One of the biggest factors that influences the taste of e liquids is the presence of a sweetener.
Sucralose is the sweetener that you are most likely to find in your e liquids. You can detect its flavour instantly. Sucralose tastes like a sugar-free sweet or fizzy drink. It coats your entire mouth with sweetness, and it ensures that candy and dessert flavours are both pronounced and appealing.
Sadly, as with so many other things in life that taste great, sucralose has its drawbacks.
You might be wondering why sweeteners are added to e liquids.
The answer is simple. Sweeteners ensure that certain flavour profiles taste better. Sweeteners stimulate taste receptors in your mouth and so increase the pleasure of vaping the flavours.
If an e-liquid has been mixed to replicate the flavour of a specific sweet food or beverage, the addition of a sweetener may be required to conjure the authentic taste. Dessert, fruit, drink, ice cream, candy and bakery blends can all benefit from the addition of a sweetener.
Moreish flavours keep ex-smokers away from traditional cigarettes precisely because they taste so appealing. A cigarette will never taste like a jam doughnut, but an e liquid can courtesy of sweeteners!
Sucralose is a synthetic organochlorine sweetener (OC) that is often added to edible products and drinks. It interacts with sensors in the alimentary tract that play a role in sweet taste sensation hormone secretion. Sucralose can be found on supermarket shelves with various brand names including Canderel and Splenda. Pure sucralose is around 600 times sweeter than sugar.
As sucralose is available in liquid form and does not deliver a bitter aftertaste, it is a convenient choice for e liquid manufacturers.
There are several reasons why you might decide to avoid e liquids containing sucralose:
Unfortunately, sucralose causes residue to build up on vape coils. This residue is known as coil gunk and will shorten the useful lives of vape coils. The sucralose leaves deposits because it cannot be fully vapourised. In other words, when you take a puff, your e liquid is vapourised, but a small amount of sucralose will remain in your tank or pod and adhere to your coils.
As you continue vaping, the residue will eventually begin to burn. The coil gunk gets thicker and thicker until you can taste nothing but the burnt sweetener. It will then be necessary to replace your coil.
Of course, taste is subjective, but it is known that the presence of sucralose can adversely impact complex blends. When e liquids that feature several flavour notes also contain sucralose, the various notes may be harder to detect.
Research suggests that sucralose could stimulate your appetite leading you to eat more and gain weight.
Your gut is home to billions of helpful bacteria that, amongst other things, support your immune system. Some studies have found that sucralose can change your gut microbiome and reduce the number of good bacteria by as much as 50%. More research is required to confirm the impact of sucralose on the gut.
If you enjoy sweet flavours but don't want to replace your vape coils quite so often, sucralose probably sounds like bad news. Happily, e liquids can taste sweet without the addition of this sweetener.
Vegetable glycerine (VG) features in most e liquids and boasts a slightly sweet taste. Vape juices high in VG will taste a little sweeter than those high in propylene glycol (PG). VG does not leave residue in your tank or pod so long as you are using a sub ohm device.
Some e liquids contain ethyl maltol which is a flavouring agent that captures the taste of caramelized sugar. Most people liken the taste to that of cotton candy. Used sparingly, ethyl maltol can sweeten any flavour profile without adding significant flavour of its own.
Erythritol is a sugar alcohol extracted from fermented corn. It is as sweet as sugar. Added to an e-liquid, erythritol can sweeten the flavour and produce a very mild cooling sensation similar to what you would experience with a small amount of menthol. At the time of writing, erythritol is not yet a commonly used e-liquid sweetener. As more people begin demanding gunk-free e-liquid that still tastes sweet, erythritol is likely to become a more common ingredient in vape juice flavourings.
