When you look at the trends in vape flavors today – both among vape juice brands and in disposable vapes – one thing immediately becomes clear: People love sweet vapes. Vape juice makers are happy to oblige, giving sweet-toothed vapers a wider array of options than ever. How are those flavor profiles achieved, though – do sweet vapes have sugar?
The answer to that question is "no."
No mainstream mass-produced e-liquid contains sugar, which is one reason why vapes essentially have no calories. Instead, the sweetness is achieved through the addition of alternative sweeteners such as sucralose.
What’s the point of sweet vapes, and what other sweeteners are used to make them taste the way they do? Is there any reason not to buy sweet vapes? In this guide, we’ll explain everything you need to know.
What Ingredients Are Used to Make Vape Juice Sweet?
The ingredients of vape juice are typically fairly simple. Under the “natural and artificial flavors” heading, though, there can be quite a few individual flavoring ingredients – that’s how e-liquid makers create such complex and varied flavor profiles. Some sweeteners may be under that heading, but one of them – sucralose – is often shown separately on the ingredient list because it isn’t technically a flavor.
These are the three ingredients that are typically used to sweeten vapes.
- Sucralose: Sucralose is the most common sweetener used in vape juice by far. Sold in stores under the brand name Splenda, sucralose tastes virtually the same as standard sugar but is dramatically sweeter – so a small amount can sweeten an entire bottle of e-liquid. The benefit of sucralose is that it tastes neutral like sugar, so it’s very versatile and can add sweetness to any flavor profile.
- Ethyl Maltol: Ethyl maltol is the flavor of cotton candy. Although it’s typically used as a flavoring agent in foods and not as a sweetener, it works well as an alternative sweetener for e-liquid because it has a vaguely sweet flavor that works well with candy flavor profiles. It doesn’t work quite as well as sucralose as an all-purpose sweetener, but it also doesn’t contribute to coil gunk. We’ll discuss that at greater length shortly.
- Vegetable Glycerin: Did you know that glycerin is actually added to many shelf-stable foods as a low-glycemic sweetener? VG has a slightly sweet flavor, and an e-liquid that’s high in VG will taste a little sweeter than a low-VG e-liquid with the same flavor profile.
Why Are Sweeteners Added to Vapes?
So, why do sweet vapes exist? The short answer is that they exist because they taste good. Although tobacco vape juices definitely have their fans, most people who vape choose sweeter flavor profiles. Some people use sweet vapes just because they’re enjoyable. Others use them because they don’t want to use flavors that remind them of smoking.
Although most early vape juices had tobacco or menthol flavors, sweet flavor profiles have actually existed since the beginning of vaping. Early sweet vape juice flavors included things like cherry, vanilla and coffee. Before companies began adding alternative sweeteners like sucralose to their products, though, sweet flavor profiles fell a bit flat because they didn’t quite taste like the things they were supposed to represent.
It’s a bit like the difference between drinking a can of flavored but unsweetened carbonated water and drinking a can of traditional sweetened soda. You can definitely taste the flavor in the unsweetened carbonated water, but it doesn’t really hit your palate in the same way that regular soda does. Once the sweet receptors in your mouth are activated, the flavor profile tastes completely different.
Vape juice is the same – without added sweeteners, many flavor profiles like fruits, candies and desserts just don’t quite taste the way they’re supposed to taste. That might not be a problem for everyone. You might prefer more neutral flavor profiles, and unsweetened e-liquids have other benefits as well. If you want to use a candy-flavored e-liquid that actually tastes like candy, though, it’ll have to include a sweetener. Without a sweetener, it just won’t be the same.
How Can You Tell if You’re Using a Sweetened Vape?
It’s usually fairly easy to tell if a vape is sweetened with sucralose because it’ll taste basically the same as if it had been sweetened with actual sugar. You’ll also notice a sugary coating on the inside of your mouth and lips after using the e-liquid, almost as if you’ve been eating candy or drinking soda.
If you’re using bottled vape juice that has an ingredient list on the label or outer box, you can also usually tell if it contains sucralose by looking at the ingredients. Since sucralose doesn’t fall under the definition of natural or artificial flavors, the ingredient list should include it if it’s there. Disposable vapes typically don’t have ingredient lists, unfortunately, so you’ll have to go by taste in that case.
Identifying an e-liquid sweetened with ethyl maltol isn’t always quite so easy. If a large amount of ethyl maltol is used in vape juice, it’ll obviously taste like cotton candy. In many cases, though, e-liquid makers only use a small amount to round out the vape juice’s overall flavor profile. Because ethyl maltol is a flavoring ingredient and not a sweetener, it generally won’t be identified on an e-liquid’s ingredient list.
Do Sweet Vapes Have any Drawbacks?
While ethyl maltol doesn’t do anything that affects the vaping experience in a negative way, sucralose does have a drawback that you need to be aware of – especially if you use a refillable vape. The drawback is coil gunk, which causes a vape to taste burnt. If you’ve ever removed a coil from a pod or vape tank and noticed that the inside of the coil had turned dark brown or black, you’ve seen coil gunk.
Although almost all of the ingredients in e-liquid can leave residue on a coil to a certain extent, most of those ingredients take weeks or potentially even months to affect the coil’s flavor in a noticeable way. Sucralose, on the other hand, causes residue to form much more quickly because it caramelizes much like sugar when it’s heated. Here’s a video showing what happens when a hot metal ball is placed in a bowl of sucralose. As you can see, the sucralose quickly caramelizes and begins to burn. The same thing happens in your vape when you use sweetened e-liquid – it just happens more slowly.
How long does it take for sucralose to ruin a vape coil’s flavor? That depends on how sweet your e-liquid is and how much vape juice you use per day. If you’re using a powerful vape mod and tank, you’re going through a lot of e-liquid every day and may actually detect a change in your vape’s flavor within just a day or two of replacing the coil. That can make vaping very expensive, which is one reason why some people choose unsweetened e-liquids instead.
It’s also a reason why many people still build their own coils even though modern vape tanks are better than rebuildable atomizers in many ways – because it’s a lot cheaper than buying pre-made coils.
Does Coil Gunk Affect Sweet Disposable Vapes?
These days, vape mods aren’t the most popular types of vapes anymore – disposable vapes are. They’re popular because they’re convenient and easy to use, but that’s only part of the story. Many people who previously used refillable vapes have switched to disposables because they liked sweet flavors but were tired of the need for constant coil replacements. By the time a disposable vape might start to taste burnt, it would be empty anyway.
At least, that was the case before today’s high-capacity vapes began to hit the market. These days, it’s possible to find vapes that contain enough e-liquid for several days or even weeks of full-time vaping. You can actually find people today reporting that their disposable vapes taste burnt, which is a complaint you never would have seen a couple of years ago when disposables only lasted a couple of days.
The fact that disposable vapes are now potentially susceptible to coil gunk is one reason why dual-coil vapes like the Geek Bar Pulse were developed. Although the big new feature of this device is Pulse Mode – which uses both coils simultaneously for double the vapor production – the standard single-coil mode is actually just as important because it can have a tremendous impact on flavor quality.
When you use the Geek Bar Pulse in the standard single-coil mode – or any other disposable vape that has a dual-coil design and works in the same way – the device uses only one coil at a time but switches between them each time you puff on the device. Since each coil is only in use half of the time, the coils effectively take twice as long to develop coil gunk compared to a standard disposable vape or vape tank with just one coil. Most of the people who love sweet vapes should find that they can use the new dual-coil disposable vapes from start to finish without worrying about any changes in flavor.