Dry Vape Hits - Why They Happen and How To Avoid Them

Once you've been vaping long enough, you're sure to have noticed that sometimes you'll get a dry vape hit and a burnt, unpleasant taste. This is the bane of vapers everywhere, and is pretty much the worst thing that can occur during a regular session.

Don't feel bad though. No matter how careful you are, a dry hit will usually sneak up on you the moment you're least expecting it.

Fortunately there's a way to lower the chances of a nasty hit happening in the first place, but first let's discuss why they even happen.

What’s A Dry Vape Hit?

Here's how it usually happens: You're hanging out on a nice day and decide to puff on some of your favorite new vape juices. So you pull out your vape and start puffing away.

Suddenly, the flavor starts to change and develop a burnt taste. The back of your throat is tickled by a nasty hot feeling, gross taste, and even might make you cough a bit.

This unpleasant experience is a dry vape hit, detested by vapers around the world. 

It's no wonder why this is a popular question we're asked, but before avoiding them, let's figure out why they happen.

Why Do They Happen?

A common cause of a dry hit is when you pull a cartomizer or atomizer without it being completely saturated in e-liquid.

When this happens, the heat warms up the wicking material without the insulation of the juice, which actually burns the wick. Once you've burnt the wick, you won't be able to get rid of the nasty taste. Even if you change the juice out, you'll still get a burnt flavor from the wick, and will just need to replace it.

The wicking material isn't to blame though - most wicking materials are unflavored. But once the wicking material gets burnt, it'll taste like licking a used ashtray

How to Avoid Dry Vape Hits

Unfortunately for now, it’s not really feasible to avoid dry hits entirely. Sometimes they just happen. Fortunately, there are ways you can reduce the chances of experiencing the dreaded dry hit.

Not Enough E-Juice

On occasion it's as simple as a lack of e-juice in your device's, causing a dry hit once there's not enough juice to burn. This might seem obvious, but you'd be surprised how often it's just this easy to solve.

Some e-cigarettes also limit the airflow artificially per pull to create more of a suction effect. This can end up resulting in less liquid being pulled up to the wick than a normal kit, meaning that you'll run into unpleasant dry hits more often.

Dry Wicks & Coils

It might sound repetitious, but it really is important. If you want to minimize the odds of having a dry hit, you should try your best to make sure that the hearing coil or wick stays moist with juice. To help make sure that you always have enough e-juice, there's a few things to be mindful of. 

First, make sure you always have enough juice in the first place. Second, avoid chain-vaping too much, give your vape time to cool down. Third, try using lower voltages to avoid pushing the coil too hard, which should also help  make your coils last longer.

Adjust Your Voltage

If you seem to be experiencing dry hits on a regular basis, you should try turning down the voltage of your vape. Check out our  beginners guide to vaping to learn how to get your vaping setup properly ready to go.

If your power is set too high, it can actually put too much heat into your vape juice and singe the liquid before it's even vaporized, resulting again in a burnt taste.

Using a high voltage can also open up the problem of failing to warm your devices correctly, which results in the coil getting a sudden high-temperature shock, instead of heating gradually.

Adjust Your Pressure

Still getting nasty hits? Next, try taking drags that are longer with less pressure/suction, giving your kit some time to rest between sessions. You might be hitting your vape too hard, which can end up giving you dry hits as well. 

Some vapers have found some luck in preventing these hits by first taking a primer puff (without turning the battery on) to get more liquid into the atomizer chamber before heating up their vape.

Check Your PG/VG Ratio

If you've tried the above and you're still running into a nasty dry hit problem, there could be another culprit. Some people are more sensitive to different ratios of PG and VG in their juice, so try out a couple of different variations to see what works best for you.

A little known fact is that e-liquid with higher concentrations of VG, also known as vegetable glycerin, are thicker, meaning that the wick takes longer to absorb it.

Priming Your Wick

Another common issue is when vapers fail to prime the wick adequately, which results in a similar problem as the lack of e-liquid. If your wick isn't totally saturated before you take your fist hit, it could end up burning your wick and doom you to a future of dry hits until you replace it.

Try Using A Mod

Mod vapers tend to experience fewer dry hits than your avergae vape user. It still happens on occasion though, but mostly to new mod users, since they usually won't be quite used to what their ideal settings will be yet. Similar to variable vapes, new mod users tend to use too high of a voltage, which leads to the singing and charring. But as mod users often take their vaping more seriously, they start to avoid getting dry hits pretty quickly.

Final Thoughts

As you can see, dry vape hits can be mostly be avoided by careful vaping habits and being mindful of your settings & juice levels.

If you dial in your voltage and make sure that your wicks are always fully saturated, you should enjoy a happy future of tasty vaping.

Now that you know how to make the most out of your vaping and avoid nasty tastes, check out our selection of delicious vape juices since you can really enjoy their flavors.

We hope that the above vaping tips will enhance your vaping experience to the best levels.

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