# Caramel e-liquid: which recipe wins? > Caramel e-liquid verdict: salted, tobacco and dessert families compared on ratio, format and nicotine across the British shelf, with a winner by use. Four bottles carry the word caramel on the label and offer four different things: a plain caramel, a salted caramel, a caramel bolted onto a tobacco, and a caramel drowned in a dessert. Picking a **caramel e-liquid** at random inside that family is a lottery. This piece puts the British families side by side on stated data, then calls it. ## Caramel e-liquid: which family to choose by profile For a straight caramel with nothing behind it, the plain and salted references are the only ones that keep that promise. On the British shelf they are a minority, and they are usually 10 ml bottles rather than large formats. For all day use, an associated recipe holds up better. Salted caramel, caramel with a nutty tobacco, or caramel inside a fuller dessert all break the monotony that a single sweet note produces after a few tanks. For anyone mixing at home, a caramel concentrate hands you the dosing and the ratio, at the cost of a steeping wait of several days. ## The four families on the British shelf A caramel aisle is not read by product name but by the list of stated notes. Four families come out of UK catalogues, and they are not aimed at the same palate at all. The plain and salted caramel sits first. The UK Range salted caramel sold by VPZ is a 10 ml built on a 60 percent PG and 40 percent VG base, with the 3 mg version formulated at 50/50 instead. Totally Wicked's Red Label caramel, made in Britain, is described as sweet and nutty with a warm buttery finish. The toffee leaning caramel comes second. Vampire Vape lists a Caramel Crunch freebase 10 ml blending buttery toffee, smooth caramel and light butterscotch notes, offered at the higher freebase strengths. The caramel and tobacco pairing is the third and the most British of the four. Vape Dinner Lady sells a Caramel Tobacco 10 ml at 50:50 combining tobacco flavourings with caramel, vanilla and honey. Just Juice builds its Nutty Caramel around Nicaraguan tobacco at 70 percent VG, and Doozy Vape Co lists a caramel tobacco nic salt. The dessert caramel closes the list. Perfect Bar sells a salted caramel shortfill made in the United Kingdom, Dark Star lists a salted caramel cheesecake in a large shortfill, and Holy Cow puts salted caramel inside a milkshake as a nic salt. ## The caramel e-liquid comparison table The data below reproduces what the manufacturers and British retailers state. Prices are absent, because they change from shop to shop without saying anything about the recipe. | Criterion | Plain or salted 10 ml | Toffee crunch 10 ml | Caramel tobacco | Dessert shortfill | |---|---|---|---|---| | Stated notes | Caramel, sometimes salt | Toffee, caramel, butterscotch | Tobacco, caramel, vanilla | Caramel inside a pudding | | Typical ratio | 60/40, 50/50 at low strength | 50/50 | 50/50 or 70/30 | Usually 70/30, sometimes 50/50 | | Volumes | 10 ml | 10 ml | 10 ml and 100 ml | 50 ml to 120 ml | | Nicotine | Up to 20 mg/ml | Higher freebase strengths | Freebase and nic salt | None, add shots | | Ready to vape | Yes | Yes | Yes | Yes, once shot | | Steeping | None | None | None | None | | Target hardware | Pod, MTL tank | Pod, MTL tank | Both | Sub-ohm | Read the table vertically and the real fault line is not taste but format. Three families arrive ready to vape in 10 ml bottles, while the dessert family lives almost entirely in shortfills that need a shot before they are usable. ## The technical detail dessert listings skip Something genuinely useful appears once you line up the ratios above. This is one of the few flavour families in Britain where the same note is sold at 50/50, at 60/40 and at 70/30 by different houses, and often within one house across two strengths. That spread is not decoration. A 60/40 caramel and a 70/30 caramel do not belong on the same hardware, and a shopper who moves brand without checking the ratio changes device category without meaning to. It explains a large share of the reviews calling a dessert sickly at high power. The second point concerns coils rather than tanks. Sweetened recipes leave more residue on the cotton and the wire than fruit ones, which shortens the useful life of a coil before the taste degrades. The effect is visible to the naked eye on a stripped coil, and it is the practical cost of this whole family. The unusual case is worth naming. Perfect Bar lists a salted caramel shortfill at 50/50 in a 100 ml bottle, which cuts across the convention that large formats are high VG. It is the one route to a big volume of caramel on mouth to lung hardware, and the relationship between ratio and device is set out in our head to head on the [PG VG ratio](/uk/pg-vg-ratio/). ## What the French shelf offers and Britain does not It is worth being straight about this. Several caramel references that dominate French comparisons, including the plain caramel sold by Le Petit Vapoteur, the salted butter caramel from ECG and the classic caramel vanilla from Nicovip, do not appear on British retail listings. They are not obscure products, they are simply distributed on the domestic French market and on European sites that ship there. Comparing them as if a UK shopper could add them to a basket would be misleading. The honest way to use them is as flavour profiles rather than product references. A French salted butter caramel with a custard vanilla behind it maps closely onto a British salted caramel dessert shortfill, and a French classic caramel maps onto the caramel tobaccos that Dinner Lady, Just Juice and Doozy build here. The equivalences hold, the barcodes do not. ## Verdict: who wins, and on what criterion No recipe dominates on every criterion. The verdict is therefore given by use, which is the only honest way to separate bottles that are not aiming at the same moment of the day. Straight caramel, occasional use: the plain and salted 10 ml bottles win. They are the only ones that deliver the note undiluted, and the 60/40 and 50/50 bases suit the pods most British vapers actually own. Everyday dessert: the caramel tobacco wins. The tobacco base carries repetition far better than pure sugar, and the family spans both 10 ml and large shortfills so it scales with your consumption. Continuous sub-ohm use: the dessert shortfill wins on volume and on ratio, since 70/30 is what a low resistance coil wants. Expect to change coils more often than you would on a fruit. Home mixing: a caramel concentrate wins on freedom, letting you set both the strength of the note and the base, provided you accept several days of steeping before the mix settles. ## Frequently asked questions ### Does a caramel really gunk a coil faster than a fruit? Sweetened recipes leave more residue on the cotton and the wire, which shortens the useful life of a coil before the taste degrades. The build up is visible on a stripped coil. ### Are there sucralose free caramels? Some makers publish explicitly sweetener free versions, but the mention has to appear on the product page. It cannot be deduced from the recipe name or from the word natural. ### Does caramel come as a nic salt? Yes, British ranges list caramel and salted caramel nic salts in 10 ml, including caramel tobacco and dessert milkshake versions, within the 20 mg/ml ceiling. ### Should I rinse my tank after a caramel? A rinse in warm water followed by full drying stops the note carrying over. Without it a fruit vaped straight afterwards keeps a sweet aftertaste for several refills. ### Can I combine two caramels from different brands? Technically yes, but the point is thin. Two caramels added together rarely give anything more interesting than one caramel paired with a nut, a tobacco or a coffee. ## What this comparison changes about your next order A **caramel e-liquid** is not chosen by its name but by its stated notes and its ratio. A 60/40 plain caramel and a 70/30 dessert shortfill are neither vaped on the same hardware nor at the same point in the day, and the shelf makes no effort to tell you so. Check the stated composition, match the volume to what you actually get through, and set the ratio against the ohm value of your coil. The rest is taste, and no table will decide that for you. If you mix your own, the concentrate route detailed in our look at the [arom et liquide](/uk/arom-et-liquide-formats/) catalogue gives more control over sweetness than anything ready made, while the format logic that decides a caramel e-liquid is the same one at work in our piece on [Heisenberg e-liquid](/uk/heisenberg-e-liquid/). Editorial content for adult readers only. Vaping products usually contain nicotine, a substance that causes addiction. Not for sale to under-18s in the United Kingdom. This article is not a buying recommendation.