E-Liquids: Abbreviations, Tips & Tricks for Vaping – Part 6

You can’t vape without e-liquid — but with so much choice, it’s easy to feel stuck. What should you buy when you’re just starting out? A fruit e-liquid and a bowl of fresh fruit are, after all, two very different things. And if you smoked Marlboro or Dunhill for years, chances are your first pick will be a tobacco e-liquid with a similar-sounding name.

Luckily, every vaping forum has swap threads for those bottles that missed the mark! After all, everyone who started out with e-cigarettes has bought a few duds along the way. The next false step tends to hit when you’re not really a beginner anymore: one day, nothing seems to taste right. We’ll come back to that in another blog post.

What are e-liquids made of?

In Switzerland, e-liquids containing nicotine are prohibited, but you may import 150 ml per shipment for personal use. You can find the relevant customs information sheet here. In general, e-liquids in Switzerland are covered by food law. So we won’t go into nicotine any further for now, but we’ll come back to it when we talk about quitting smoking. Quick tip: save the information sheet to your computer — if you ever need it, you won’t waste time looking for it.

The base ingredients in every e-liquid are:  

PG (propylene glycol – E1520*)

VG (vegetable glycerine - E422*)

Distilled water

Food-grade flavourings

PG or propylene glycol

PG is a food additive that is not carcinogenic and acts as a preservative in its own right. That means a product containing propylene glycol doesn’t need any extra preservatives. Propylene glycol is produced through the hydrolysis of propylene oxide. You’ll find PG in chewing gum and toothpaste, for example. PG itself is virtually odourless and dissolves well in water. In addition to its preservative effect, it also helps keep products from drying out — for example, it is used in cigarettes to stop the tobacco drying out.

VG or vegetable glycerine

Vegetable glycerine is found in every — absolutely every — oil we use in the kitchen. So VG is a naturally occurring substance derived from natural oils. It’s the VG that produces the vapour when you vape an e-liquid. This form of glycerine occurs in every oil-bearing plant — but please don’t try pouring oil straight into your tank.

Distilled water

Distilled water is pharmaceutical-grade water. It’s added to e-liquid to help it flow more easily. In a later chapter on DIY e-liquid mixing, we’ll see that you need to be careful with the amount. You can buy distilled
water at any pharmacy.

Flavourings

All flavourings used in e-liquids come, without exception, from the food industry. In everyday foods, you’ll find them in biscuits, frozen products, sweets and drinks. Once you’ve been vaping for a while, you’ll start picking out food flavourings in product after product. Never use flavourings from the cosmetics industry! Essential oils from perfumery are not suitable for vaping and, at best, will only wreck your coil.

In the next post, we’ll take a closer look at the classic mixes and explain the general differences.