Howdy Mixers,
Some simple ways you can contribute to the sub:
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Respond to a post and even, just maybe, win a prize! (see the first paragraph here
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Tell us What you are vaping on?
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Share your recipe in the Monthly Recipe Thread
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Upvote content you want to see more of or useful comments
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Introduction
Smoking and vaping tobacco share similarities and differences. It is often said that vaped tobaccos flavors or aromas are more like the aroma of the unlit tobacco, akin to walking into a tobacco shop and inhaling the smell. And what a wonderful smell it is! I used to love when I was in Midtown Manhattan and passed by the Nat Sherman shop on 42nd St. If you have never been, don’t go. Not as a vaper, don’t do it. It glorious. Go to the Porto Rico Importing Co. stores and buy some fine coffees instead. If simply because the smell is like a blanket of warm, moist earthy rich goodness. Not that cheap dry chemically dirt raisin flavor of a pack of Pall Mall 100’s Unfiltered. This is an oasis for smokers like me, one of many. Yet, not anymore…
Switching to vaping, like many, I thought to avoid tobacco flavors to move as far from the drug that ruined-my-life. Despite that, my first mix ever was a House Mix cigar flavor that was gross and way over nicced but it took. I bought the device and the mix for an overnight trip where I was uninterested in either smelling like smoke constantly (and being found out) or wearing a patch and having those crazy nicotine patch dreams. When I returned, I pulled out of the glove box my packet of Nat Sherman Hint of Mints (I always had money for smokes), lit up, and gagged. Holy Smokes! All I could taste was ash and burning. And I had the damndest time inhaling it since all I could feel was pain and a tightening of the throat.
Decided to look online for e-juice descriptions. “Google, what is the BEST e-juice flavor?” That search came up with a few results that seemed sketchy but one stood out: Black Note. Black Note is a NET (Naturally Extracted Tobacco) that is quite good and comes with a steep and hefty cost. But, hey, what did I know and, if this new way of life were to take hold, let me buy the best and see if it can’t work for me. So I tried a small bottle of Legato. Notorious coil murder aside, my precious Baby Beast tank delivered the smoothest flavor compared to that OG Cigar bottle (which I still have from april 2017 in my drawer, black as night). Yeah, well, that led me to vape shops which would let you try stuff and, despite all the sugary fruits and strawberries and cream/custard ubiquity, there I was with a handful of pre-mixed juices that kept me off the stinkies solid since.
It was the stranglehold of not being able to reduce nicotine consumption efficiently (0mg/3mg/6mg/wha?) that led me to researching how to make my own ejuice that led me here looking for answers. In late 2017, the FLV Tobaccos were gaining in well deserved popularity for their complex flavors and you can see some early pre/post release reviews show how mixers were trying to figure out the flavors and how they mixed with the INW and FA tobaccos that were more widely available at the time:
Etc. The point is, I tried many a tobacco flavor that was available readily shopping off the names (mostly FA -- still scarred) and was like nahhhhh this isn’t for me. But look how far we have come from My First Tobacco Order from 4 years ago to u/ChemicalBurnVictim’s wonderful post Getting in to Tobaccos and even more specifically, Battle of the Baccos: Turkish v. Oriental.
And with all that said, and nearly vaping tobacco flavors semi-exclusively for the last 3 years, I STILL struggle to explain what in the hell they taste like. I guess a strawberry can be realistic, juicy, authentic, jammy, or whatever. But how in god’s name do you explain a bacco? Mostly, if you vape a lot of them, you notice the accents and that can drive your pairings later on. Cedar note here, coffee note there, woodsy and leafy but what kind? Is it a brown crinkly leaf? This is madness.
So how are tobaccos described by smokers? And, how much of that relates to vaping, which can be significantly different?
That’s a great question. I’m not sure how deep commercial cigarette smokers go into describing their tobaccos but RYO (Roll Your Own) smokers may be more familiar with terminology relating to the source of the tobacco. Cigar and pipe smokers are going to be where our greatest body of information is at the internet search fingertips and a very quick search came up with some interesting results that may apply. Unfortunately, linking to these articles is against Reddit terms of use and I am remarkably lazy at using work arounds so I will keep this somewhat condensed. My hope is that the tobacco flavor community will chime in here and provide opinions at how to guide the ongoing discourse around codifying tobacco flavors to provide more consistent information for casual vapers looking to dip their toes into the flavors when they are ready. Most of this will apply as much to single flavor concentrates as to blends and mixes fairly easily.
Let’s start with an adaptation of some stuff I cobbled together from a 10 minute search online:
- Flavor
- Body
- Balance
- Strength
- Aroma or Room Note
- Finish
Flavor
We can say “Duh” all day long but, after having been heckled (and rightfully so) by u/mLnikon on Noted for saying “Leafy” as a descriptor for a ‘good’ bacco and “Leafy” again as a bad thing. I realized I lacked the appropriate vocabulary to describe what I was tasting. And, metaphors can only take you so far despite the joy of saying “Grandma’s bathwater” repeatedly. I’ve found a few charts that really help with identifying categories for describing categories and specific notes within those categories here:
The chart and the table should be self explanatory. Add some of your favorite tobacco vocabulary in the comments (or just the funniest descriptions you’ve heard)!
Body
Here’s one that we can probably all relate to with vaping. How do these flavors actually impact your palate? Texture, richness, weight and overall mouthfeel are all important components. For tobaccos, from a source that links to tobacco products: “in conjunction with body is texture. Words used to characterize texture include leathery, meaty, silky, creamy, soft, succulent, woody, chalky, dry, oily, and spicy.” TPA Western is leathery (actual leather lol), INW Vanilla for Pipe is woody, FLV Arabian is spicy, etc.
Balance
This one, in my humble opinion is a bit trickier. A real cigar might touch on the taste receptors on the tongue: bitter, salty, sour, sweet, umami. We do know that some of these experiences are simply not in the cards for vape juice, most notably salty and sour. Maybe you can get impressions of them but it does seem to be a missing factor in flavor impressions. (Do you get a salty impression from FLV Beer Nuts? No, saline does not add a salty taste.) Bitter, I’m not as sure about (please chime in here, people) and sweet is a no brainer. Would umami be DAAP? I dunno, you tell me.
That said, balance for a tobacco flavor, in this mixer’s humble opinion would be more along the lines of “What accents/notes are needed to ‘complete’ this experience?” With this in mind, some tobacco flavors are very strong stand alone flavors and can carry a recipe all on their own while still having a function as an accent. Some are complex in flavor but seem to have one aspect a little more prominent than the others. All around, this comes most importantly into play in the mind and imagination of the mixer. Let’s say you have a flavor like FLV Red Burley that is very moist with a prominent nutty note and people say they also get a cocoa note as well. You may want to play to that cocoa to bring it out more or just use RB low in a mix to accent another bacco with that nutty note where a bit of moisture is also welcome.
Strength
This is going to be a less useful term as it relates to vaping as from smoking, but hear me out. Strength applies to the nicotine content of a given tobacco or blend. Since diy mixers directly control that nicotine strength level, how does this apply here. In a weird way, I personally find that some flavors behave differently at different wattages. A really interesting recipe that delves into this aspect can be found in u/matthewkocanda’s Amorphous. I am here to argue that some flavors/recipes do shine in different ways at different temps and vaping styles. I am by no means an expert on this but I do know that u/wh1skeyk1ing’s Gold tastes quite differently at low watts mtl over higher watts dtl (yes better and new gold ducat works quite nicely when you don’t know any better). So do make note here that strength does indeed have a kind of place in our lexicon.
Aroma or Room Note
This one may be the least important for you, yet more important for your loved ones. While you may not be Brad with your pack of donut lies, there can be some serious cat pissy room note vibes from some tobacco flavors. A traditional pipe tobacco room note can be extremely enticing, and occasionally in vape form we get that. To me this is a bonus, but the opportunity to create a vape with this in mind is there. Go wild.
Finish
An often overlooked aspect of flavors on my part, the finish is the lasting and lingering note after the flavor or mix is exhaled. This can range from lingering ashy notes to woody or spice notes. The way INW Bahraini Apple Gold leaves that lingering anise tingle on the tongue in u/tbx12’s Simple Apple Shisha Hookah is like heaven. Or like the way he blended it to cover it up in TB4 and end with a slight cocoa touch at the end.
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That's all for now. Check out Prior Tuesday Tutorial posts written by a host of people. Please feel free to comment on anything you like at all, but particularly if you have an idea for a future post, if you'd like to write one, or if you caught a mistake or misinformation in my post.
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keep mixin and keep sharin,
- i
Edit: wanted to add this post as part of the 'history' of discovery of tobacco vapes and you can even see a young pup doggo trying to make heads and tails of it all in there. Top 5 Tobacco Flavors from 3 years ago as FLV was gaining mucho traction.
Definitely a little off-topic, but I'm curious what the percentage of vapers who like tobacco flavours are.
When I smoked ciggies I never particularly enjoyed the flavour of tobacco so I've been very happy getting my nicotine hit from completely different flavours these past few years.
I can definitely see how tobacco flavoured vapes would appeal to some people, I never tried one which was good though.
Great question. It's definitely a subset that I have seen growing in the last few years. Mostly because the FLV tobaccos are both very good and generally shake and vape. Prior to that, the TPA and FA tobaccos weren't exceptional and the INW tobacco flavors have always kind of required a prohibitively long steep (28 days to maturity). But you will see like 8 bazillion strawberries and cream recipes. People love them some SbnC.
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IME the tobacco flavors were complex enough to work as stand alones, far enough removed from the real thing to not trigger a smoking response (one reason also people tend to stay away from them at first as well), and have just enough variety to keep it interesting. Obviously not everyone will feel that way, but worth giving it a try. The lack of recipes by comparison to other profiles, makes it so that there are few simple mixes for people to 'test out' to see if they like them. It requires a little bit of 'buying in' that most folks who aren't deep end into the pool don't find worth the chance when they are already fairly happy with the flavors they have.
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edit: great point by mixman reminding me INW baccos have varying steep times, can be snv but start to 'mature' from 10-14 days. IME they start to shine around 14-21 and are done changing by 21-28 days depending on what you mix them with.
I've always wondered if there might be some correlation between people who smoked cigarettes as well as cigars/pipe and people who like tobacco flavors.
I personally preferred the taste of the pipe, but absolutely nothing could replace the instant nicotine fix from a cigarette.
Nothing could replace that fix. That stuff is powerful. And, I used to roll my own, with an itty bitty filter and roll halfsies. Just puff puff and go. Cigars were just too much of a commitment and nothing tasted right for like a week after and pipes required equipment. My shitty $2 corn cob just wasnt cutting it.
Naturally extracted tobacco flavours are where its at. I couldn't vape it every day, but some mornings with a nice coffee you just can't beat it. I find it very difficult to find other flavours that match with coffee as I hate most desserts.
NETs are so damn good. Gunking aside, they can just be smooth and satisfying as all. If you want something to match your coffee, and feel like dropping a few $$$, check out Flavor Monks Coffee Tobacco. Initial test was very very good. I still can't find any conclusive evidence saying if they are NETs or not, but they don't gunk like one, if they are.
See I started vaping like 8 months ago. Picked up a JUUL just to get something asap and stop smoking. Liked the virginia tobacco, did not like the price or vapor production. Bought a couple pod devices and a whole bunch of different flavors.
Every single flavor I tried was overly sweet and disgusting to me. I also found that if I found a flavor that was palatable, I didnt necessarily want to vape it all the time. Like certain flavor combos just dont go well with certain things, like after a specific meal or with a certain drink for instance. Or even after brushing your teeth or chewing gum.
But then I found a tobacco flavor randomly just by trying highly reviewed products. Its VGOD's Dry Tobacco. Loved it immediately, goes with everything, reminds me of Virginia tobacco from JUUL but 10x better.
I know a lot of smokers who dont like the idea of fruity or sweet vapes that taste like something random, but like the idea of something reminiscent of tobacco so that they dont crave a cigarette. Its partly this for me, and partly that a cig used to pair well with many other flavors. Especially things like coffee, after any meal, with beer, etc.
Problem is Ive tried other tobacco flavors and didnt like them. They are often super sweet dessert flavors with a hint of tobacco. So Ive had an impossible time recreating it DIY, and literally have found no other flavors I like. Its a struggle.
I'm in a similar position. I've always preferred more of savoury/spicy/umami flavors in food and don't have much of a sweet tooth. This is part of why I am drawn to tobaccos. I also smoked pipe tobacco, dokha, RYO, and cigars in my college days, so I know I enjoy the actual aroma and flavor of real tobacco and not just the strange amalgam that makes up commercial cigs.
There are indeed MANY sweet and dessert tobacco recipes out there. Even some of the straight tobacco recipes I've tried can be too sweet for my taste at times. I'm thinking of picking up Bitter Wizard to play with and maybe try and neutralize some sweetness from the VG/PG.
Has anyone used this at all?
thank you for a great post =]
flavor description (tobacco or other) is something I really struggle with, for the longest time I had only a handful of words to describe a tobacco flavor, I could only make out wood & spice notes and it took me months to recognize leather & coffee notes. the thing is I'm not sure whether I can't identify the flavor or can't taste it. on the one hand I have problems tasting many bakery and cream flavors (or any subtle flavor really) which makes me think it's the latter, on the other hand, I did manage to identify coffee and leather notes later on so maybe it comes with experience?
making out a flavor note to me is pretty much like trying to eavesdrop on the conversation of two people whispering in nightclub, if that makes any sense, then I listen to the notes of the good people of noted and I read flavor descriptions on recipes and it just blows my mind
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I could not at all associate a tobacco flavor with an actual tobacco products with the exception of one NET I've tried
I do enjoy tobacco flavors a lot, mostly in MTLs nowadays. maybe I should just spend more time with each flavor solo and take notes as I get more familiar with it, or at least to figure out whether it's a problem with tasting or perception
I friggin hear you on all of that. In some ways, I think my love for bacco vapes was born out of a lack of subtlety in tasting nuances. They're bold and complex, but yeah, I can't pick out all the flavor notes. Maybe it comes with time, but I still am not 'there' yet either. Part of the reason I do this is to push myself to be more descriptive and figure out how to put words into filling out those eavesdropped conversations between my tongue and my pleasure center in my brain. (Love that analogy btw). u/ID10-T once described his process around testing a flavor with his eyes closed and all this other voodoo. Man, if that's what I gotta do to get better at this, I'm out. "Is good" is sometimes good enough for me. :)
Nice write up, appreciate the charts too.
I do wonder about things like the assertion that Inawera baccos need a 28 day steep. Not that I disagree, just I wonder if because I have vaped them so much I have become accustomed to some of the less than appealing aspects off the shake. Or maybe I just like them dirty. ':)
There are very few Inawera baccos I've encountered so far that are terrible off the shake and 180 on me with a steep, but most just smooth out a bit, becoming a less bold version after a lengthy steep. I get why that might be desirable depending on the application.
Great point, and true as well. Baharaini Apple gold is definitely one I like off the shake as well as Black Cherry for Pipe. However I do feel like the flavor really starts to show at 14 days and then gets solid by 21, and is done 'growing' by 28. If you mix a fair number of them together, 21-28 is my guide. I think that 28 days 'rule' is more for consistency than for 'is good; It's just, if im saying this is a mix, it's mostly what it will taste like for a while starting at 21-28 days. There just happen to be a few that I think the relative joy of them isn't seen for a while, they just hint at it until they mature. Like just come across as ok until i put it aside for a bit and hit it like, wow i dont remember it being this good.
I don't really vape tobacco flavours as the steeping time I've seen on some of them scared me. Only tried TFA Ry4 and INW Gentelman, and those were decent after a week of steeping. Everyone knows Ry4 and there are many reviews of it. Haven't seen much about Gentelman, it's similar in that it has caramel flavor but the other main flavour for me was sunflower seeds.
A compound in sunflower seeds blocks an enzyme that causes blood vessels to constrict. As a result, it may help your blood vessels relax, lowering your blood pressure. The magnesium in sunflower seeds helps reduce blood pressure levels as well.
very cool. never heard of INW Gentleman before. you should consider doing a review of it using u/Odiedoodah's SFT notes generator to post in his sft Notes thread about it.
This reminds me of when I went down the rabbit hole with coffee brewing. In my very limited experience with good tobacco, (the actual plant, not vape flavors) I found that it was very similar in the way people used terminology, and how they described each. There's a few good coffee flavor to terminology charts that could be slightly modified to work for tobacco notes as well.
Great post, thanks for the read!
It took me about one year of DIYing until I got into tobaccos, and similar to many vapers, I haven't payed much attention to tobaccos while I was smoking.
My journey began with dessert tobaccos, it was an easy introduction as I am a sucker for dessert recipes. But this rabbit hole of tobaccos in ejuice caught me, hard. I immediately ordered ~30 tobacco flavorings from INW and FLV. And I am a bit ashamed to admit it, but I actually bought a real analog pipe, a pack of some aromatic pipe tobacco, few different nicaraguan cigars and an occassional different "roll you own" from smoker friends just to "introduce" myself to nuances in tobaccos beyond the chemical ash taste of cigarettes and to "appreciate" tobacco recipes a bit more. I haven't "finished" any of them though. In retrospective I am not sure whether it was a right decision or not, but I definitely appreciate good tobacco recipes now more than before (needless to say that I do not touch analog tobaccos anymore).
I can definitely recommend the following:
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A small note: I really enjoy dry burning coils that were gunked by INW tobaccos, the smell is so good as compared to FLV tobaccos that smell too chemical when "burned".
Lord knows, I resist the urge to try real tobacco "just to know what they taste like for real". I can always make an excuse to smoke again, knowing full well I'll hate it yet smoke it all anyway. God bless you for putting it down.
Out of the ones you listed, I have tried RYDark, Dune and Gold. I remembered not liking RYDark as much at the time and have to revisit it again, but Dune and Gold are both recipes I regularly remix, which is almost unheard of for me. Dune, last time I tried it was just a bit too sweet for me and I had said some ideas in a comment a while back of how I might mess with it next time, but I already forgot what I said. I think it was u/vApe_Escape who suggested adding a little Tobacco Absolute to Gold and I tried that last time. I think I added too much, but I will try that again. Kinda darkened it up a little in a nice way.
I wish there were more reviews left for these recipes, in general. Tobacco vapes don't get enough to compete with other recipes. It distinctly bothers me. I'd love to do another Intro to Tobaccos (Part 2) soon and collect some recipes for those of us who love them. Add anything to the list for me to try and I will!
RYdark really resembles a "sweeter" pipe-ish tobacco. It peaks at around the 2-3 weeks of steep but can really mellow with longer steeping times, try it with HS RY4 instead (or any less dessert-ie RY4 than RY4D), and it will go through.
I can't get enough of Dune, it is so unique, but definitely on the sweeter tobaccos spectrum. I like how all of the nuances come through with a tad of syrupy sweetness from FA Honey, even though I am not a fan of FLV Red Burley at more than 1% at all.
Can't wait for the second part!
Here are two more:
Saria by Fear, which is basically an unlit and spiced clove cigar with many things going on. Mixed it once, it was nice but not so much as ADV, might reduce Clove a bit to let the spices a more central role.
Garuda Cubano Way - A mild / relatively bright cigar that works well in low wattage.
I usually keep FA Black Fire & INW DNB at no more than 0.5%, more than that and the goodness of tobaccos complexity gets masked in "cheap" dirtiness or meaty liquid smoke.
Here are some tobacco forward recipes from my to do list to consider:
The Classic, Blackest Nights, Native GOD, Latakia for Pipe, Aroma tobacco, Shaggy Drum, Aromatic pipe, Woody Tobacco (but I plan to use HS RY4 instead of RY4D), King of the road, Tuntun v2
Ummmm, dude. I think you just wrote it. Would you consider just compiling everything you just wrote into a condensed version? I’m dead serious. This is a great list of stuff I haven’t tried or didn’t know existed.
part 1 you can skip all the extra stuff I did and just write a few sentences about each one.
Nice post, dog. While vaping (some years ago) I met a girl from Belgium that only rolled her own smokes. She said this was just the way they did it in Belgium. I gave in (because she was pretty sexy) and I was curious to taste what she rolled in comparison to the store bought marlboro menthol lights I smoked for over 20 years. The taste was very different, maybe because she rolled her cigarettes and there was no filter like on packed cigarettes.
I only smoked these for a few days just to be kind but I definitely preferred my vanilla custard out of my RDA. But tasting her tobacco cigs opened my eyes to a new taste that wasn’t familiar with any store bought cigarette I’ve ever smoked. This really interested me to try tobacco flavors in vapes but made me worrisome that I would find myself back on cigarettes.
For anyone wanting to try tobacco flavors but are hesitant to because it might reverse their cessation to tobacco I can say vaping tobacco flavors will not turn you back on cigarettes
>“Google, what is the BEST e-juice flavor?”
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This is hilarious... I had almost forgotten how insane my first DiY searches were! Porto Rico Importing Co = my all-time favorite smell.
Nice write up, doggo
Bacco's don't really interest me, so I can't personally use this much - but I concur on the INW Bahraini Apple. That anise note, that's something real special
Thanks. I can relate to a lot of the backstory (used Black Note and enjoyed it, but it’s expensive, got into DIY and was scarred by FA tobaccos). Am working through some of the different INW tobaccos most recently—I enjoy Black for Pipe with a bit of DNB, and have enjoyed Gold Ducat (am going to try the “Gold” recipe in the post, thanks for link). Just got INW Cavendish yesterday and liked its prospects (based on a SNV test at 3%). Still haven’t tried FLV tobaccos yet. Given what I like from INW, any tips about FLV? (Based on other posts I’ve read here, I’ve had my eye on Kentucky, Cured, and Connecticut Shade. ChemicalBurnVictim’s flow chart was quite helpful in this regard.)
where can I see ChemicalBurnVictim’s flow chart just ordered some FLV tobaccos
Getting Into Tobaccos pic at top of the post
I made some notes here that might help you. It’s kind of brief but on point. Kentucky is great. All of them are really good at worst. Oriental is one I never got excited about and now I’m using it repeatedly. The only one I can’t seem to get behind is classic cig and many people speak highly of 2 flavor banger by jj. So, it’s a matter of preference but ky and cured are fantastic. Cut shade is tricky and polarizing.
Thanks! I think I’ve looked at those notes before, but good to see again. Your description of Native (vs Kentucky) has my attention cause I smoked mainly Am Spirit Red RYO for years before switching to vaping.
native was my first flv tobacco that I abused and over used and haven't been able to look in the eye since the divorce. we share custody, but it's a tense relationship better off now just remembering old times. maybe we'll get back together again, stranger things have happened...
plus, kentucky has that ash perfect. right now, that's the mood i been in. :)
This is a great post. I’ve always been curious about tobacco flavors, but I had so many questions. Very helpful! I do see a lot of mixers working with tobacco. I think for me a nice simple tobacco dessert type recipe would be great way to see if it’s for me. Thanks again for the time and effort that you put into this post!!
Tobacco desserts are awesome in their own right. Some of my favorites are from u/Foment_life like coco bacco
How do you reference coco-bacco for a first timer instead of alfred's Cabin?
I think cabin is the perfect intro to tobaccos
a combination of having reviewed cabin before and how coco bacco both uses horchata as a spice (genius) and is an actual tobacco. Cabin is alfredpudding good. I felt like coco bacco was accessible good. Something that made me think, this is awesome, i want to play too!
Best place to find out how to describe tobaccos is to start with pipe smokers and cigar smokers who review stuff. For example, Jim Amash (yes, the Marvel comic artist) is a pipe smoker and has reviewed a zillion blends. His Tobacco Reviews user page is here, to give you an idea of what relatable flavors he picks up. By relatable flavors, I mean descriptors like "bready", "nutty", "woody", and so forth.
Aromatic pipe tobaccos are the heavily cased and sauced stuff that smells good to others but generally tastes like cheap tobacco to the smoker, because that's exactly what it is...cheap tobacco marinated in flavorings. A lot of tobacco vape recipes with food/beverage notes are basically the room/tin note of aromatics in vape form.
Non-aromatic tobaccos are what I love, and they're not froufroued up with too many extra notes. Generally, whatever flavor non-aromatics have comes from the tobacco itself plus whatever processes it went through during the curing process. Dark-fired Kentucky and Latakia, for example, have characteristically smoky flavors from the fire-cured process, while Virginias that are flue-cured get their sweet notes from the changes they undergo during the flue-curing process. Vape juices that aren't big on added aromatic elements basically resemble the tin/pouch note of non-aromatics.
RYO/cigarette tobacco reviews you can pretty much ignore because 90% of RYO/MYO tobacco is crap unless it's something different from the cheap combo of Tobacco Krispies, flavored confetti, and floor sweepings that you get in mass market cigarettes. The better stuff tends to be more like Drum, Bali Shag, or Peter Stokkebye blends that come in both a RYO shag cut and ribbon cut for pipes: just the tobacco, no reconstituted paper or whatever, but it's still going to be the smell of an opened pack or pouch of tobacco in vape form. Smokiness and ashiness has to be faked with additives.
Tobacco smoked in pipes has a fuller flavor profile and the way it's smoked, you get a lot more nuance and depth than you would if you were dragging on a tube. The good tobacco vape juices come the closest to tasting like what you'd taste if you were gently sipping on a pipe, 'cause the idea with a pipe is you want to control the ember so it's just on the verge of going out and it's actually liberating/vaporizing more of the tasty notes from the unburnt tobacco below it. So, not as acrid or smoke-forward as a cigarette, and you don't really pick up much ashiness unless you're smoking too fast/hot.
When I started vaping, I insisted I would never vape a candy, fruit or dessert flavor! I swore "nothing but tobacco, for me!" WOW was I wrong!
I picked up two flavors when I purchased my first vaping device. One was an RY4 based flavor house liquid. The other was supposed to be "The New Tobacco". (I got the name off of a different store's website of the same name by mistake)
I ended up with a clone of Time Bomb's TNT. That apple, peach, strawberry blend that is quite yummy. I've since been hooked on fruit and nothing but fruit and candy!!