Are they worth buying?
Motley Brew is a premium e-juice mixer without the excessive price-tag. With a rock n’ roll style, some interesting flavor combinations and a cloud-chaser friendly 70 % VG mix, the brand has a lot going for it.
Although not every flavor is a knockout, there are plenty of delicious flavors in the line-up, particularly Brews Brothers and Grateful Red, and almost every juice has the potential to be somebody’s favorite.
At just $13.99 for a 30 ml bottle, considering the high quality of the juices, they’re definitely worth trying out, and you’ll probably find some personal all-day vapes among the line-up. Then all you have to do is kick back, fill up a tank and puff out delicious clouds of vapor to the strains of some classic rock.
Full review
It’s not very often you come across an e-juice brand best enjoyed while listening to hair metal and wearing spandex, but Motley Brew is just that brand. With a rock n’ roll style, juice names referencing songs, bands and other rock-related stuff, and six unique juice flavors to choose from, the brand definitely does enough to stand out among the competition. The price is pretty good too, at just $13.99 for a 30 ml bottle, but does the juice itself do enough to make it worthwhile? Is the hard-rocking style all the brand has going for it, or do they have some hard-hitting flavors too? We’ve tested the e-juices out for our Motley Brew review to find out.
Packaging and Design
Motley Brew’s bottles look great, with the purple caps matching the logo and each flavor’s name backed by a unique color underneath it. The logo looks pretty cool, with “Motley Brew” in white letters backed by a purple banner and a symbol that’s like a cross between a skull and the suit of spades from a deck of cards. The nicotine level is shown below the name of the flavor, the ingredients are listed on the left of the logo and flavor name and all the expected warnings are on the left. The overall look is great, with the whole line-up having a cohesive look but the different colors for each flavor helping you differentiate between them at a glance.
The bottles from Motley Brew are all glass, and include child-proof caps and dripper caps. This is everything you want when it comes to packaging, so there are no complaints here at all. The child-proof caps work well too – they come open easily when you push down as you twist, but spins without opening if you don’t push down.
Overall, Motley Brew has done a great job in this department, the bottles are high-quality and the design is eye-catching without being overstated.
Mixing Options
The juices from Motley Brew all come in a 30/70 PG/VG ratio, offering a fairly VG-heavy e-liquid mix but still balancing the viscosity out with a touch of PG and offering a small throat hit too. The vapor production is excellent thanks to the higher VG mixes, and although some vapers may prefer some options for PG/VG ratio, the chosen mix will suit most tastes.
For nicotine, you have the option of 0, 3, 6, 12 and 18 mg/ml, offering a wide enough range of options for everyone from just-switching smokers through to long-term vapers consuming much less nicotine. Although some may want a 24 mg/ml juice, this isn’t as likely to be needed with modern devices, so the fact that it’s missing isn’t much of a downside at all. Overall, Motley Brew does a good job in this department.
Motley Brew Review – The Flavors
Pearadise City – Rating 4/5
Accuracy: This juice aims to take you down to the place where the pears are green and the girls are pretty, with a mixture of pear, Japanese lychee and cream. You definitely pick up the pear clearly, with a notable hit of the fruity flavor on the inhale, but the lychee following it up closely and adding more sweetness and a unique, fragrant touch to the flavor. The cream is there to pull everything together, adding a smoothness to the taste and piling on yet more sweetness.
Overall: This is definitely an enjoyable flavor, but it may be a bit more candy-sweet than you’d be expecting. This could be a good thing or a bad thing, depending on your preferences. For me, the mixture of the unique fragrant notes and intense sweetness reminds me of a British candy called a pear drop, which is OK but I would have preferred a more natural, fruity sweetness. That said, the juice is still delicious, and I’ll happily make my way through the bottle, even though it isn’t my favorite from the bunch.
Froot Fighters – Rating 4.5/5
Accuracy: This is a melon medley e-juice, with watermelon, honeydew, cantaloupe and an extra secret ingredient thrown in for good measure. The melon definitely comes through in this juice, with the honeydew taste probably being the most prominent, but touches of cantaloupe and watermelon being detectable too. The mystery component will have to remain a mystery, unfortunately, because I can’t pick it out of the mix.
Overall: This is a really excellent juice. The melon mix works wonderfully, having a fairly realistic flavor but again with a sort of candy-sweetness to it, though less pronounced than in Pearadise City, and working a lot better. The flavor also has a slightly perfume-y aroma to it, which isn’t that pleasant, but tends to work well for realism in melon juices, and it’s subtle enough that it doesn’t ruin the overall flavor of the juice. Froot Fighters is a great flavor, overall – one to try if you’re a fan of fruity juices.
Grateful Red – Rating 4.5/5
Accuracy: This is a very busy flavor, mixing granny smith and red apples, brown sugar, Tahitian vanilla custard and caramelized sugar – a kind of psychedelic, Grateful Dead-style fusion of fruit and dessert flavors. The result is definitely interesting. The vanilla custard and sugars come through most strongly on the inhale, without the eggy note you get from many custards and the subtle vanilla blending well with the sugars. The apple elements play out in the background, giving the flavor a touch more character but primarily playing a supporting role in the juice.
Overall: Grateful Red is hard not to like. The dessert elements are prominent enough to give the juice a vanilla custard character, but subtle enough to avoid flavor fatigue after you’re vaping it for a while. They probably gave the apple elements too much prominence in the description, though, so don’t go into it expecting a fruity flavor – it’s a mellow dessert flavor with a touch of apple for good measure. This is an all-day vape for me, with the soothing sweetness to the flavor making it an easy one to keep coming back to.
Almost Famous – Rating 3/5
Accuracy: This is a cake, blueberry and praline pecan e-juice, topped off with a touch of powdered sugar and named after a film about a young budding journalist who gets a job writing for Rolling Stone. The execution here is pretty good: the cake is the main flavor you pick up, with touches of well-executed blueberry topping it off. The pecan praline isn’t easy to pick out of the mix, but seems to blend in with the cake and is a little outshined by the blueberry.
Overall: This juice isn’t the best of the bunch from Motley Brew, sadly, with the flavor sounding delicious conceptually, but falling a little flat in practice. The dominance of the cake seems to be the downfall of the juice – it’s a pleasant flavor but doesn’t quite manage to be delicious on its own. The blueberry could have given the flavor a bit of a reason to recommend it, but it’s too subtle to carry the flavor alone. The juice doesn’t taste bad, but it doesn’t taste good enough to really get excited about.
Old Fashioned R & R – Rating 3.5/5
Accuracy: This is a barrel-aged premium whisky juice, with touches of citrus and topped off with sugar, styled after the cocktail of the same name. The whisky flavor is really well-captured; it tastes eerily accurate, with woody undertones and some lightness from the citrus giving it a bit of bite. The juice itself actually smells like whisky, and you get very distinct alcohol notes from the juice. The sugar just serves to round out the flavor a little, taking the edge off the characteristic whisky taste and helping the whole thing go down more easily.
Overall: This is a tough one to call. On the one hand, it’s a very well replicated whisky flavor – easily the most accurate I’ve tried – but on the other, it’s hard to enjoy unless you’re a big fan of whiskies. I’m a fan of whisky, so I enjoy the flavor, but overall I would say I’d rather drink it than vape the flavor, however well captured it is. However, if you’re interested in a whisky-flavored juice, I’d say this is a fantastic option – authentic, well-balanced and with just a hint of sweetness to top it all off. Not one for me, but it could easily be for you. It won an award at Vape Summit 2015 for best cocktail and drink e-juice, so many vapers clearly love it.
Brews Brothers – Rating 5/5
Accuracy: This is another interesting flavor combination from Motley Brew, with European espresso, Madagascar vanilla bean ice cream, sweet tobacco and a touch of butterscotch. That’s a lot of flavor components to hit on, but the juice makes a valiant effort. The espresso takes center-stage in the flavor, and it’s exceptionally well-captured, to the point where it comes across as an espresso rather than just a generic coffee. The ice cream adds the softness of vanilla and contributes to the sweetness of the flavor, and notes of butterscotch poke through the mix occasionally too. The sweet tobacco isn’t as easy to pick up, but really that’s not much of a bad thing.
Overall: This is my favorite juice of the bunch from Motley Brew, a beautifully-blended coffee flavor with plenty of extra touches to put it a step above most others in the same flavor category. The ice cream and butterscotch turn the already delicious coffee flavor into something exceptional, adding just the right amount of sweetness and balancing out the stronger flavors nicely. It might not be to everyone’s tastes (some vapers don’t really like coffee juices), but if the flavor appeals to you it’s definitely one to pick up – for me it’s an all day vape.