Does an E-Cigarette Taste Like a Real Cigarette?

Guest post by Triple 7 Vaping.

Please note that this is a sponsored post, and does not necessarily reflect the opinion of the founder – John Deus.

It’s the first question any smoker asks before vaping for the first time. Maybe you’ve tried to quit smoking before, only to discover that products like nicotine gum are nowhere near as satisfying as smoking. Can an e-cigarette really be a 1:1 replacement for a real cigarette? Is it possible to switch from one to the other without noticing a difference?

This article is a frank discussion of what vaping is and isn’t.

What Do E-Cigarettes Really Taste Like?

We’ll begin by answering the question above: No, an e-cigarette doesn’t taste like a real cigarette. When you take all of the reasons for that fact into account, though, you may decide that adjusting to a different flavor is a small price to pay for all of the other benefits that e-cigarettes have to offer.

What do e-cigarettes really taste like? The answer is that they can taste like almost anything. Since there’s no end to the variety of different flavor combinations that e-liquid makers can invent, there are many, many flavor profiles that haven’t been discovered yet in addition to the hundreds that already exist.

The Magic of E-Liquid

Let’s take a moment to discuss what e-liquid can do. Companies around the world create natural and artificial flavor concentrates set in oil, alcohol, propylene glycol or vegetable glycerin. Every maker’s version of a particular flavor – strawberry, for example – tastes different. One might taste like a famous strawberry candy – probably because the maker of that candy uses the same flavor – while another might taste remarkably like a fresh strawberry. If you put those two flavors together, you’ll have something else. Now, imagine what would happen if you had the strawberry flavors from six different makers and tried them in dozens of different combinations and ratios. You could find a way to express any nuance of strawberry that you could possibly imagine.

Next, let’s take things a step further. Strawberry is just one flavor. A major maker of flavor concentrates like Capella or FlavourArt will have more than 100 different flavors available. Suppose you chose a few different manufacturers and purchased their full lineups. You’d have hundreds of different flavor concentrates at your disposal. You could combine strawberry with:

• Cereal and vanilla flavors to create a cereal bar profile
• Cream and vanilla flavors to create an ice cream profile
• Milk and banana flavors to create a smoothie profile

The above examples are just the beginning; some of the world’s most interesting e-liquids combine more than a dozen individual flavors to create profiles that are complex, nuanced and entirely unique – and that’s only the start. One e-liquid maker enhances its products by aging them in oak barrels. Another maker steeps black tea and saffron in vegetable glycerin to add extra layers of complexity. With access to everything the culinary world has to offer, there really is no end to what e-liquid makers can produce.

The Limitation of E-Liquid

Now you have a better understanding of what e-liquid can do – and that means it’s time for a discussion of what e-liquid can’t do. E-liquid can produce an incredible variety of complex flavors. As a smoker, though, you know another way to create a complex flavor profile: by burning the fermented leaves of the tobacco plant. Tobacco is a special plant anyway. If it wasn’t, it wouldn’t have become such an important part of human history. Combine tobacco’s already unique taste with the complex chemical changes that take place during fermentation and combustion, and you’ve got a flavor profile that’s impossible to duplicate. An e-cigarette doesn’t burn, and most e-liquids contain no tobacco. An e-cigarette can’t recreate the flavor of tobacco smoke.

A Compromise for Tobacco Lovers

E-cigarettes can’t duplicate the complex flavor profile of cigarette smoke, yet millions of people around the world vape anyway. In this article, we hope we’ve given you an idea of what makes vaping so compelling for so many people. Even if you can’t imagine yourself craving anything but the flavor of tobacco, it’s likely that you will in the future when you begin to explore all of the amazing e-liquid flavors out there. For right now, though, all that you want is the flavor of tobacco. There are two different ways to approach that goal.

The first way to approximate the flavor of tobacco in an e-liquid is by breaking the desired flavor profile down into its constituent components. Nicotine actually has a slightly peppery flavor of its own. Since nicotine tastes the same regardless of whether it’s in a cigarette or an e-liquid, it goes a long way toward helping an e-liquid taste like the real thing. Mix a good amount of nicotine with some nutty, spicy, sweet and vegetal notes, and you can create an e-liquid strongly reminiscent of real tobacco. That’s exactly how most of the world’s e-liquid makers create tobacco e-liquids. You’ll find a great many tobacco e-liquids out there, and it’ll be quite some time before you tire of trying them all.

Would you like to find an e-liquid with a tobacco flavor that’s even more convincing? Above, we discussed the fact that some e-liquid makers create unique e-liquids by extracting the flavors of natural plant materials. As it happens, there are actually quite a few e-liquids available that contain real tobacco extracts. Creating a tobacco extract is a painstaking process that involves steeping ground tobacco leaves in a carrier such as alcohol or vegetable glycerin for several weeks or months, filtering the resulting extract and using it like any other e-liquid flavor. There are many different tobacco cultivars and processing methods, and intrepid e-liquid makers have created extracts that capture tobacco’s wide palette of flavors. While even a perfect natural tobacco extract can’t duplicate the flavor of tobacco smoke, it can come a long way toward capturing some of tobacco’s magic and in the process help to smooth your path from smoking to vaping.

About the Author

Jason Cugle is the Owner/Curator of Triple 7 Vaping. Triple 7 Vaping offers premium vaping products at wholesale prices and specializes in Aspire tanks, mods, parts and other accessories. Triple 7 Vaping offers lightning-fast same-day shipping on orders over $30.