LincolnBlogs

This past weekend I went to the DC Vapefest as sort of a mini vacation with my wife. This was the very first big meetup I went to and it was pretty cool to see all the people there!
And people there were… LOTS of them! Oddly enough, most everyone wearing a black T shirt of some kind or another, so there was an absolute sea of black shirts as far as the eye could see. So many that the venu was almost too crowded to get through (the exhibitors/vendors area at least). That’s what I was there for really, to browse through the vendor area and it was easy to see I was not alone 🙂
There were soem familiar favorites there like Madvapes and Mount Baker Vapor and some others unfamiliar to me. I picked up a tank at Madvapes, some Uncle Junk’s John Wayne juice (delicious) and my wife found some juices she likes at the Zeus Juice booth. All in all it was a good time except for the extreme crowding. They really need a bigger venue. The vape haze there was comical!
I think the thing that interested me the most there was what I DIDN’T see. Sure I saw a plethora of Nautilus tanks floating around and those that didn’t sport them were playing with their RDA’s, but I didn’t see ANY 26650 mods, and I was SURE there would be an explosion of them. Maybe my meter is off or something 🙂 Or maybe they will all be there next year? I guess we’ll see.
I was pleasantly surprised to find some people there I knew. I bumped into the fellas from Ecigg.org and Delco Vapes (Philly peeps) checking things out and looking for new goodies for their shops. I also ran into the folks from Vape Dojo from MD, whoc I did a review for early on last year. There was a veritable riot at their booth the entire time I was there. It was great to see them doing such good business!
Again, a great time, and maybe next year I will be able to spend a little more time there than just a few hours, and I’ll get to see some of the talks too!

A couple weeks ago I received another care package for review from Vapor4Life. I just love these folks 😉 It has been a while since I looked into their wears and they have some nifty new things going on there lately.

The first thing you see here is e-juice. They have been working hard over there to come up with some new cigar and tobacco flavors and here are the fruits of their labors. I used to be a cigar smoker – or maybe a better word is “taster”, before I officially turned to vaping instead, so I was excited to try the cigar juices. The first of the 3 I tried was LIGERO, which really is a type of leaf near the top of the plant which is supposed to give it a bit more flavor – a snappiness. That it does! The first thing you notice about this is it’s the lightest colored cigar liquid, and the smell. Ahhh, the smell is definitively a cigar. It doesn’t smell like a juice, you can actually smell a bit ‘o the ashtray in there 🙂 In a good way, of course. The taste is surprisingly good. Snappy. I have found that it seems like a bold cigar flavor is actually pretty hard to come by on the vaping world, but this really is a good one. A little bite at the end of this and not too dirty. Next up was the CUBANA BLEND, which is a bit darker than the LIGERO and has a fruitier nose from the bottle. Nice and smooth tasting like maybe a really good Dominican blend. There is a lot of flavor in there, fuller, sweeter base than the LIGERO. I really wasn’t expecting it to be quite as cigar tasting as it is and it actually made me cough 🙂 Again, this was a good thing, a really nice flavor here. Then there was the darkest of the 3. The MADURO. The MADURO in the cigar world, of course, is based mostly on having a very dark leaf wrapper. This sort of translated into a very deep flavor through the cigar, and, as it happens, into this juice as well. It’s a bit sweeter and darker smelling from the bottle and has just a bit more of that ashtray smell as well. The taste is pretty robust and deep as you would expect, all the way through both the inhale and exhale. There is none of that snappiness like in the LIGERO, just rich flavor and no surprises. Now I should mention here that all my samples were at 1.8% and considering I normally vape at .6% the fact that I coughed only briefly on the CUBANA BLEND should say something about how smooth and tasty these really are. In fact I have a buddy of mine who is still an avid cigar smoker and I cannot wait to get him to try these! The cool part about the cigar flavors is the announcement of the http://ecigarking.com website that V4L will be launching to feature all these. Word has it that there may be a kit with a Zeus, these juices and accessories available for your favorite cigar lover. The pics of the kit on the site look fantastic! Stay tuned on this one!

Before I go further, I should explain my testing process again as well. As you can see from the picture, my preference is to use cartomizers to do juice tastings with as I believe they give the best initial results. They provide a smooth and consistent flavor and burn. Also you may notice a little paper tape on the bottles and cartomizers and this is because I often try multiple flavors at a time and I don’t look anything up before writing down my notes, other than possibly the name of the juice. Often I just refer to them in my notes as whatever number is taped to the sample. It’s almost like a double blind juice tasting 🙂 For all these juices in this review I used 3 ohm boge cartomizers on a 5 volt V4L Vapor Zeus (with fantastic results btw).

The next 2 juices I believe are very significant because not only are they possibly the best cigarette flavors I have tasted from V4L, but these are (pretty sure) the flavors they are using in their new WOW line of electronic cigarette disposables. Now much like the cigar flavors I just talked about, these Smilin Tobacco and Smilin Tobacco Menthol juices also have that faint hint of ashtray going on in there (in a good way). This makes these the most realistic tobacco flavors I think I have come across, and something that I believe that will make new vapers most comfortable. These have a very believable tobacco base which kind of reminds me of some of those “roll your own” tins of tobacco. To me, this really tastes like the real deal. The menthol, I find to me tastes a little piney (if that is a word). Most menthols tend to be minty to me, but not this one. The taste is not bad at all though, and I commented to my wife that if I were to just be coming off analog cigs, this menthol would be the one I would go for.

Now this brings me to the new WOW Vapor King line of disposables. These things are pretty nifty! I mentioned the flavor above, but the mechanics here need a little time too. These are as I mentioned a disposable line. The come in 2.6 and 3.6 mg nic, which is not for the feint of heart but perfect for long time smokers looking to get off analogs. You certainly are not going to vape one of these and still be craving nicotine. The filter end on these is squishy, like a real cig, which I find to be a really cool feature that I wish existed when I first started vaping. They look very much like analog smokes albeit slightly larger in diameter and have a green LED on the end (let’s not confuse us with those fire breathers any longer). The only thing I had on hand to compare sizes to was my remaining Newport Red 100ds that I keep around for size comparisons. The ecig is 9mm X 90mm compared to the real deal which was 7mm X 98mm. Pretty darned close! Each WOW Vapor King Disposable comes in a nice little half pack sized box with your vape and a nice little user manual. Once again, it bears mentioning that they taste great, they seem to work really well, and they should last you about a couple of packs worth of equivalent cigarette smoking.

And now for the change that will become legendary! Vapor4Life is going to start releasing some product with a 510 connection instead of 808. The 2 they sent me for review were the 510 Vapor Zeus (Dual Mode) and the Dial A Volt (Auto XL). Of course they also sent me a couple Smileomizers for each to help in my assessment. That really is good thinking because NOTHING works as good on a Zeus or Dial A Volt better than a smileomizer.

The change between 808 and 510 on these devices amounts to the connector between the battery (device) and the atomizer (Smileomizer). On the 808 connection, the connector is male on the top of the battery and the reverse is true with 510 style. The connectors are different sizes as well and what’s most important is that right now, 510 connections are pretty much the industry standard. This means that if you went with the 510 version of these devices that you are able to use them with a wider range of atomizer heads from different vendors, AND you are also able to use 510 style Smilomizers on other vendors mods (batteries) without any fiddly adapters. As I mentioned, there is nothing that works better on these devices than a Smileomizer, however, for the adventurous, I have also enjoyed using an Aspire Et-s BDC on my 510 Dial A Volt and iClear 30s seems to work really well on the 510 Dual Mode Zeus, along with any 3 ohm cartomizer. Note here that you should be careful with the Zeus though because it puts out 5v, which is a bit high for some atomizer devices.

These two mods are FANTASTIC devices as I mentioned in previous reviews and that still holds true in the 510 versions. The knurling on the Dial A Volt’s knob makes for super control when selecting your voltage, which is still clearly marked as opposed to some other vendors versions of this device. The Vapor Zeus appears to have changed slightly from the 808 version I have. This one is about 3/4 inch longer than the 808 version (is it the new XL?) and has a slightly lighter colored wrapper, which still closely resembles a nice cigar 🙂 Of course, if cigar colored is not your thing, there are different colors to choose from and I particularly like the green color of my new Dial A Volt!

SO, where do you get one of these beastise you ask? Well, in an effort NOT to confuse the populace and those of you already familiar with Vapor4Life, they are starting a NEW website called WOWVapor which will contain everything 510 connector compatible. Right now, it looks like they only have their new disposables available on there but I would expect to see the 510 products soon because, hey, everyone needs a Vapor Zeus! 😉

Well, the folks at Suprem-e E-Liquid Cigarette were certainly listening to my last review and sent me out some additional flavors to check out. 11 more in fact! These flavors are from their Dodici line which if my translation is correct means “12”, which is indicative of the size bottle you are getting. Again, my standard disclaimer here is that these were provided free of charge for the purpose of review, which I will provide in an honest and straight forward fashion. And remember, taste is a subjective thing, for instance, some people enjoy eating yucky things like octopus . 🙂

Orange Plus:
OK, I had a hard time putting this one down. It seems like orange is a difficult flavor for people to do, and this one, as it turns out, is pretty good! Nice orange flavor and not overly harsh, which some citrusy vapes can be.

RY4 Regular:
Sort of disappointed with this one. As I mentioned, I am a RY4 fanatic, and this is definitely a RY4 and not a 3 or a 5, but I am getting a slight metallic taste from this that I just cannot place. Initially I thought maybe it was my cartomizer or maybe a new metal drip tip, but they were both swapped out and the taste remained. Is it me, or the Juice? Well, since the rest of the juice is such high quality, I am forced to assume it’s probably me.

Jelly:
Really more of a marmalade kind of taste in my opinion. Citrusy and berries and sweet. Not at all unpleasant to vape, and mixes really well with the orange 😉

Tropical:
Passion fruit. That’s what I taste. There are a lot of other tropical fruit flavors in there as well, but it’s the passion fruit for me that lingers on. Tasty!

Il Melone (Melon):
This one is pretty interesting for people who enjoy melons. I taste 3 (I think). Definitively there is Honeydew and Cantaloupe pretty strong with a hint of what I think is Watermelon hanging out in the background. Delicious.

Green Cloud:
OK, funny story with this one. When I do juice reviews I typically use cartomizers (they carry the taste the best I think). I do not look at descriptions on websites or anything more than maybe looking at the name on the bottle of juice. If I have several, I will shoot up a bunch of cartos and number them and the appropriate box/bottle so I know what to refer to in my notes. So all that being said, the only thing I knew about this one was the name. I assumed this was going to be some menthol or mint or both so I tried it. On the first vape I thought, wow. This tastes very earthy, mushroomy (?) Maybe there is something wrong with this carto. I checked and it was definitely not burny or anything so I tried again. This was interesting and not *at all* what I was expecting. It was almost like dried herbs. Not unpleasant but quite different. Then it hit me. All my college days came flooding back. It’s pot (marajuana). The taste and smell is definitely there, although not so strong as to get you busted (probably). This would be a great vape to pull out at a party to get some reactions!

King:
A nutty tobacco. Very good with the slightest hint of an almost almondy bite at the end.

Bright:
This one is a bit strange. I get a tobacco that has a very chocolaty and nutty aftertaste. It’s absolutely delicious but for me doesn’t match the name.

La Pesca (Peach):
Peach. There are 2 flavors which I am particularly adverse to and one is banana and the other is peach. What I can say is although I think peaches are icky all together, this peach flavor is most definitely a fresh peach flavor and not a candied peach flavor. Straight from Georgia to your mouth by way of Italy 🙂

Artic Mint:
This is great. This is really what I was expecting the Green Cloud to taste like 🙂 It’s a nice clean mint – cool and smooth. Love this stuff!

Absinthe:
This is a lighter version of their black licorice flavor. Not as heavy a flavor. Would make a great all day vape for any licorice or Absinthe lover. Spot on.

As I mentioned on my previous review for Suprem-e, they really seem to be a quality juice maker and if you are in the market for something to carry as a retailer, you could certainly do worse than to check these folks out. If you just a vaper like me, their stuff is great quality and quite tasty and they seem to package and ship very quickly – faster than I have gotten some things from the other side of my own country! Good stuff for sure!

I ran into this company, Suprem-e e-liquid cigarette, which is an Italian company specializing in e-juice. I had never tried an Italian e-juice before and they graciously sent me some samples for review. In fact, they sent me an entire display! There were 15 bottles of juice in there, so it did take me a bit to run through them and give them a proper tasting, and here’s what I thought:

Nice packaging w/ expire date, etc.
20 ml bottles with child (adult) proof caps (squeeze them hard).
These are all a 50/50 PG/VG Blend.

RY4 Pleasure:
Caramelish smell
Very nice / smooth. Hint of cotton candy and caramel creme?

Mint:
Minty smell but not overbearing
Tastes JUST like the “Pillow Mints” you see at Christmas time. Delicious!

Vanilla:
Very dark. Not as fragrant as I had expected.
Flavor is sweet and slight but there. Very unexpectedly smooth.

Coffee:
Smells Delicious!
Again, very mellow but tasty coffee.

Licorice:
Nice black licorice smell. Definitely licorice but not overpowering or assaulting like some black licorice vapes I have tried. Smooth enough to be an all day vape and not just a dessert vape.

Il Bacio (The Kiss?):
Very strange almost chemically smell to this – perhaps it’s my cold… Very dark liquid.
This is a hazelnut with a chocolaty background note. It’s the “real deal” hazelnut, which to me has a slightly bitter aftertaste and not the watered down mass consumption hazelnut coffee flavor we see so often.

Irish Cream:
Undeniable smell of Irish Cream!
Cream, vanilla, coffee, a bit chocolaty with just enough whisky hint so that you know exactly what this is. Anyone who likes Irish Cream will be instantly familiar with this flavor and very comfortable with it.

Rum:
Smells like rum and tastes like it too. 😀

Velvet:
Very mild tobacco smell.
Mild (blended?) light tobacco flavor with more TH than I had expected. Not overly nosey but the tobacco taste is definitely there. There may be a subtle sweetness in there too.

First Pick:
Slightly more than Velvet. More scent, more flavor, still mild but tasty.

Kiln:
Bold. A robust dried tobacco flavor. Not subtle but not bitter.

Sunset:
Oddly colorless compared with the other tobacco flavors. Very good. A milder tobacco with an almost fruitiness to the taste.

Blended:
Stronger than I expected. A good quality blended tobacco taste.

Pure:
Stronger smell and darker color that goes with it. Now we are talking. This is like a first pick tobacco – unprocessed. This reminds me a bit of a Cohiba cigar. Strong tobacco, but not dirty. This is something any cigar or natural tobacco smoker should enjoy.

Tasty:
Again, oddly colorless. Kind of a combo of the Blended and Sunset. Milder, Sweeter, again somewhat fruity. True to it’s name, it’s tasty!

The juices I tasted were all from their “Classic” line, which, again, come in 20 ml bottles. They also have a “Dodici” line – 12 ml bottles, with some different / additional flavors. I’d love to try these sometime too – absinthe, orange, jelly? Heck yeah!

The flavored juices I tried are all quite good in their own right, but the hidden gem here was really the tobacco flavors (the last 7 in the list I tried). Now, I have been a vaper for a little over a year at this point and I didn’t think tobacco held this much of an interest to me, however, these really deserve some attention. There is a little something in there for everyone I suspect (except maybe a menthol smoker). They are just excellent, all quite mellow and flavorful. I know these guys are searching for some US distributers, and honestly, if you are one, you may be doing yourself a disservice by not at least trying some of these and considering them. New vapers sometimes seem to have a hard time finding just the right tobacco flavor that they can be comfortable with, and my bet is there would be something in this set they would like!

Check out Suprem-e today and if you pick up one of those bottles of orange before I do, let me know what you think!

Waiting on info from one vendor and review materials from another I decided to check out some local fare. Here in the Philly area there are several notable juice makers, one of which is Ecigg.org. Ecigg.org holds the notable distinction of being the only vape shop in the area right now which has multiple locations, or sister stores. It also has started its own juice line recently called Zen Juice.

I had the opportunity to sample a few of their juices and here’s what I thought:

RY4 Mix:
This is a straight RY4. I think it tastes a lot like Dekang, but in a good way. It has that familiar taste but without the chemically or overly harsh aftertaste that you sometimes get with a Chinese made juice. It’s actually pretty good.

G5:
This is Ecigg.org’s answer to a RY5, which is supposed to be a sweeter version of a RY4. What I get from this is RY4 mixed with marshmallow. Not regular marshmallow, but a toasted marshmallow. It’s a good bit sweeter and deeper flavor than the standard RY4,

Vanilla Swirl:
This is a vanilla candy flavor. Pretty tasty!

Guava Candy:
THIS is just delicious! I have long been a fan of Guava and one of my favorite juices is Goya Guava Nectar. This nails it.

These juices are all a 50/50 PG/VG blend and quite tankable. I have had them in a Smoktech GBC and PBC, both bottom coil tanks and both performed with good flavor and no dry hits. This is good stuff, folks. Give it a try!

Oh yeah, this is totally a 2-fur review, but that’s because I already had the picture and it looks so good 😀

The other day I was visiting my preferred vape hangout Liberty Vapor and bought an iClear30s. Actually, it was a couple weeks ago and I got it with my new iTaste VTR and just never used it until the other day, but that’s another story..

Anyway, I decided to actually give this new iClear30s a try. I really REALLY did not like the regular iClear30 as, for me, the friggin thing flooded every 10 minutes or so (ok maybe every 15 tops). That sorta performance cuts down on my vape time and wastes my juice, so I was hesitant to try anything new that still said “iClear30” on it. I was assured multiple times that this new one worked a treat so I finally gave in and tried it.

Apparently, the little “s” on the end means “we fixed this and made it work” in Chinese because that’s what happened. The internal design has changed immensely. All the coil heads and wicks are now encased in this cylindrical cover which resembles a cartomizer with a bunch of holes laser punched in it. This is no longer something that is rebuildable as you don’t really have any direct access to the coils. It’s purely disposable and it purely works. Pretty good trade off if you ask me.

The outside has changed slightly for the better as well. They have dropped a lot of that ugly knurling and replaced it with some more aesthetic but still grip-able cap designs and made it possible to get rid of that included metal swivel tip and use your own more comfortable and better looking drip tip. Good thinking there imho!

So far I have run maybe 10 or 12 tanks through the two of these I have and only had a couple minor flooding issues, and they were related to refilling and not just accidental or laying the tank on it’s side or something like that. The flooding I experienced was before I actually realized that I could use my own drip tip and I *think* what happened was the included swivel tip collects a lot of condensation. When you crack the tank apart for a refill, I believe that condensation runs down through the coil flooding it out. It hasn’t happened since I have been using my own drip tips, but then again, I have been slightly more careful too. I’d love to hear from anyone else who notices this just out of curiosity, but as I said, this has been nowhere near the problem the old iClear30 had and is certainly not a reason to avoid these whatsoever. For around $15, these are working mighty well this time around actually better than one of my original Protanks, but I will deny having actually said that 😀

I also JUST got an iTaste 134. That’s the awesome looking Lightsaber or Galing gun looking ecig (mod) in the picture.

THIS THING IS COOL LOOKING!

Well, now that I have that outa the way… This really is an interesting mod aside from its looks. It is wide in diameter. which makes it really stable when standing on its end and arguably easier to hold on to. Now I don’t have arthritis but I can remember my grandmothers hands knurled around a pencil and I remember seeing cooking / eating utensils for arthritic people having big handles. This sort of mod would definitely fit that bill better than a thin ego or something similar. With that girth comes weight too, though. I don’t think it’s WAY heaver than, say, a Provari,. but it’s noticeably heavier for sure. For me this is a bonus. Personally I think heavier and more substantial often speaks of better quality and craftsmanship. YMMV of course.

This is a variable wattage or variable power mod and the only display is the wattage, in .5 watt increments marked into a selector ring which encircles the mod slightly below the fire button. Understanding the intricacies of variable wattage is beyond the purpose of this post, but it’s not as difficult as you may think and even if you knew nothing about it at all, you could put an atomizer or tank on here, set the power to the middle and then tweak it forward and back to get what you want and then NEVER have to dink with it again.

The mod uses 18650 batteries. This is good. Lots of long lasting power, when your battery peters out, you just pop in a new one and you are off to the races again. No stopping your vaping habit for a recharge or being tethered to a usb cable while charging either. And speaking on that topic of size, this mods size has enabled it to have this large and easily grip-able base, which is where you put the battery in. Nice a?!

I am really diggin’ this thing. I like it’s looks. I like it’s feel. I like how it is really usable and still very simple to operate. It’s not overly gaget-y or fiddley. It’s a bit on the expensive side at between $110 and $140 where you can find it, but rugged (yes I have tomahawked this already on the ground and floor and a steel table leg) and cool as hell. Go buy one and the geek in you will love you for it 😀