Do you need help opening a vape juice bottle? Don’t be embarrassed. I’ve been there: fresh off the tobacco, shaky hands struggling to remove the lid. Get it wrong, and you can mash the nozzle, dent the bottle, or damage the cap’s screw-on thread.
So, you and I should step back and approach this bottle issue with fresh eyes. By the end of this article, nothing will stand between you and your e-liquid. We’ve even got a few special tricks for opening those particularly troublesome or faulty bottles. Here’s everything you need to know on how to open a vape juice bottle.
Why Are Vape Juice Bottles So Hard to Open?
Because if they weren’t hard to open, it would be easy for kids to get at your vape juice! Remember, nicotine is an addictive and toxic substance. So when you decide to make that kind of thing taste like sour blueberry bubblegum, it behoves you to keep grasping little curious hands away.
A bottle of e-liquid has child-proofing similar to that of bottles of bleach. However, a 10ml container can be more challenging to grip and leverage than a big old bottle of cleaning fluid, which adds to the complexity.
How to Open a Vape Juice Bottle That Won’t Open?
Here we are, students. Welcome to Opening Bottles 101. Nine times out of ten, following these steps is all it takes to unseal your vape juice bottle.
And that’s all kinds of e-juice, mind you. 10mls, 50ml and 100ml shortfills, bar salts, nic salts, and CBD e-liquids all use the same kinds of bottle and nozzle.
Step 1 – Prepare Your Bottle
Remember the Seven Ps: Prior Preparation and Planning Prevent P***-Poor Performance. You want to have steady, dry hands, a dry e-liquid bottle, and a hard surface for the bottle to stand on.
Step 2 – Push Down the Cap
Grip the bottle in one hand while pinching the lid between your thumb and forefinger using your dominant hand. Don’t throttle the poor thing, as gripping too tight might bend parts of the bottle and make it harder to seal again.
You want to push down because if turned without being pressed down, the lid will spin and spin, mocking you and any hubristic children trying to get at the juice. Pressed down, the lid will be ready to hit the ‘catch’ that leads it off the infinite loop spin.
Step 3 – Twist the Cap Counterclockwise
Remember, it works like most thread fixtures; righty-tighty, lefty-loosey. So firmly twist the bottle cap counterclockwise (left from 12, if you imagine the bottle cap as a clock face).
If this is your first time opening an e-liquid bottle, you’ll need to break the factory seal ring, which looks like the kind you get on a fizzy drink bottle. This should break open easily when you turn the lid for the first time.
Within the first turn or two, you should feel the lid go ‘down’ slightly, indicating it’s escaped the child-safety mechanism. Clever you! At this point, the lid can be spun quickly counterclockwise, leaving it ready to be plucked off to reveal the nozzle beneath.
How to Open Vape Juice Bottle to Add Nicotine?
You will need to go deeper if you’re rocking 50ml or 100ml shortfills. If you want to add nicotine shots, that is. Sadly, bottles larger than 10ml can’t legally be sold with nic already. They’d already be infused with nicotine if it wasn’t for those pesky kids!
Luckily, it’s a straightforward process, though it may require some pliers or strong tweezers.
Step 1 – Prepare Your Bottle
Like with a vape juice 10ml bottle, ensure your shortfill is dry and grippable, with equally grip-ready digits.
Step 2 – Push Down the Cap
Place your big boy bottle on a steady surface. Grip the shaft (ahem) with one hand and the cap with your other (oh my). Hey, get your head out of the gutter; we’re juicing here!
Push the cap down, allowing it to bypass the child-safety lock when you begin turning it.
Step 3 – Twist the Cap Counterclockwise
Twist the cap counterclockwise (12 > 11 > 10 > etc, if you’re unsure). If the bottle is unopened, you’ll likely hear the faint snap of the plastic strands holding the lid onto the sealing ring.
After about a half-turn, you can stop pushing down. Continued turning of the lid will cause it to come off, revealing the nozzle beneath.
Step 4 – Remove the Nozzle
Here’s one of the few places where the experience of adding nic-shots to a shortfill can vary. While vape juice bottles are primarily universal in design, the nozzle itself can sometimes be different from brand to brand.
Most of the time, it’s a simple, thin plastic proboscis standing proud in the centre of a wide plastic disc that covers the full diameter of the bottle opening. The best thing to do in this situation is to (very gently!) use a pair of pliers to grip the nozzle and pull it upwards, which should dislodge the nozzle disc.
Be careful, though. If you mash the nozzle too much, it’ll never feed juice through optimally, particularly thicker high-VG juices.
Some brands feature little nooks under part of the nozzle disc that you can get a nail or butterknife (careful!) under to wench the cap off without risking the nozzle getting flattened.
And occasionally, you’ll encounter fancy shortfills where the nozzle pops out easily from an aperture in the nozzle disc. These are rarer but wonderfully convenient.
Step 5 – Pour the Nic Shot
Now, just add the nic shots you want. An 18mg 10ml shot added to 50ml in a 60ml bottle will get you 3mg, the same as adding two shots to 100ml of juice in a 120ml bottle. If you want to make it more potent, you’ll need a bigger bottle for your juice.
You can squirt the nic shot into the shortfill through its own nozzle, but if you want to go faster, just use the same techniques listed above to get the nic shot’s nozzle off as well. This will help it glug down into the shortfill bottle quickly.
Step 6 – Steep
Steeping can make a big difference when filling a shortfill. You steep a cup of tea to make it taste better, right? Well, vape juice works similarly!
Nicotine shots are flavourless, and adding one or two to your e-liquid will have a slight dilution effect on the flavoursome e-liquid within. What happens if you add 10ml of water to a glass of cola?
You diminish the flavour, and you look weird. Why are you watering your soda?
If left overnight to breathe with the lid off in a cool, dark place, the e-liquid’s flavour concentrates will brew over the nicotine shot, restoring the strong flavour while retaining the newly added nicotine to the bottle.
Steeping isn’t essential, but take it from me when I say it’s worth doing. You bought the shortfill; don’t you want every drop to taste as good as it can? We have a helpful guide if you’re going to learn how to steep e-liquid.
What to Do if Vape Juice Bottle Cap Is Still Stuck?
So you’ve followed all the steps, but the cap just isn’t coming off? No need to panic or stomp back into town all red-faced to get your money back; there are plenty of valuable tips for those particularly irksome e-liquid bottles.
Right off the bat, I will tell you NOT to use your teeth. I’m telling you this because, while I do respect you, I’ve seen too many people try this to make assumptions. You can mess your teeth up biting down on an e-liquid bottle lid, so I’m telling you right now to NOT do that!
1. Add Extra Grip
It could just be that the lid needs a little extra firmness. Do you know how we can increase the grip? Anyone who says ‘teeth’ should leave the class immediately.
Any flexible material that can generate greater friction than your sensitive hand skin is great; cleaning gloves, a dishrag, a paper towel, or even a rubber band tied around the lid a few times. Giving it a turn with some assistance usually solves the issue!
2. Use Hot Water
If your e-liquid bottle’s lid feels overly tight and won’t budge even with some extra grip assistance, you can instead use thermal hydrodynamics.
By this, I mean holding the lidded end of the bottle under a hot tap for about a half-minute to soften and slightly expand the plastics in the lid. This usually gives you just enough wiggle room to finally get that pesky lid off.
3. Squeeze the Rigged Sides
It could be that your e-liquid bottle has a slightly more sophisticated child lock than most on the market. These bottles have ridged panels on the lid that you need to pinch before turning to avoid the infinite child-lock loop. It’s just like the grip panels on the lids of medical pill bottles.
4. The Scorched Earth Approach
Alright, the orthodox methods aren’t working. The lid is stuck, and you can’t get it past the child-lock mechanism. Grip isn’t working, and hot water isn’t helping.
Most vape retailers will likely accept the bottle as a faulty return if that’s an option for you. And if it isn’t? Grab a set of pliers, put on thick gloves, and go to town. There is no need to be gentle here; our goal is to get to that juice no matter the cost.
With enough wrenching, you’ll eventually get the plastic lid off. The downside to this method is a broken lid that you can’t use anymore.
But if you have any empty vape juice bottles, you can pour the e-liquid into a new vessel.
This is a last resort method, so be sure to try the others first!
Don’t Wrestle With Your Vape Juice Bottle
By now, you should know all the suitable methods for getting stubborn vape juice bottles open.
And hey, well done for looking up help! I’ve had dozens of people come into vape stores with mangled bottles smothered in tooth marks, expecting a refund (lol, no, you’ve half-eaten it). So it’s always great to see vapers rolling up their sleeves and handling their vaping issues directly!
If you have any questions, please leave us a comment! And if you’re in the mood for some juice and confident in your bottle-opening abilities, you can buy vape e-liquids in the UK from MIST.