What the Heck is RY4????

As a smoker, I naturally shopped around for tobacco flavored smoke juice in the very beginning. This was back in the day before I ever heard of dessert or coffee flavored e-juice.  I was looking for a cigarette substitute.  My first e-cig looked like a cigarette afterall.  It even had a red led tip that glowed when I inhaled.

The e-cig starter kit I had purchased came with cartridges that had a tobacco flavor.  This seemed to be what I wanted.  I quickly learned that you could save a lot of money by buying smoke juice and refilling those cartridges.  So, I went shopping for e-juice expecting to find Marlboro, Winston, Camel, Kool, you name it.  I expected real cigarette flavors. 

To this day, when I look at the various e-juice menus on the many vaping sites I explore, I always check out the "Tobacco" section.  One type of tobacco that appears on maybe 95% of these sites is "RY4" or something very close to it.  I racked by brain trying to figure out what "RY4" was.  I ran through the names of all the tobacco cigarettes I could think of.  I assumed that "RY4" was a codename for one of them, much like "Cowboy" is a code name for that ever famous "cowboy cigarette."

"RY4" is short for Runyun #4.   This is a very popular e-liquid that consists of three basic flavors: a tobacco base, caramel and vanilla.  There are many versions of "RY4" out there,  each using its own version of caramel and vanilla, as well as their own tobacco base.  What they all have in common is that these three flavors are in the mix. Each manufacturer has their own blend.  One "RY4" can taste and look quite different than another "RY4."

"RY4" is part of a series of caramel, vanilla and tobacco based flavors.  On a scale of one to four, RY1 was the least sweet and RY4 was the sweetest.  RY1 was more tobacco like and RY4 was more caramel like.

Personally, I don't recall seeing RY1, RY2 or RY3 ever,  but I always see RY4. 

The Really Big RY4 Roundup