Nothing is more fundamental to learning how to vape than getting your inhaling technique down. When you inhale correctly, you’ll enjoy the richest flavor and the largest vapor clouds that your vaping hardware can produce. If you don’t inhale correctly, you may flood your device’s atomizer coil. You may even prevent e-liquid from feeding through to the coil properly, and if that happens, you’ll experience harsh “dry hits.” Either way, your experience will be so unpleasant that you might end up wondering if you actually enjoy vaping at all.
So, how do you vape? It all comes down to inhaling properly. In this article, we’ll explain precisely how to do it.
Air Pressure Is the Key to Learning How to Vape
Because a vaping device contains liquid, you need to inhale very gently when you vape. Otherwise, you could cause your device to gurgle or leak.
The most important thing you can learn from this article is that, when you puff on a vaping device, you need to use much less air pressure than you would use when smoking a cigarette. As a smoker, you know that if you use more air pressure when puffing on a cigarette, you’ll increase the rate at which the cigarette burns. If your cigarette burns down more quickly, you’ll get more smoke and may experience more of a nicotine rush.
Vaping devices, however, do not work that way.
If you want to get bigger clouds when vaping, putting more air pressure behind your puffs won’t accomplish that because air pressure has nothing to do with the vapor production of your vaping hardware. These are the three factors that have the greatest impact on vapor production.
- The operational power of your vaping device
- The surface area of your atomizer coil
- The airflow characteristics of your tank
When you vape, a partial vacuum forms in your tank or pod. The vacuum helps to prevent the e-liquid from leaking out, and it also pushes the e-liquid toward the wick wrapped around the tank’s atomizer coil. If you use too much air pressure when vaping, you’ll force excess e-liquid into the coil assembly. Your vaping device will begin to gurgle, and e-liquid may even leak from the tank.
The most important aspect of learning how to vape properly is recognizing that puffing with gentle, consistent air pressure is the way to enjoy the biggest and tastiest vapor clouds. That’s true whether you use the mouth-to-lung or direct-to-lung inhaling style.
Wait – did we just say that there are two different inhaling styles for vaping? We sure did – and now, you’re well on your way to learning how to vape. Let’s discuss the two inhaling styles next.
What Are Mouth-to-Lung and Direct-to-Lung Inhaling?
You can inhale from a vape in the same way that you’d smoke a cigarette, or you can inhale the vapor directly into your lungs. The size of the vape’s mouthpiece and air intake usually dictate which inhaling style you’ll use.
There are two different inhaling styles that you can use when vaping, and as we’ll shortly explain, the inhaling style that you should use will generally depend on the vaping hardware that you own.
- Mouth-to-lung inhaling means that you draw the vapor into your mouth before inhaling. This is the inhaling style that you use when smoking a cigarette.
- Direct-to-lung inhaling means that you inhale the vapor directly into your lungs.
Mouth-to-lung inhaling requires a fair amount of airflow resistance. If you try to use the mouth-to-lung inhaling style with a vaping device that has little airflow resistance, you’ll inhale mostly air.
How can you tell the proper inhaling style for your vaping device? It’s easy – just look at the tank. If the tank has a mouthpiece that’s around the same width as a cigarette filter, it’s designed for mouth-to-lung inhaling. If the mouthpiece is wider than a cigarette filter, it’s designed for direct-to-lung inhaling.
How to Vape With a Mouth-to-Lung Vaping Device
If you want to get bigger clouds with a mouth-to-lung vape, try taking a few short puffs to preheat the coil before taking a longer, deeper puff.
Let’s suppose that you have a vaping device designed for mouth-to-lung inhaling, as is the case with most devices aimed at beginning vapers. These three tips will help you get the biggest and tastiest clouds with a mouth-to-lung device.
- Use the primer puff technique. Take a short puff to get your device’s atomizer coil warmed up, and then take a second, longer puff.
- If your device has an adjustable airflow collar, try closing the airflow slightly. You’ll find that your device produces warmer vapor with a bolder, more focused flavor.
- Use a higher-nicotine e-liquid if you don’t feel completely satisfied. Nicotine salt e-liquid is usually ideal for mouth-to-lung vaping systems.
How to Vape With a Direct-to-Lung Vaping Device
To get the biggest clouds with a direct-to-lung vape, try pressing the fire button to start the vapor production before you begin inhaling.
When you upgrade to a vaping device designed for the direct-to-lung inhaling style, your new device will use a manual button for activation rather than an automatic puff sensor. Your device also won’t have the airflow resistance of your old direct-to-lung device. You’ll still need to use gentle air pressure when vaping, but you’ll be able to inhale much more deeply for bigger clouds. These five tips will help you get the biggest and tastiest clouds with a direct-to-lung device.
- Press your vaping device’s fire button to start the vapor production before you begin inhaling.
- Adjust your device’s wattage, using the recommended wattage range etched into the side of your tank’s atomizer coil as a guideline. Running your device at a higher wattage increases vapor production – but only to a point. If the vapor starts to become uncomfortably warm, you’re at risk of burning the coil’s cotton wick – which will ruin the coil.
- Try a tank with a mesh coil. Mesh coils have low mass and high surface area, so they produce large vapor clouds while having very reasonable power requirements. A mesh coil often works great with a single-battery vape pen.
- Switch to a high-VG e-liquid. Vegetable glycerin is thick and produces very large vapor clouds compared to propylene glycol.
- Use a low-nicotine e-liquid. The greater your device’s vapor production is, the lower the nicotine strength of your e-liquid should be. With today’s powerful direct-to-lung vaping devices, the most popular e-liquid nicotine strength is 3 mg. With higher nicotine strengths, you’re likely to experience irritation that’ll make vaping unpleasant for you.
How to Vape When Your Atomizer Coil Is Flooded
If your vape begins to leak or gurgle, you’re probably puffing too firmly. You can often remove the excess e-liquid by running a paper towel or cotton swab down your device’s mouthpiece.
Reading this article, you’ve learned how to vape properly regardless of the type of device that you’re using. As we mentioned above, what’s most important is that you always inhale with gentle, consistent air pressure. If you inhale too firmly, you’ll flood your device’s atomizer coil with excess e-liquid.
What should you do, though, if that has already happened? Here’s how you can tell if your atomizer is flooded.
- You hear a gurgling sound when you vape.
- Your device pops loudly and spits hot vape juice into your mouth.
- If the flooding is severe enough, e-liquid may leak from your tank’s airflow vents.
If you’re experiencing any of those problems, Try fixing your flooded atomizer with these tips.
- You can continue vaping until you’ve cleared the excess e-liquid from your tank. If you keep inhaling with gentle air pressure, the problem will eventually resolve itself.
- If you’re using a vaping device with a sub-ohm tank, you can run a cotton swab down the tank’s mouthpiece to soak up the excess juice.
- As a last resort, you can disassemble, rinse and dry the tank. Put the tank back together very carefully to avoid crossing the threads and causing further flooding or leaking.
- If you’re using a pod system, you can remove the vape pod from your device and blow the excess e-liquid out. Hold a paper towel over the bottom of the pod and blow gently through the pod until the gurgling stops.
How to Know When It’s Time to Switch to a Direct-to-Lung Vaping Device
If you’re vaping more for the flavor and clouds than you are for the nicotine and throat hit, you might be ready to step up to a larger vape that’s designed for the direct-to-lung inhaling style.
If you use a small vaping device such as a pod system, the concept of direct-to-lung inhaling might be new to you. You switched to vaping because you wanted to stop smoking. You chose a vaping device that replicates smoking as closely as possible. Why, you’re probably wondering, would anyone want to vape in a way that isn’t like smoking?
In your quest to learn how to vape in the way that satisfies you most, you may eventually decide that there are things about your vaping experience that you’d like to change. You might decide, for instance, that you enjoy blowing huge clouds and that you’d like to use a device with better vapor production. You may also decide that you would enjoy a lower-nicotine vaping experience prioritizing bold flavors over a strong throat hit.
Those are the things that you’ll enjoy with a direct-to-lung vaping device, and that’s why many people who vape end up upgrading to larger vaping devices after they gain experience.
Try These Beginner-Friendly Vapes
If you're new to vaping, you need a device that has super-smooth airflow to provide for easy inhaling. Here are two of our favorite beginner-friendly vapes.
- Dennis Rodman x Aloha Sun Disposable Vape: One of the hottest new disposables to hit the market this year, this device was created in partnership with basketball great Dennis Rodman and lasts up to 9,100 puffs.
- Puff Hotbox Disposable Vape: The Puff Hotbox lasts up to 7,500 puffs and was one of the first high-capacity rechargeable disposable vapes ever created. Contains 16 ml of vape juice and uses a USB-C port for rapid charging.