Have you ever noticed how sweet some vapes and vape juices taste these days? Some of them taste so much like real candy that they actually leave a lingering sweet coating on the inside of your mouth. What creates that sweetness? Do vapes have sugar?
The answer to that question is “no” – vapes don’t contain sugar.
They do, however, contain alternative sweeteners in many cases. Sucralose is the most common ingredient that makes vapes taste sweet, and there are also a couple of sweet ingredients that you should be aware of if you’re curious about what’s in a vape.
Key Takeaways:
If a vape tastes almost like real candy, it probably contains sucralose as a sweetener. We’ll explain what sucralose is and what it tastes like, and then we’ll continue by discussing two of the other ingredients that can enhance a vape’s sweetness.
Sucralose is an artificial sweetener that’s synthesized by altering the molecular structure of sucrose. It tastes very much like regular sugar, although it’s many times sweeter and can make an e-liquid taste very sweet even if it’s used in a low concentration. Sucralose is popular in diet beverages because it doesn’t affect insulin levels, and it’s also the most common sweetener for vapes.
It's not difficult to tell if a vape is sweetened with sucralose. If it tastes almost as sweet as real candy and leaves a sugar-like flavor on the inside of your mouth, sucralose is most likely the sweetener that’s in it.
Ethyl maltol is a synthetic agent that’s produced in part through chlorination, much like sucralose. It has a scent and flavor resembling cooked or caramelized sugar, and many people believe that it tastes very much like cotton candy. In fact, ethyl maltol is included as an ingredient in the majority of cotton candy-flavored vapes and vape juices. It’s also used in some sweet-scented perfumes.
Although ethyl maltol isn’t a sweetener in the strict sense of the term, many people interpret it as being vaguely sweet since it since it’s so similar to the flavor of cotton candy. Ethyl maltol is used in fairly high concentrations in cotton candy-flavored e-liquids, and it’s also used in lower concentrations in a wide variety of other candy flavor profiles. If you’re using a vape or vape juice that tastes like candy, there’s a good chance that it includes at least a little ethyl maltol.
Vegetable glycerin (VG) is one of the key ingredients in almost all e-liquids, along with propylene glycol (PG). Together, VG and PG comprise upwards of 90 percent – and even more in some cases – of what you inhale when you vape.
Although VG and PG have many similar properties, they differ in flavor. PG has almost no flavor, but VG tastes slightly sweet. Glycerin is a sugar alcohol, so it can be used in foods as an alternative sweetener. Other sugar alcohols include sorbitol, maltitol, isomalt and erythritol.
Since the flavor of VG is mild, you probably won’t notice it in an e-liquid that contains other flavoring ingredients. You’ll notice the slight sweetness, though, if you ever try an unflavored or “Clear” vape.
Even in today’s age of sugar-free candies and diet sodas, sugar is still the most common sweetener. You might wonder why it isn’t used in any commercial vaping products.
Vapes are nearly calorie free, and the fact that they don’t contain sugar is certainly one reason for that. The real reason why sugar isn’t used in vapes, though, is because it wouldn’t actually work as well as you might think.
Surveys have repeatedly shown that vapers overwhelmingly prefer sweet flavors. In a 2023 survey of over 69,000 vapers in the United States, the most popular flavor profiles among those who had quit smoking after switching to vaping were fruit, dessert and candy. A much smaller percentage of respondents used tobacco flavors.
As popular as sweet vapes are, though, a sweet e-liquid doesn’t need to contain added sucralose. In fact, some people actually prefer to use vapes with little or no sucralose. Here are some reasons why.
People have different opinions about the pros and cons of e-liquid sweetened with sucralose, and you need to make the choice that’s best for you. There’s one drawback of sweet vapes, though, that’s a definite fact. If you use vape juice with sucralose, you’ll need to replace your pod or coil more often – and that can make vaping more expensive for you in the long run. That’s because of sucralose’s one big side effect: coil gunk. We’ll discuss that next.
As tasty as sweet vapes can be, sucralose in e-liquid does have one major drawback in that it condenses and caramelizes in much the same way as sugar. This video provides dramatic evidence of what happens when sucralose comes into contact with hot metal – it rapidly turns into a thick, dark sludge.
The same thing happens on a smaller scale when you use a sweet vape. The sucralose in the e-liquid forms a dark coating on the coil that the members of the vaping community call “coil gunk.”
Coil gunk increases in thickness over time, affecting a vape’s flavor in stages.
Because of the residue that it creates, sucralose shortens the life of a vape coil. With unsweetened e-liquid – or e-liquid that’s only “sweetened” with ingredients like ethyl maltol and vegetable glycerin – a vape coil can potentially last several weeks before it begins to taste burnt. Sucralose, however, can shorten a coil’s life to just a few days if you’re sensitive to the burnt flavor it creates.
One important thing to remember about sucralose and sweet vapes is that the more e-liquid you use, the more rapidly gunk will form on your coil. If you like sweet vapes and want your coils to last as long as possible, it can be beneficial to use a small vape like a pod system.
It can also be worthwhile to consider using disposable vapes if you like sweet flavors. By the time a disposable vape might have begun to taste burnt, it’ll be out of e-liquid anyway.
Although sweet vapes don’t have sugar, the fact that many of them contain sucralose can be problematic because it leads to the formation of coil gunk, which tastes burnt and makes your coils or pods burn out more quickly. If you don’t like coil gunk, here are five easy ways to avoid or mitigate that issue.