Steve K's Vaping World

As a guy who loves his e-cigarettes so much he rarely puts them down, I go through a lot of e-liquid. I’ve previously expressed my love for cartomizers that haul around a lot of e-juice.  There are quite a few CE2 style “tank mods” out there, but the Juice Jar’s capacity to carry 9ml of liquid got my attention.

The JJ has another unique trait that separates it from the other tanks kicking around out there in the vape world.  The Jar sports a screw top lid for insanely easy filling (and emptying if you decide you made a 9ml mistake in e-liquid choices).  The maker of the Juice Jar touts the device as “The easiest Tank Mod to empty and refill in the WORLD. a monster holding 9 ml of Juice a great mod for beginners with no bells or whistles.“

Design
I disagree with the statement that this is a good beginner mod.  I found myself fiddling with the Jar quite a bit to get it to work optimally. I don’t necessarily think that makes the Juice Jar a bad tank mod, I just think it’s a little more maintenance than a newbie would tolerate. Let’s go through the design in more detail, and I’ll explain my feelings along the way.

There’s a hole in mah jar!

The Juice Jar is exactly that, a jar with a screw top lid.  It looks like one of those little jars you in which you would store hobby paint or something like that.  The design is brilliantly simple.  There is a hole in the bottom of the container, and another one in the lid.

In each hole is a gasket, the CE2 guts slide through the bottom gasket while the tube and inner silicone gasket from the CE2 fit in the lid portion of the Juice Jar.  The notable thing at this point is that this is a standard sized CE2, unlike many tanks out there, there is no need to cut the stem, it just fits.  Quite nice.

The lid portion of this combination is where things start to break down.  The fact that it’s a screw top lid is both a blessing and a curse.  It is a blessing from the standpoint of making this tank super easy to fill, no syringes or anything like that, just dump your juice in.  However, it is cursed because of the twisting action required with that type of lid.

The pieces parts

The problem comes in because of the design of the CE2 itself.  If you aren’t familiar with the design, a CE2 has an inner silicone gasket that sits on top of a porcelain cup.  The bottom of the gasket has small notches to allow the wicks to pass into the heating coil located in that cup.  The purpose of the gasket is to keep e-liquid from seeping into the coil directly which would flood the coil.  For that seal to work properly, the wick slots must be aligned with the wicks coming out of that cup.

Hopefully I haven’t lost you yet.  Because the fact the silicone rotates in the tube as you twist the lid on makes it next to impossible to align that gasket correctly.  The way the Juice Jar handles that is that it ships with the tube and gasket just touching the top of the cup on the CE2.  This eliminates issues with rotation, but it means that the device will flood if tipped to anything even closely resembling horizontal, let alone upside down.

Gasket extends past end of tube

There is a solution to this issue.  The trick I found (after breaking one CE2 and nearly breaking a second) is to place the inner cup gasket into the tube so it protrudes about half way out the end of the tube.  Then position tube so that half of the gasket covers the wick cup. Great care has to be made to try and immobilize the CE2 as much as possible to prevent damage.

I broke my first clearomizer trying to get the tube positioned just right, good thing I had a few laying around and they’re so easy to replace. The second almost broke because when tightened the lid pushed the tube onto the gasket and cup.  This formed a fantastic seal, but when I removed the lid the cup came along with the tube separating the cup and stem from the bottom of the CE2.  Using a pencil to push the gasket and cup out as I unscrewed the lid saved the second CE2.

Performance
It took a little practice to get the tube to just the right position to keep the jar from gurgling because of juice leakage.  Once it was correctly seated, the Juice Jar performed pretty well.  There weren’t any dry burn issues, and the overall experience of the tank was better than a stock CE2.  I find this to be true with most tank mods.  I think that the small tube of the stock versions constricts the wick too much for it to work as well as it could.

Ok, this looks a little silly

Vapor production even on an eGo was quite pleasant and was naturally better at slightly higher voltages.  Being based on the CE2, you probably don’t want to try and take this device much past 3.7 volts.  The vapor temperature was a bit cooler than a standard issue clearomizer because the coil has to travel the length of the tube, almost as if it were a bottom coil cartomizer.  Throat hit was about average, and the flavor was passable as well, about on par with a stock clearomizer as well.

I don’t really think performance is actually the point of the Juice Jar.  The performance isn’t terrible once you get it working right, it’s just that the primary point of this thing is to hold lots of juice and to make putting said juice inside the tank incredibly simple.  I’m also not sure if durability is the main focus of the Jar either.

While not totally flimsy, the Juice Jar is clearly not something you are going to put in your pocket.  Beside the obvious point that it’s mondo huge, I also think it would be pretty easy for the gaskets to slip if this think is jostled too much.  The risk is even greater considering  you’re talking about dumping such a good amount of juice all over the place if it does give out.

That’s a little better

Too Long; Didn’t Read
The Juice Jar is an interesting twist on the CE2 cartomizer tank mod.  The hand made device boasts an impressive 9ml carrying capacity along with a screw top lid making it easy to get 9ml of e-liquid into the Jar.  While billed as a device for newbies, it likely will work better in the hands of an experienced vaper.  The easy to replace CE2 engine is a nice bonus, but might come at the cost of portability.

Pros:

• Standard CE2 guts fit without cutting
• Screw top lid for easy filling and emptying
• HUGE capacity
• Easy to disassemble/reassemble for rebuilding