How to Avoid Dry Hits When Vaping

It’s a common scenario – you’ve been stuck in a meeting aching for your vape. When the meeting is over, you shoot off outside to take a drag… and another… and another… and then wham! You get the biggest and nastiest dry hit! Dry hits are the vapers Achilles heel but what is it? Can dry hits be avoided?

What is a dry hit?

A dry hit is a nuisance and something that most vapers have experienced at some time in their vaping journey. As yet, vaping technology hasn’t solved the problem of dry hits completely but who knows what the future holds?

If you start to notice an unpleasant burnt taste as you vape, that’s a dry hit. And if you experience a sudden and intense heat and at the back of the throat, that’s a dry hit. They’re annoying, it’s unpleasant and a nuisance.

We may not have fixed the problem just yet but there are ways of avoiding the scourge of the dry hit.

How do dry hits happen?

Generally speaking, dry hits happen when your vaping juice is not wicking properly or the heating coil is burning the vape juice too quickly. The result is you end up getting a mouthful of very unpleasant hot air from an overheating coil or, worse in some ways, you get a mouthful of the smoke caused by the residue and gunk on your coil being roasted off.

How to stop dry hits

The solution is to keep the coil moist at all times. By doing this you should avoid dry hits but until there is a sure-fire of banishing them forever, you’ll need to keep an eye on your coil, juice, vaping habits and vaping kit instead.

#1 Keep your wick saturated

First and foremost, keeping the coil saturated should reduce the possibility of a ghastly dry hit to almost zero. To do this, you may need to take a look at your kit and opt for a bottom-coil clearomizer tank. Specifically designed for this reason, the coil is more or less continually saturated so it's time to update your kit, why not put some new coils at the top of your list?

#2 Change your vaping habit

Do you have a tendency to chain vape? Or maybe you up the power to get the big flavour hits and the big clouds? Sometimes, how we vape can contribute to the frequency of dry hits.

Chain vaping, power vaping and vaping with the voltage up high can lead to more dry hits than you care for, as too can over vaping.

How do you know if you over vape?

It’s hard to quantify over vaping but most people would agree it’s when you start to feel the unpleasant side effects of too much nicotine. Headaches, nausea and the ‘jitters’ are all signs you’ve overdone it. Keep your vaping experience positive by setting time aside when you can enjoy a luxurious, calming vape session rather than sucking on your vape like your life depended on it. If you like long, languid vaping sessions, why not enjoy a lower strength nicotine content in your vape juice or a nicotine-free juice?

#3 Unhurried vaping sessions

If you were a smoker prior to vaping, you’ll come to it with a smoker’s habit. And that is the unrelenting need for nicotine. The more we smoke, the more our brain hankers after a hit. And thus, we associate smoking with a short, sharp session of nicotine intake. 

There is a solution and it comes in the shape of Disposable Pods, a product that gives an instant but smooth hit of nicotine when you need it most. 

Also, when smoking a cigarette or cigar, there is only a certain amount of time that they last. And so a ‘quick fag’ at lunch is common or a few puffs on the way to catch the bus is not unseen either.

Vaping is different. Different people vape differently but essentially, at the heart of vaping is a more relaxed approach and that means ditching the quick snatch for a gentler, longer drawer on your e-cig.

Switching your vape off and giving it a rest can help to ‘reset’ it too and some vapers have found a ‘primer puff’, the drawing of liquid without the battery on, helps to keep the coil moist and dry hits at bay.

#4 Adjust your vaping juice PG/VG ratio

Vaping juice has very few ingredients, two of which are Propylene Glycol (PG) and Vegetable Glycerine (VG). There is a reason why these two ingredients are used in different ratios, one of which is whether you want to blow clouds or not.

VG is thicker than PG and so when it comes to blowing huge clouds, many vapers will opt for a juice with a higher VG content. And when it comes to dry hits, the PG/VG ratio could be affecting it.

As it is thicker, it takes longer for the coil to become saturated with a high VG ratio vape juice which is why you may be experiencing more dry hits than you normally would. Swap to a high concentration of PG liquid and you’ll see a difference. Because it is thinner, the coil is soaked more easily and quickly with the thinner e-liquid and hey presto, fewer dry hits!

#5 Update your vaping kit

It might be that your vaping kit has seen better days or your vaping experience is moving on to the next level and your beginners vaping kit is failing to keep pace.

>Moving on up with your vaping kit means investing in a vape pen or mod box that offers you the vaping experience you clearly want. Having more control over temperature and voltage is one reason why vapers look to the next level of kit.

You might also want to start experimenting with flavours and change how you vape too. With control over your nicotine intake possible, when you leave the addiction to nicotine behind (or control it better), you’ll find that your vaping sessions tend to be more about the enjoyment, the flavour and the relaxation rather than satisfying a craving.

Dry hits happen so don’t beat yourself up BUT if they are happening more often, you need to take action!