about the first Federal regulations coming down last week on e-cigarettes – frankly, I’m not overly concerned about it right now. For one thing, nothing much seems like it is going to be happening immediately – in fact most of the larger changes don’t seem like they will take effect for quite some time. Additionally, looking at the long view, the fact of the matter is, when you boil it all down, an e-cigarette is just a battery in a metal tube heating up a small coil with a wick running through it – something anyone who was a little handy could accomplish with products from their local Home Depot if they were feeling industrious. Of course it CAN be more complicated than that, but that’s pretty much the heart of it. I find it hard to believe that they are ever going to have good way of stopping people from easily buying and creating the devices themselves. Then looking at the juice used in e-cigarettes, it’s basically 2 primary ingredients (PG/VG) which can both be purchased at Walmart, among other places where they are readily available, plus nicotine and flavoring. Again, it’s going to be hard to regulate that to the point where people aren’t going to be able to get juice. The worst case scenario I can see is that the way we buy some of these products might end up changing a little bit – but that is a long way off. Last point on the topic – a year ago, I only knew of 2 ecig shops within 50 miles of my house. Now there are literally like 100. There are some now that are just blocks away from other ones. The point being, there is now a huge army of business owners out there who have a serious vested interest in this, and I am thinking that the massively growing number of people with a serious vested interest in e-cig regulations will be a tremendous asset to the vaping community in helping to fight some of the large interest groups in Washington who are against this. So I think it’s going to be a slow process that will ultimately prove very difficult to regulate. Of course I could be totally wrong, but at the moment I don’t feel much concern at all about this. The worst potential things I see for the immediate future are banning of sales to minors and severely limiting or outright banning usage in public places. I have no problems with limiting sales to minors, and as an ex-smoker, being forced to smoke outside or in my car rather than in a restaurant never stopped me before.

Vape on!