Vaporesso iTank, which DIY e-liquid suits this tank
A home-mixed recipe is judged in a tank, and the tank you pick weighs on the verdict. Fitted to plenty of mods, the Vaporesso iTank readily ends up on a mixer’s bench, used to taste the latest bottle direct to lung. Shop listings cover the glass, the airflow and the coils, yet none of them says a word about what goes inside. Ratio, flavour strength and cleaning between recipes are all left to you.
Vaporesso iTank and DIY, the short answer
Yes, a Vaporesso iTank handles home-mixed e-liquid, as long as the recipe is built for it. Its GTi coils are mesh heads designed for direct lung vaping, from 30 to 90 W depending on the resistance. They call for a liquid rich in vegetable glycerine, a flavour strength suited to warm, generous vapour, and a thorough rinse every time the recipe changes. A 50/50 mixed for a tight-draw pod can taste flat in it, and the recipe is not to blame.
What Vaporesso’s sheet says, and what it leaves out
Before measuring anything, it pays to start from the maker’s figures. They set the working wattages, and so the heat the recipe will have to cope with.
Four GTi coils and their wattages
Four GTi mesh heads appear on the official iTank T sheet. The 0.15 ohm runs from 75 to 90 W, the 0.2 ohm from 60 to 75 W, the 0.4 ohm from 50 to 60 W and the 0.5 ohm from 30 to 40 W. In the box you get the 0.2 ohm, already fitted, and the 0.4 ohm.
Vaporesso highlights COREX cotton described as more heat-resistant, and a system that returns condensation to the heating area to reduce leaks from the base. Neither claim tells you which liquid to use.
No ratio published
This is what matters at the bench. Vaporesso’s product page gives no recommended PG/VG ratio, and the shop listings checked for this article say nothing more. A mixer has to work out the right balance from the coil itself, which is what the next section does.
Which PG/VG ratio for a Vaporesso iTank
The usual sub-ohm rule applies here, and it is easier to grasp with numbers. Two things count, the thickness of the base and the temperature of the room where you fill.
Glycerine, around 25 times thicker than PG
Reference values published for the two compounds give 1.49 Pa·s for glycerine and 0.058 Pa·s for propylene glycol, at 20 °C. The ratio comes out at around 25. A base rich in vegetable glycerine therefore moves slowly through the cotton, which suits a large mesh head driven hard, vaporising a lot on each puff without flooding.
In practice, a VG-leaning ratio of around 70/30 is the usual starting point for this kind of coil. A 50/50 still works on the 0.5 ohm, the gentlest of the four, but it wicks faster and can encourage gurgling on the lower resistances.
A cold workshop changes priming
The viscosity of glycerine depends heavily on temperature. According to a table of physical properties for liquid glycerine, its kinematic viscosity is 3.00 x 10⁻³ m²/s at 10 °C against 1.18 x 10⁻³ m²/s at 20 °C, roughly 2.5 times higher at 10 °C.
A high-VG bottle kept in a garage or shed over winter therefore soaks the wick far more slowly. The 5 to 10 minute wait that shops advise after filling a new coil may fall short in a cold room. Letting the bottle warm up before filling reduces the risk of a first dry hit wrongly blamed on the recipe.
Flavouring for 55 or 65 W
A recipe’s flavour percentage does not carry over as it is from a pod to a sub-ohm tank. Wattage and vapour volume change how the notes come across, and not always in the expected direction.
On the 0.2 ohm, with a stated sweet spot of 65 W, and on the 0.4 ohm, rated at 55 W, a light fruit recipe can seem watered down, while bakery and toasted notes can come forward. Rather than overloading from the start, mix two versions of the same bottle, one or two points apart, and taste them at the same wattage. Our guide to flavour concentrate percentage walks through the maths.
A recipe that seems mute in the Vaporesso iTank is not necessarily under-flavoured. Wattage set too high or too low, or a bottle that is too young, produce the same symptom, and the recipe deserves a second chance before it gets changed.
Switching recipes without ghost flavours
A tank remembers the last liquid it held. On a tank used to test several recipes, that is the first trap at the bench.
Glass and O-rings
The iTank T box includes a spare glass tube and two O-rings, the iTank 2 box a glass and three O-rings. The glass rinses clean easily. O-rings have a reputation for holding on to strong flavours such as menthol, aniseed or cinnamon, and they are often what brings a ghost note into the next recipe. Keeping one set of O-rings for menthol recipes and another for the rest is a simple fix.
One coil per flavour family
The cotton in a GTi head never really rinses out. A sweet recipe, or one heavy on bakery concentrates, usually gunks the wick faster than a clean fruit, and the residue colours the next tests. Keeping one head for each broad family, fruit, bakery, cool, lets you compare bottles without the previous one creeping into the next.
A test bottle sized for 2 ml
In the UK, refillable tanks are capped at 2 ml, and nicotine-containing refill bottles, nicotine shots included, at 10 ml and 20 mg/ml. Vaporesso lists a 2 ml TPD version for both the iTank T and the iTank 2, alongside the 6 ml and 3 ml versions of the iTank T and the 8 ml version of the iTank 2.
At the bench, that smaller capacity is almost an advantage. A 10 ml test bottle fills the tank several times over several days, which leaves time to taste the recipe at different stages of its steep. Our piece on steeping e-liquid explains why a bottle is rarely judged on the day it is mixed.
Which iTank for which workshop
The Vaporesso iTank range is not a single tank, and each model suits a type of recipe. Your choice depends on what you mix most often.
VG-rich recipes, big vapour
The iTank T and the iTank 2 share the same GTi heads. The first draws air from the top through a marked ring, the second opens with a press for filling. If you mostly mix 70/30 bakery or fruit recipes, either will do, and the 0.4 ohm, rated at 55 W, runs cooler than the factory-fitted 0.2 ohm.
50/50 recipes, tighter draw
The iTank X runs on GTX heads, including a 1.2 ohm rated for 8 to 12 W and a 0.6 ohm mesh for 20 to 26 W. Those modest wattages suit a 50/50 better, and the 1.2 ohm aims at a far more restrained vape than the GTi heads. It fits recipes built for discreet vaping more closely.
A fixed-setting test bench
To compare recipes against each other, the model matters less than a wattage that stays put from one test to the next. A mod adjustable to the watt, like the one covered in our read of the Lost Vape Centaurus M200, lets any iTank serve as a test bench.
FAQ
These answers deal with bench habits that the sections above do not cover.
Can you fill the iTank straight after mixing a recipe?
Yes, the tank comes to no harm. The recipe, however, has not finished settling, and that first test tells you more about the flavour percentage than about the final profile.
Should you shake the bottle before every fill?
It is a good idea with a home-mixed recipe, especially a VG-rich one. Some denser concentrates settle at the bottom of the bottle, and filling without a shake can leave the tank less flavoured than planned.
Prime a new coil with the test recipe or a plain base?
With the test recipe. A plain base dilutes the first puffs and skews the verdict. Placing a few drops straight onto the cotton through the coil ports, before filling the tank, speeds up the soak.
How do you spot a gunked GTi coil?
A caramel or burnt note that settles in, thinner vapour at the same wattage and browned cotton visible through the ports are the usual signs. Swapping the head then stops the fault being pinned on the recipe.
Does a coloured concentrate stain the glass or the wick?
The glass cleans up, the wick does not. Dark concentrates, coffee or caramel for instance, brown the cotton faster, which makes the colour of the head a less reliable sign of wear.
Vaporesso iTank, build the recipe before judging it
The Vaporesso iTank asks nothing unusual of a mixer, but its sheet does not help. A glycerine-rich ratio for the GTi heads, a bottle at room temperature before priming, a flavour strength built for warm vapour, and separate O-rings and coils for each flavour family make this tank a usable test vessel.
A recipe judged in a poorly prepared Vaporesso iTank is a recipe misjudged. The same goes for every tool at the bench, from the tank to the graduated syringe.
Related reading
Editorial content for adult readers only. Vaping products can contain nicotine, which is a highly addictive substance. Vaping products are not for sale to anyone under 18 in the UK. This article is not a buying recommendation.
