My Review Process (or The Method Behind My Madness)

My Review Process (or The Method Behind My Madness)

When I decided I wanted to start reviewing the e-juices I was amassing, I had to start by figuring out what qualities of the juice I wanted to review and how I was going to review it. 

This meant starting with what characteristics in the juice I thought were most important.

If you buy juices in your local shop, more often than not you have the opportunity to sample the different flavors before you buy them.  However, depending upon the actual mods, tanks, and RDAs you may use at home, the flavors you experience at the vape shop by using their e-pens and cartomizers are greatly different than what you’ll experience with your own equipment.  With the added wattage and heat from the mods most people use, the flavor tends to change a great deal.

But if you order juice online, you’re not able to taste test before you buy.

Also, depending upon the brands of ingredients, amount of nicotine (if any) included in the juice, and the flavorings use, the juice itself may grow harsher at some of the higher wattage levels that many advanced mods are capable of utilizing.

Another factor in how a juice will taste is often affected by how it smells.  Our sense of smell dictates how our brains actually perceive the flavor of the things we eat and drink.  Scientific studies have proven this – willing subjects have been blindfolded and their noses blocked then given something like a strong, potent onion and told to try it (after they’ve been told they were eating an apple).  Without the ability to smell that familiar fragrant smell of onion, the volunteers were unable to tell they were actually eating an onion.

So to me, it was a simple choice for what I wanted to review in these juices.  I wanted to experience how they smelled and tasted without heat; then, I wanted to experience how they smelled and tasted when actually vaped (and whether or not you’d experience any harshness when vaping them.)

With that decided, it was time to decide upon the equipment I would use to sample these juices.

In the short time I’ve been vaping with more than my Voodoo brand e-pen, I have collected quite a few mods, tanks, and RDAs.  From simple tube mech mods to unregulated box mods to regulated box mods where you can control the wattage and voltage used, I had to pick which one I was going to use for these reviews.  As for the choice of tank versus RDA (rebuildable dripper atomizer), I decided to stick with using RDAs. 

The choice of RDAs available to the vaping public is far more vast than the choice of which mod to use.  But the one thing about the RDAs that influences more of how much flavor you get from your juice is more the coil build inside.  The number of wraps (the actual coils you have), the wire used – if you can consistently use the same type of build, your experience will vary little from most RDAs (notice I say MOST – there are some out there built more for flavor, some built with more air flow, etc.)

I decided the mod I was going to use would be my Sigelei 150 watt regulated box mod.  It is a very dependable device that runs on two 18650 rechargeable batteries.  You can control the exact wattage and/or voltage you use when you vape – meaning you can actually control how warm or hot your vape will be.

(Confused by all this terminology?  Don’t worry!  I’ll dedicate a post to the terminology used in the vaping community soon.)

Unless you vape, none of what I’m about to say will make much sense, but I’m going to include it anyways for the hard core vaper.  The RDAs I’ve been using for my reviews have been as follows:

• ·         Mutation X V3
• ·         Mutation X V4
• ·         Mutation V4
• ·         Twisted Messes

However, the coil build in each RDA has been the same – 6 wraps of 24 gauge kanthal wire that comes out to .3 to .4 ohms (I will be dedicating a post to Ohms Law as well, so you don’t necessarily need to worry about that right now either.)

So, I was set to vape and review.

For my reviews, my chosen criteria were as follows:

• ·         Aroma and taste without heat
• ·         Aroma and taste with heat
• ·         Whether or not the juice gets harsh at higher wattage levels
• ·         Whether or not the flavorings used in the juice create a harsh feeling in your throat

With each review, I always start with fresh cotton and a clean RDA.  I don’t want any leftover residue from a previous juice that may still be in the RDA to influence the flavor of something I’m reviewing – and I certainly don’t want cotton that’s been soaked in some other flavor of e-juice to influence the flavor of the juice I’m about to review.

And there you have it!  The method behind my madness.  It’s really quite simple when you look at the entire process from beginning to end.