Vaping has been around for years now and it has helped millions of smokers quit their smoking habits. It’s a magical instrument, that delivers nicotine to your body, without the combustion of tobacco. And the most amazing part of vaping is that it takes into account the variety of flavour preferences and offers e-liquid in thousands of flavours. Flavour, essentially, is a synthesis of taste and smell and our choice of flavour or flavour preference is shaped by our experience, predisposition, culture, and mental barriers.
Different people like different flavour profiles and a lot of them tend to remain within the bounds and don’t stray too far from it. But a lot of people don’t know their target of appreciation, and even if they know, they struggle to find e-liquid flavour profiles for themselves. Before searching for “e-liquid shop near me” you must know what flavour suits your taste preference. For those of you, who are still on the fence about your e-liquid flavours, here’s a guide for you to help you understand and select your e-liquid flavor.
How Do People Perceive Flavours?
Before we dive into e-liquid flavours, we must first ask the quintessential question and understand the mechanics behind your likings. While we only have five or six types of taste receptors in our mouth, namely sweet, salty, sour, bitter, and umami, we have hundreds of different types of smell receptors in our nose. Food and drink flavours are a combination of taste and smell which explains the wide variety of flavours we experience.
Furthermore, taste and smell combine to give us the experience of what we think of as the flavour of food and drinks. This is why if you have a cold, so you can’t smell well, food tastes rather bland. It’s also why hot food seems more flavourful than cold food. Hot food means more evaporation of what is in the food so more smell.
How Does E-Liquid Get Its Flavour?
Vape flavors/essences use PG or VG as the carrier/solvent, and do not contain sugars. PG propylene glycol and VG vegetable glycerin are used together to make vape juices. It comes in different levels. 50/50% percent is generally where everyone starts and when they find their pace, they often switch to 70/30% or 60/40%.
Raising or lowering the levels as needed to get the effect you want makes vaping more pleasurable. If you raise the PG you will get a stronger throat hit which is more like a cigarette. If you raise the VG you will get more vapor. PG is the best element in the whole PG/VG thing when it comes to being an efficient flavour transporter. Furthermore, food-grade and perfume-grade flavorings are also added to vape juices along with artificial or natural sweeteners.
Major Types of E-Liquid Flavours
- Tobacco and strong flavour profiles
As we age, we become prone to appreciate things that come with age. Things that only time and patience could make taste the way that they do. Old cheese, smoked sausage, aged wine, roasted coffee beans, and beer brewed to perfection. The bitterness and sharpness of taste are real to us and we don’t get stimulation or pleasure from sugars. We crave life at its core.
Tobacco and other strong flavored profiles, including coffee, cinnamon, roasted nuts, and tea are some of the e-liquid flavors that are mostly liked by those who have an acquired taste. These blends are complex and take time to grow upon you if you’re not well-acquainted with them. Tobacco-flavored e-liquids are also preferred by long-time smokers who have their taste buds desensitized to enjoy other flavors due to smoking for a long time.
- Fruity flavor profiles
Fruity blends are the most liked and favored e-juices in the vaping industry. These flavors come are extremely likable and sold the most in the market. Flavors like strawberry, pineapple, cherry, mango, and watermelon are among the frequently bought flavors by vapers. Fruity flavors are extremely well-balanced and taste extremely close to their real-life counterparts.
Some vape brands hold so much expertise in creating fruity-flavored e-liquids, that you wouldn’t be able to tell the difference between the vape juice and the actual fruits. The notes in these blends are often sweet and tangy and they can be felt and enjoyed with every puff. These flavors are extremely beneficial for beginners who are new to the vaping world, as they give a nice head start to explore your taste.
- Dessert Flavour Profiles
Dessert flavour e-liquids are the holy grail for those who have sweet tooth. Dessert-flavoured e-liquids are extremely popular as they taste really nice and give your taste buds the perfect sweet kick without adding any calories to your body. There are thousands of dessert-flavoured e-liquids in the market that are there to cater to the confectionary fan base. Flavors like chocolate cake, crème Brule, vanilla custard, and apple pie are among the top-selling dessert-based flavors.
Dessert-based flavours are often PG based as it carries flavour really well, and they are comparatively thicker in consistency. They may or may not have a darker color, but it varies from brand to brand. When it comes to dessert flavors, the brand you get them from matters a lot. A lot of dessert-flavored e-liquids are loaded with extra sweeteners to balance out the strong flavouring, which ends up gunking the coil.
- Drink flavor profiles
There are supertasters among us that have a much higher density of taste receptors on the tongue, and some people have a superior olfactory sense as well, which is why they weigh nice-smelling things much higher. Drink flavor profiles are often known for their strong and pleasant smell, and they’re liked by many people because of this particular characteristic.
Popular Drink flavored profiles include, wine, coffee, hot chocolate, chamomile tea, lemonade etc. these e-liquids exude extremely pleasant-smelling vapour that pervades the room immediately, which adds up to the vaping experience. Drink-flavored profiles are liked by many people, but the amount of sweeteners in each of them varies a lot. A special and odd thing about drink-flavored e-liquids is they’re sold more during winters than summers, which reflects a change in taste preference with respect to the season.
