Note: I am an independent reviewer, with no connection at all to this or any other purveyor of vaping equipment or juice.
Just received my order of Vermillion River Kentucky Premium Blend, the Kentucky Vanilla Blend, and the Poker Blend.
I opened up the Kentucky Premium to try it straight out of the box. What follows is my review of the Vermillion River Kentucky Premium Blend as I found it to taste when vaped fresh out of the bottle, without steeping. (This is my first review, so I'd appreciate feedback, negative or otherwise)
Packaging
First of all, Vermillion River juices come in smoke-colored glass bottles with glass drippers. Nice touch. Nice looking label, too. The overall initial impression is one of quality. (I wonder, however, how much breakage they experience sending these things via 1st Class US Mail.) I'll be saving these bottles and drippers to re-use so I don't have to deal with plastic dripper bottles, which feel cheap to me and detract from the overall impression I get from handling the juice.
The bottles bear an attractive, nickel-colored label that wraps about 3/4 around the bottle, which will allow you to easily see the juice level as it descends below the top of the label. It lists the ingredients, the size, the nicotine level, and bears a small circular sticker indicating the flavor. While it indicates that the bottle contains “Premium E-Juice,” it does not indicate the PG/VG blend, nor could I find that information on the Vermillion River Website. The label does not indicate the date that the juice was mixed.
Tasting parameters
I ordered the 30ml bottle (1 fl. oz.) with 20mg of nicotine per ml. From what I can tell vaping the juice, it seems likely to be 80/20 or 70/30. I tested it using a fresh Smok 1.5 ohm XL dual coil cartomizer atop my eGo-V VV battery.
The juice is 0 days old (calculated from the receipt of the bottle, delivered via 1st Class USPS mail), and it had never had the cap removed.
This is a tobacco flavor. Vermillion River offers a brief description of the composition of this flavor on their website: "Kentucky Premium Blend has a very smooth classic tobacco taste combined with very subtle caramel and nutty undertones. Sure to be a top shelf must have you will want to enjoy all day everyday."
Overall impressions
In the bottle, the Vermillion River Kentucky Premium Blend simply smells like caramel and hazelnut. I tried vaping it at a variety of voltages. No matter what the voltage, it had a very smooth, velvety mouth feel. Mild throat hit, but very good lung hit -- similar to the resistance you feel pulling the smoke from a strong cigarette into your lungs.
This put out a good deal of vapor at every wattage, and my wife (who neither smokes nor vapes) said that the vapor smelled very good.
Evaluations of flavor at specific power settings
6 watts (3 volts): Initial hit is sugary -- not candied sugary, but tobacco-sweet that's characteristic of easy, warm pipe tobacco. This is followed by a mild caramel with maple overtones that lingers through the rest of the vape. The caramel is briefly joined by a hint of fruitiness (couldn't quite place the exact fruit) before you're hit with a medium-light tobacco impact that grows to match the caramel. The finish realizes the hazelnut that you can smell in the juice out of the bottle, but the hazelnut is subdued and adds fullness to a crisp peppery conclusion. Overall, the flavors are nicely balanced, but they stand out just a bit too much due to less-than-graceful transitions. This is usually the sort of thing that will improve with steeping. If you like this review, I'll report back in a couple of weeks.
6.8 watts (3.2 volts): Similar to 6 watts. The pepper flavor enters sooner, interfering somewhat with the caramel, which is also dialed up a bit. The combined flavors pretty much obliterate the tobacco impact and I couldn't sense the hint of fruitiness I found at 6 watts.
7.2 watts (3.4 volts): Similar to 6.8 watts, but with no initial tobacco sugar impact and a stronger hazelnut in the finish. The caramel still gives the overall impression of a mild tobacco sweetness in spite of the absence of a tobacco impact throughout the vape.
8.1 watts (3.6 volts): At this wattage, the flavor takes a sharp turn. The initial impact is hazelnut, with a milder, less crisp pepper following close behind, all underpinned by a very mild tobacco impact mixed with light caramel that preserves the impression of an overall sweetness. Up through this wattage, I still find it to be a very pleasant vape.
8.6 watts (3.7 volts): This wattage introduces a cereal (raw grain) off flavor that is most intense in the finish. The hazelnut has morphed into burnt peanut shells, and the pepper has all but vanished. Still a hint of caramel, but once again, the tobacco impact seems to have disappeared. Very little differentiation of flavor over the lifespan of the vape, with all of the flavors crowding in all at once and overstaying their welcome by lingering throughout. Below average vape at this wattage.
Conclusion
As you can probably tell, I liked it best at the coolest vape. Though I normally like cooler vapes (6.5 to 8 watts), this is the first juice I've preferred at a wattage this low (6 watts), where it struck me as a very good vape. It was still very good up to 8.1 watts, but lost a good deal of sophistication in the process of traveling up the wattage scale -- think cabernet vs rum punch.
I like the Vermillion River Kentucky Premium juice much better than any other tobacco flavor I've tried -- this may be a function of the fact that I don't have enough experience with good tobacco juices, but I like it better than Gandalf, Shadowfax, Dragon's Breath, which do not suite my taste at all because I find them to have a cloying candied sweetness. I also preferred it to any of the stock Chinese tobacco flavors I've had, or the Canadian juice I've purchased from my local B&M store, which I enjoy due to their easy simplicity in spite of their overall lack of tobacco flavor.
I'll be ordering more, as I find that I like the taste, and it strikes the balance I'm looking for between flavor and mellowness for long stints of vaping a single flavor.
Score: 9.5/10
Just received my order of Vermillion River Kentucky Premium Blend, the Kentucky Vanilla Blend, and the Poker Blend.
I opened up the Kentucky Premium to try it straight out of the box. What follows is my review of the Vermillion River Kentucky Premium Blend as I found it to taste when vaped fresh out of the bottle, without steeping. (This is my first review, so I'd appreciate feedback, negative or otherwise)
Packaging
First of all, Vermillion River juices come in smoke-colored glass bottles with glass drippers. Nice touch. Nice looking label, too. The overall initial impression is one of quality. (I wonder, however, how much breakage they experience sending these things via 1st Class US Mail.) I'll be saving these bottles and drippers to re-use so I don't have to deal with plastic dripper bottles, which feel cheap to me and detract from the overall impression I get from handling the juice.
The bottles bear an attractive, nickel-colored label that wraps about 3/4 around the bottle, which will allow you to easily see the juice level as it descends below the top of the label. It lists the ingredients, the size, the nicotine level, and bears a small circular sticker indicating the flavor. While it indicates that the bottle contains “Premium E-Juice,” it does not indicate the PG/VG blend, nor could I find that information on the Vermillion River Website. The label does not indicate the date that the juice was mixed.
Tasting parameters
I ordered the 30ml bottle (1 fl. oz.) with 20mg of nicotine per ml. From what I can tell vaping the juice, it seems likely to be 80/20 or 70/30. I tested it using a fresh Smok 1.5 ohm XL dual coil cartomizer atop my eGo-V VV battery.
The juice is 0 days old (calculated from the receipt of the bottle, delivered via 1st Class USPS mail), and it had never had the cap removed.
This is a tobacco flavor. Vermillion River offers a brief description of the composition of this flavor on their website: "Kentucky Premium Blend has a very smooth classic tobacco taste combined with very subtle caramel and nutty undertones. Sure to be a top shelf must have you will want to enjoy all day everyday."
Overall impressions
In the bottle, the Vermillion River Kentucky Premium Blend simply smells like caramel and hazelnut. I tried vaping it at a variety of voltages. No matter what the voltage, it had a very smooth, velvety mouth feel. Mild throat hit, but very good lung hit -- similar to the resistance you feel pulling the smoke from a strong cigarette into your lungs.
This put out a good deal of vapor at every wattage, and my wife (who neither smokes nor vapes) said that the vapor smelled very good.
Evaluations of flavor at specific power settings
6 watts (3 volts): Initial hit is sugary -- not candied sugary, but tobacco-sweet that's characteristic of easy, warm pipe tobacco. This is followed by a mild caramel with maple overtones that lingers through the rest of the vape. The caramel is briefly joined by a hint of fruitiness (couldn't quite place the exact fruit) before you're hit with a medium-light tobacco impact that grows to match the caramel. The finish realizes the hazelnut that you can smell in the juice out of the bottle, but the hazelnut is subdued and adds fullness to a crisp peppery conclusion. Overall, the flavors are nicely balanced, but they stand out just a bit too much due to less-than-graceful transitions. This is usually the sort of thing that will improve with steeping. If you like this review, I'll report back in a couple of weeks.
6.8 watts (3.2 volts): Similar to 6 watts. The pepper flavor enters sooner, interfering somewhat with the caramel, which is also dialed up a bit. The combined flavors pretty much obliterate the tobacco impact and I couldn't sense the hint of fruitiness I found at 6 watts.
7.2 watts (3.4 volts): Similar to 6.8 watts, but with no initial tobacco sugar impact and a stronger hazelnut in the finish. The caramel still gives the overall impression of a mild tobacco sweetness in spite of the absence of a tobacco impact throughout the vape.
8.1 watts (3.6 volts): At this wattage, the flavor takes a sharp turn. The initial impact is hazelnut, with a milder, less crisp pepper following close behind, all underpinned by a very mild tobacco impact mixed with light caramel that preserves the impression of an overall sweetness. Up through this wattage, I still find it to be a very pleasant vape.
8.6 watts (3.7 volts): This wattage introduces a cereal (raw grain) off flavor that is most intense in the finish. The hazelnut has morphed into burnt peanut shells, and the pepper has all but vanished. Still a hint of caramel, but once again, the tobacco impact seems to have disappeared. Very little differentiation of flavor over the lifespan of the vape, with all of the flavors crowding in all at once and overstaying their welcome by lingering throughout. Below average vape at this wattage.
Conclusion
As you can probably tell, I liked it best at the coolest vape. Though I normally like cooler vapes (6.5 to 8 watts), this is the first juice I've preferred at a wattage this low (6 watts), where it struck me as a very good vape. It was still very good up to 8.1 watts, but lost a good deal of sophistication in the process of traveling up the wattage scale -- think cabernet vs rum punch.
I like the Vermillion River Kentucky Premium juice much better than any other tobacco flavor I've tried -- this may be a function of the fact that I don't have enough experience with good tobacco juices, but I like it better than Gandalf, Shadowfax, Dragon's Breath, which do not suite my taste at all because I find them to have a cloying candied sweetness. I also preferred it to any of the stock Chinese tobacco flavors I've had, or the Canadian juice I've purchased from my local B&M store, which I enjoy due to their easy simplicity in spite of their overall lack of tobacco flavor.
I'll be ordering more, as I find that I like the taste, and it strikes the balance I'm looking for between flavor and mellowness for long stints of vaping a single flavor.
Score: 9.5/10
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