How to Avoid a Dry Hit

Ever been vaping with your normal mod or atomizer and our favourite liquid but then got hit by a burnt taste? Don't worry you're not the only one! This blog will explain everything you need to know about these dry hits and how you can stop them from happening in the future.

The first question is WHY does your E-Liquid taste burnt?

You need to begin with thinking about what happens when you're vaping normally without getting a dry hit. When you hit the ignite button, electricity flows through the coil and heats up. This heat is then used up by the E-Liquid, which gets immersed into the wick and turns the liquid into vapour. The juice takes up some of the heat, making sure the coil doesn't get too hot.

Once the E-Liquid has been vapourised, the wick will dry out slightly. However, if you have a tank which is still full of E-Liquid that surrounds the coil, this is always replacing the used up juice, meaning your wick should be nicely soaked again by the time you take another inhale.

Now we know how it should work, what happens when there's not enough or no E-Liquid at all? When you hit the ignite button, there isn't anything to take up that extra heat, meaning the temperature of the coil gets too hot and leads to two things:

1. The remaining E-Liquid in the wick gets overheated, which causes the PG to break down into formaldehyde, which gives a really unpleasant taste.

2. The wick is directly exposed to high temperature. Therefore if the wick is fully dry, then it could possibly go up in flames. As you can imagine, this also tastes horrible.

How can you stop a dry hit from happening?

Below are a few things you can do to stop a dry hit from happening:

Always prime your coils

When you first use your new coil, the wick needs to go from being completely dry to fully soaked. This will usually take about 5 to 10 minutes from filling up your tank to being able to take your first puff. If you wait a long amount of time you sometimes won't need to prime your coil, however it can be really difficult to see whether your wick is fully soaked.

Priming your coil is simple and makes sense really. All you need to do is manually soak your wick before you install it. Usually, cols have an opening at the top and some holes around the sides. Simply squeeze in a few drops of E-Liquid to soak the wick.

On the other hand, instead of priming, some vapers just take a few puffs on their device without pressing the ignite button to draw the liquid up into the wick. If you do this, be careful not to suck too hard as this can pull up too much E-Liquid which will end up flooding your coil.

Your coil is now primed and ready to go. But it's still best to leave it about 5 to 10 minutes just to make sure its soaked properly before you start vaping.

Try not to chain vape so much

Chain vaping is just continuously vaping until you can't vape anymore, this can also lead to a burnt wick. As explained above, you need to make sure your wick has enough time to re-soak before you take a puff. If you're not a chain vaper, then this shouldn't be an issue as the wick will have time to recover.

There is a simple solution for this. All you need to do is have a break from vaping for a while. The main sign that says you are vaping too much is that you will lose flavour strength - this shows that there is not a lot of E-Liquid in the coil and you could be coming close to a burnt situation.

Reduce your wattage

When you are vaping at a high wattage, you are evaporating more juice each time you inhale. Obviously, this is ideal if you want huge clouds, but in turn it can also affect your coil. The answer to this is to lower your power setting and wattage.

PG/VG ratio

PG (Propylene Glycol) has a thinner consistency than VG (Vegetable Glycerin), meaning it soaks into wicks easier.

E-Liquids that have a high VG content have the potential to cause wicking problems, meaning they can damage your coils. So, if you're continuously getting dry hits, you may want to consider changing your type of E-Liquid for a 50:50 ratio.

However, this isn't always the answer to a dry hit as Sub-Ohm tanks are made to handle with high VG liquids. Some juices have a lot of sweetener added to them to make them taste great but this can also make thick 'gunk' collect around the wick, meaning it can't suck the E-Liquid up as good as it should. These liquids are usually dessert or coffee-based flavours.