# Fighter Fuel: mapping the flavours in the range > Fighter Fuel: the top and base notes of each recipe, the pomegranate running through the whole range, and what the ratio changes on the palate. A range of more than thirty bottles is intimidating on sight. The Japanese sounding names used by **Fighter Fuel** tell you nothing about what is inside, and the product pages line up fruit lists with no hierarchy at all. The result is that people pick at random, or by label colour. Yet the collection follows a very readable aromatic logic once somebody maps it out. ## Fighter Fuel: a French range, and where that leaves a UK reader Before anything else, an honest note. **Fighter Fuel** is published by Maison Fuel and made in France, and it is not a fixture of the British high street. Search for it from the UK and the shops that come back are French and Swiss, not domestic ones. That does not make the range irrelevant here. Plenty of British vapers order continental bottles, and more usefully, the way this collection is built is a template you can apply to any iced fruit range sold in Britain. So read what follows as a profile guide rather than a shopping list. If you cannot find the bottles, the reading grid still works on the shortfills already sitting on your local shelf. ## The architecture shared by every recipe Every recipe in the collection shares one skeleton: an assembly of sweet fruits carried by a marked cooling effect. This is not a menthol range, nor a plain fruit range, but a systematic crossing of the two. The attack is always fruity and sweet, the finish always cool. Between those two fixed points, the choice of fruit is the only thing separating one bottle from another. That is why the names are so unhelpful. They vary the decoration while the structure underneath stays put, which is precisely why a map is worth having. ## Pomegranate, the invisible signature Read through the stated compositions and one fruit comes back with a regularity that is not accidental. Pomegranate appears in around a dozen recipes across the collection, usually listed second rather than first. It is not a top note. Its contribution is structural: a tannic, faintly astringent acidity, a discreet sweetness, and above all the ability to give body to fruits that lack staying power. It is what stops the strawberry or the melon evaporating at the end of the puff. That recurrence is the real house signature. Two recipes that look completely different on paper, say a mango blend and a pear and melon blend, are actually built on the same spine. Spotting that marker changes how you choose. Instead of picking blind, you work out whether you like the backbone first, then choose the top fruit that dresses it. ## Mapping the recipes by top fruit The bottles group naturally into four sets according to the fruit that opens the mouth, and that grouping makes the range navigable in about a minute. Red fruits and strawberry form the largest set. You find strawberry with pomegranate and kiwi, strawberry with watermelon and pomegranate, strawberry with dragon fruit, and strawberry with arbutus berry. The variations play on acidity: kiwi pulls it green, watermelon pulls it watery, arbutus pulls it flatter and slightly floury. A darker version built on blackcurrant, pomegranate and wild strawberry reads noticeably deeper, with a jammy sugar and a longer finish. The tropical set gathers mango with pomegranate and strawberry, pineapple with lychee, pineapple with peach, and yellow pitaya with melon and watermelon. The attack is softer and rounder here, with less cutting acidity than the previous group. Snake fruit paired with dark berries is the outlier, an unusual note somewhere between sharp apple and pineapple that throws most people on first contact. Stone and orchard fruits make up the third set. Apricot and nectarine, pear with melon and pomegranate, apple with pear and cactus: this group chases roundness rather than sharpness. The notes are more floral, the finish shorter, and the cooling reads proportionally stronger because there is less acidity to hold it in check. The last set is the odd corner. A champagne and marshmallow pairing opens on a fizzy acidity before a lactic roundness. A strawberry, marshmallow and candy floss build pushes the sugar hard. A single glacial mint bottle serves as a palate cleanser rather than a flavour in its own right. ## The ratio changes how the same recipe reads The formats in the range do not share a base, and that is the point the product pages explain least well. It is also the point a British reader should look at first, because it maps directly onto the shortfill habit. The 100 ml format comes as 30/70 in a 120 ml bottle, leaving room for two shots. The 50 ml format uses a 40/60. The nicotine salt versions sit at 40/60 in the small bottles that any nicotine containing liquid has to use in Britain. In practice the same recipe reads denser and sweeter at 30/70, and more defined and sharper at 40/60. If a bottle disappointed you in one format, it deserves a second try in the other before you write it off. The British equivalent of that arithmetic is familiar. Two 18 mg shots into a 100 ml shortfill land you around 3 mg in the finished bottle, which is the standard sub ohm arrangement here and the reason shortfills dominate that end of the market. ## Matching a recipe to a moment An iced fruit profile does not behave the same way at every pace of use, and three markers help you spread your bottles across the week rather than burning through one. The sharper pairings suit short, spaced sessions, because their liveliness stays perceptible for a long time. The round tropical pairings cope better with continuous use, since palate fatigue arrives later. The sweet recipes with a lactic note need a clean palate. Run them straight after an iced fruit and they taste flat. That same hierarchy between notes applies everywhere, a mechanism we take apart in our analysis of [ginger as a vape flavour](/uk/ginger-ginger-ginger-vape/). ## The collaborations and what they add Part of the collection comes from collaborations with another French house. Those recipes are easy to spot and offer constructions that sit slightly apart from the rest. There is a dragon fruit, red fruit and cherry blend, another pairing a lemonade with blue raspberry, and a red fruit plus menthol reading that is far sharper than anything in the main catalogue. What sets them apart is the treatment of the cold. Where the main range uses a diffuse cooling spread across the tongue, the collaborations happily switch to a frank mint note localised in the throat, which is a different sensation entirely and worth knowing about before you order. A more recent bottle leans on an energy drink note paired with dragon fruit. It is the only place in the catalogue that leaves pure fruit behind for an openly synthetic note, with that characteristic acidity and a faintly bitter edge on the finish. For a palate used to the main range, those bottles are a useful break from the shared backbone. ## Frequently asked questions ### Do these bottles contain nicotine when you buy them? The large formats are sold with none and designed to be shot. The salt versions are sold ready mixed in the small bottles that British law requires for nicotine containing liquid. ### What coil suits a 30/70 base? Glycerine heavy bases want low resistance coils and matching power. A coil designed for a mouth to lung draw will render this kind of liquid poorly whatever you do with the airflow. ### How long does an open bottle keep? Capped, kept away from light and heat, it holds its profile for several months. The cool notes are always the first thing to fade, well before the fruit does. ### Do these liquids need steeping? Ready to vape bottles are already stable. A rest is only useful after adding shots, long enough for the mixture to homogenise properly. ### Why do some recipes taste so similar? Because they share a base note. Here it is the pomegranate, and it creates a family resemblance between bottles whose top fruits are genuinely different. ## Choosing a Fighter Fuel bottle without guessing The working method is a two step one: identify the backbone that runs through the whole **Fighter Fuel** collection, then pick the top fruit that matches your tolerance for acidity. Format and ratio come third, but they are not neutral. That reading grid, a shared spine plus a variable top note, applies to most collections built by a single lab, whether or not the label says **Fighter Fuel** on it. It saves a lot of bottles opened for nothing. Apply it to anything in the [fruity section](/uk/category/fruity/), or to an iced dark fruit like [Black Dragon Ice](/uk/black-dragon-ice-vape/), and the same three questions answer themselves: what opens, what holds, what closes. Editorial content for adult readers only. Vaping products usually contain nicotine, a substance that causes addiction. Not for sale to under-18s in the United Kingdom. This article is not a buying recommendation.