The Adventures of Joe Camel and the Old Dripper Continues - Part I
I have a friend I’ve been trying hard to get off cigs. He’s about as particular as me. He smokes camel filters….Any suggestions?
This is a common refrain, question, pleading, request, call it what you want, but it turns up fairly often out in the vape world.
I would like to give you my thoughts on this.
Since The total answer is very involved and covers many subjects as almost everything in vaping is involved that effects a successful outcome, all I can hope to do here is give a little thumb-nail starters overview to clear away some of the more prevalent cobwebs and mis-information that is common on this subject. I will split my answer into two posts. But there will still be much detail left unsaid. Hopefully the following two post thumb nail overview will be of some benefit.
First, of course the DISCLAIMER:
As everyone here understands, TIS, = “taste is subjective”. These comments are from the perspective of my taste buds only. Your milage might vary. FYI, in real life I am a NET tobacco vaper only. I do not, as a matter of personal choice and flavor preference, vape any synthetic flavors whether that be fruits and desserts on the one hand all the way to so-called ‘ synthetic tobacco’ on the other. I vape NETs only. Therefore, as in all published papers that attempt to explore a narrow subject matter, you must always look for ‘investigator bias’. I readily admit that there is plenty of that here.
Let’s start here: (PART 1)
For fun let’s give the Newbie on a Quest for a Camel Cig and his/her Mentor a name. We will call the newbie “Joe Camel” and he wants to quit combustable Camel cigarettes. We will call you (the Mentor) “The Old Dripper”.
First things first:
A few questions to ask Joe so we can get some information about where he is in the progression of using vaping to quit combustibles. For Joe Camel it will be a progression, a journey, and there is a start point. To properly help him we need Joes start point frame of reference. We need to know “where is Joe currently at?”
Ask Joe these questions:
1.) Has he ever vaped any vape product at all?
2.) If so what is the product name and type?
3.) If he has tried at least the two types like PODs and low end Tank/Kit which does he prefer.
4.) Is he familiar with some vape jargon like Direct Lung and Mouth To Lung?
If the above answers are mostly NO, then you will have to assemble a few products for him and step him thru the way each of those devices behave. At first, I would suggest you just mix up some 25/50 PG/VG (no flavorings, no NIC) and spent an afternoon letting him master the basics and work through the initial trepidation of such a novel concept. Judge his reactions, be observant. What is important to him? The clouds? or perhaps he likes to play with what pipe smokers call the ‘retro-hale’ (nose to mouth). Be observant, notice how he handles the vapor. What is his cadence between puffs, what verbal comments does he make about the experience?
After this initial ‘test session’ your work starts to begin. Hopefully Joe has just shown you a preference for certain types of vaping style.
Based on the style lets go to work with an example formula, and see how we will tailor it to the new vaper.
Explain to Joe that Taste is Subjective and that at first we are NOT looking for a result of “oh my God I just found the Holy Grail, I found by Gods luck the one juice formula that I will vape fore-ever…” Explain that patience is a virtue. It probably took him many years and many trips to various fast food joints to find the perfect greasy fries and burgers, vaping is no different, you have to try a lot of different things before your get the perfect fit…
But here is where we get down to brass tacks and some important considerations with converting a combustable smoker to a “tobacco vaper”. And this is where you as the “Old Dripper” must stay on your toes.
You might not be a “tobacco vaper” yourself, so some of the following might be new news even to you, but, trust me, it is critically important that you wrap your head around the following paragraphs so that you can do a proper job as the “Old Dripper”… —>>:Do you realized that: Most of what is passed off in the synthetic pre mix and DIY-recipe worlds that is called “tobacco vape juice” is not tobacco at all ?
Most of those recipes are just simple adaptations of someones favorite fruit or pastry recipe or candy recipe with a few drops of some very low quality imitation tobacco synthetic thrown in. Then the maker gets out his Label Machine and slaps a label that says “Fine Cuban Tobacco Vape” … A couple of problems with that. First, it is unlikely that the maker ever in his life tasted a Cuban Cigar, and second there is no a chance in Hell that mixing an overly sweet totally artificial pastry with a few drop of “something” will have the flavor profile of a Cuban Cigar or “Joe Camels’ beloved combustable cigarettes. To put it bluntly, in the internet vape recipe world, there is a level of nonsense, of mislabeling, and outright lying about what is a “tobacco vape”. It is at a point that it is almost beyond crazy. Confusion abounds everywhere and Candy and all various recipe makers have tossed out something they call a “tobacco vape”. But the reality is that almost none are, in any sense, ‘tobacco vapes’.
So the hazard is that your efforts to convert your friend Joe Camel to vaping is in real danger of failure as you give him sample of one overly sweet pastry after another. You will just confuse him and discourage his efforts. Let’s get him some tobacco flavor profiles right from the start.
So what makes up a “Tobacco Vape” ?
Time for a few definitions of words. Basically there are Four Group types of ingredients for tobacco vapes.
One Group is natural extractions made from real tobacco leaves. Some of those leafs may have benefited from careful and experienced hands that have fermented them in very specialized and controlled ways, or minimally processed them with methods like “flu curing” or extended aging. You see these ingredients in marketed products like Naturally-Extracted-Tobacco, LLC , as well as many small boutique providers like Want2Vape, and of course, us home DIY NET types.
Second Group is commercially made extractions from real tobacco using modern industrial herb and flavor extraction processes. Most people do not realize but this has become a huge industry in the food flavoring business and operates internationally. Some of these products are made with great care and are very high quality. For many years the center of this industry was in Italy, but now has taken a strong foothold in USA as well. You see these ingredients in highly marketed products like Black Note. You can buy these as concentrates for your own recipe mixing in products by INW (INAWERA) and some NicVape products
Third Group is not an extraction nor is it related to tobacco at all. It is the world of the synthetic food chemist. Because the flavor components of tobacco has been studied in great detail, it is known what the basic core compounds are that give tobacco its distinctive flavor taste and aroma. By creating analog molecules in the lab it is possible to make a product that seems to mimic tobacco for the consumer. The PROs of that is that the resulting product is patentable and can be financially protected by the manufacture, and also that it is usually very cheap to produce on an industrial scale, much cheaper than making natural extractions of the real plant material. The CONs is the chemistry brings with it unwanted secondary by products. Usually these have undesirable aroma and flavor components. Typical unwanted components are “plastic taste” and unpleasant and persistent tastes that take over and persist in the olfactory senses unlike natural flavors that dissipate in a pleasant and timely manner. You see these ingredients in highly marketed products like FLAVORAH - Additionally, often heard mis-information, is that somehow the artificial synthetic favors are “safer” than real tobacco extraction. The chemistry of that would have to be the subject of some other thread (actually books have been written on this subject and the chemistry is too involved to go into here. For those that are interested and have a college level background in chemistry you can PM me and I will give to you a bibliography list) . The short of the long of it is that commercial food chemists are mostly lying to you about the safety of their products.
Fourth Group is not so much of a group related to tobacco but is more a phenomenon of Social Media discourse, and has added tremendous confusion to the whole noble subject of “tobacco vapes”… I mentioned this above when I talked about “recipes that are just simple adaptations of someones favorite fruit or pastry recipe or candy recipe with a few drops of some very low quality imitation tobacco synthetic thrown in.” Then labeled and sold to you and Joe Camel as “Tobacco Vape”. If there has been nothing else in the entire world of vaping that has conspired to doom your friend Joe Camel to never have success with vaping it is that group of mis-labeled “products”. I understand that there are thousands of such recipes in the e-liquides-reciepie side of this web site, but please resist the temptation to use any of those when trying to bring along someone like our friend Joe Camel. Let’s get Joe Camel a pure simple experience he can use to start his vaping journey. An experience he can readily relate to. Let’s not shell shock his taste buds and his years of experience with combustibles and confuse him with this rag tag Fourth Group of recipes which amount to little more than a huge bag full of artificially flavored skittles with a slight almost undetectable drop of tobacco flavor thrown in as an after thought.
Now On to Part II
