Sup,
After DIYing for several months I have noticed that the lower ohms (.3-.25) really kill the flavor of my TFA Peanut Butter and TFA New York Cheesecake mix (total 15% flavor). Is this due to the flavor reaction, type of coil, surface area, heat?
I have yet to see a thread like this. My intent is to see if anyone has noticed a preferred flavor %:ohm. Do you like fruits at low ohms and custards at high ohms, or visa versa?
When you vape at lower ohms, you are typically cranking up the wattage and emitting more vapor.
You learn pretty quickly when you DIY when you over flavor to a certain point, the flavor just becomes muted. So if you are already over flavoring a bit, a low ohm/high wattage rda is going to exaggerate it and exacerbate the issue.
I usually don't have any issues whether I'm vaping at 30W or 75W, at least nothing incredibly pronounced to the extent I feel inclined to reformulate. The only changes I'll make will be VG/PG ratios.
The other issue is to consider is temperatures you reach, and the speed at which you reach those temperatures. If you are hitting drastically high temperatures really quickly, you aren't going to have a lot of depth in the flavor. Likewise if you don't get reach high enough temperatures.
That, and flavor % ohm is hard to quantify because all flavors are different. If you think more so about the relative strength on tank and then intensify it a bit, it will help you speculate how it will perform on an rda.
Try to dropping the overall percentage by 10%/25%/50% see where you are the happiest.
Also to note, chocolate and coffee flavors are terrible at high wattages/temps. Not only that, they actually taste best at low watts (30 and below in my opinion). Same for tobaccos; preferred at 35 to 40 for myself.
I have been slowly dropping my percentages with my TFA flavors. As I am also somewhat new to the vape game, I noticed I like the heat and vapor production of .3-.25 ohm coils @ 55w-70w. Unfortunately, TFA Peanut Butter, IMO, has such a faint taste when you mix it. With .5-.3 ohm @ 50w-65w you can taste every bit of TFA PB, but under that it all just fades away. Now my other exotic fruit mixes are strong no matter the wattage or omhs.
Your comment on the speed in which it heats leads me to believe that creamy flavors would taste really well with tempurature control, opposed to kanthal.
You should check out Flavorah's Peanut Butter, its second to none. It isn't particularly creamy though, so if you want to bring that out mixing it with custard/creams is a good idea. It works really well anywhere from 0.25%-1%.
Ohms aren't really a useful metric outside battery safety and power calculations. You can build a low ohm coil with a very small number of wraps of a very thin wire or a larger number of wraps of a very thick wire, the resulting coils will perform very differently.
/u/joesphaa nailed it. Ramp up time and temperature achieved will affect how well a flavour works in any given set up. Dessert flavours tend to need higher temperatures to bring out the flavour but thinner wire with a fast ramp up time can make them taste harsh, thicker wires with a slower ramp up are smoother.
High power regulated mods make the problem of building a coil to suit your requirements a lot simpler than with mechs. You're free(er) to build a coil of the right size and wire thickness without also having to hit a resistance target to get the power you want. If you're using a fixed voltage then designing a coil that is fit for purpose is a lot more complicated.
Twisted and parallel wires are essentially just a means of creating the wire you want (in terms of resistance, wick coverage and surface area to volume ratio) from the wires that physically exist. Coils that use dissimilar wires in combination are also taking advantage of the fact that the different wires will run at different temps and so can bring out flavour notes in more complex juices (assuming that the flavour notes at different temperatures are all welcome, some juices just work best at one temperature, others change markedly but taste good across the range of temperatures).
tl;dr it's complicated and thinking about ohms won't help you
Wow, what an explanation! You and /u/joesphaa really have closed the thread. It's interesting to hear the dessert flavors use higher temps to give it the harshness of baking. Therefore, temp and ramp up time is what gives me the different flavor notes when it comes to fulfilling or diminishing the flavor of a juice, complex or not.
A question that goes along with your mech/VV mod distinction. I've heard mech mods give you a good array of the flavor profile at different temperatures. I assume that's from the direct connection to the battery and the batteries voltage dropping. My question is: Does a mech mod give a good idea for what temp a juice of mine tastes best? (e.g. At half battery life, peanut butter tastes fantastic, but at full blasts it mutes flavor. [not real scenario, guessing])
tl;dr thanks, temp and ramp up time is what I should be concerned about for flavor.
I don't think it's a direct thing like reproducing baking temperatures. Fruit flavours do tend to taste best at lower temps but I think the association with cooking vs raw is coincidence. It's just that different chemicals evaporate at different temperatures (ditto for VG vs PG) so getting the perfect balance between flavours in the mix depends on the temperature.
I think this is also why some atties work best with different sorts of flavours. I noticed this big time with the eBaron dripper vs a rebuilt Mini Protank 2. The eBaron is magnificent for fruits but hopeless with desserts, the MPT2 is the opposite. I think it is to do with the bigger surface area of cold metal for the vapour in the eBaron to pass over - the chemicals which need higher temperatures will condense first on the way to your gob and so the eBaron does a good job of getting rid of whatever elements spoil the fruit flavours and make the desserts taste great. (This is just my way of explaining it to myself, I know of no proper science testing this or any other theory.)
Mechs do naturally give you a range of power as the battery voltage drops off but I'd say that was useful for noticing that it matters more than anything fundamentally good about mechs. It's not really day to day useful when you have no control over it. You can test a much greater range of power as and when you feel like it just by playing with the VV/VW settings.
I do think that not experimenting with the power (or not being able to) is very likely the reason behind a lot of people hating some juice flavours. Tastebuds can be fussy and some juices just don't suit some people, but I'm pretty sure that a lot of the time they're just not trying it in a suitable set up and that very often it's the power/temperature that is the problem. Capella's Dutch Chocolate Mint is a good example of this, it's like an oral thermometer for your coil - vinegar at low temps, then minty and then the chocolate comes through at higher temps. On a mech that is just intensely irritating, of course.
FWIW I think this is likely the reason why drippers are so often paired with mechs. In tanks the juice flow is somewhat active, in that your draw pulls juice into the chamber and often directly into the wick. With drippers the juice flow is passive, it'll just get drawn into the wick as it dries out from the heat. So drippers compensate better for the changing power of a mech because the amount of juice arriving at the coil depends largely on how fast the coil is evaporating juice. With tanks you are (to some extent) forcing more juice into the wick regardless of how fast the coil is evaporating it so they are more sensitive to the reduction in power as the battery drains. (More broscience, I can't back this up, just an explanation that makes sense to me.)
your asking the wrong question. consider other factors - thinking about ohms is a bit of a noob trap, obviously dont build super low or high (0.2 to 1.5 for example would be a good range) but apart from that, you shouldnt really be thinking about ohms - think about surface area, thats more important.
what i want to know about is temp control & flavour - along with the optimal coil position...
This is what my thought process was headed towards, but my noob understanding of vaping so far lead me to describe it as ohms. I build low ohms which create higher temp at 50-70w. Coil position should be all about whether you want mass airflow or more dense flavor.