XQS The Menthol Nicotine Pouches

The listing: XQS The Menthol

The brand's fourteen listings sit together on the XQS page, and by flavour this can is filed on our mint shelf, which at a hundred and forty-eight cans is the largest flavour shelf we run. The full catalogue is there if you would rather see everything at once.

The definite article in the name — "The Menthol" rather than simply "Menthol" — is the manufacturer's own styling and we reproduce it as given. It is not a claim about anything and we are not going to read meaning into it. Brands name their own products and we copy the names across exactly as they appear, including the ones that scan oddly in English.

Menthol as a taste, and what the catalogue calls it

Menthol is a specific character within the broad family of cool flavours, and it is worth distinguishing from its neighbours because people use these words interchangeably and they are not quite interchangeable.

Spearmint is the softest and sweetest of the cool notes — rounded, herbal, closer to a garden mint than anything clinical. Peppermint is sharper and more forward, with a confectionery association for most British palates. Menthol is the coolest and the cleanest-edged of the three: less about herbal sweetness and more about the sensation of cold itself, with a directness that reads as brisk rather than sweet. It is the least decorated of the cool flavours, which is precisely why some people prefer it.

In a dry pouch that character comes through as a cool note arriving early and holding for a long stretch, generally with less sweetness behind it than a mint-and-fruit listing would carry. There is no fruit element declared on this can and none implied by the name. It is a single-direction flavour, and single-direction flavours tend to be the ones people return to when they want something that does not change much from one pouch to the next.

Aroma from an opened can is present but restrained. Cool flavours are a little more noticeable to the nose than fruit ones across this format, but nobody across a room is going to know you have opened a can.

Now the catalogue caveat, which on this listing is a substantial one. We hold exactly one flavour tag against this can, and the word is "mint" — not menthol. There is no menthol heading anywhere in our system. That single word covers this can, every spearmint can, every peppermint can and every frost-and-ice variant we stock, all hundred and forty-eight of them, without distinguishing between any of them.

That has a direct consequence for anyone browsing. Clew Cool Mint at £39.90, Denssi Cold Mint at £39.90, Edge Mint at £14.95 and Klint Avalanche Mint at £36.90 are all in stock and all carry the identical single tag that this can carries. Our catalogue records nothing whatsoever that would let us tell you how any of them differ in taste from this one or from each other. They share one word. That is the whole of the relationship our data can describe, and anyone who claims more is filling in a blank rather than reporting something.

If menthol specifically is what you want rather than cool flavours in general, reading product names across the shelf is the reliable method here. The filter will not do it for you, and we would rather tell you that than let you work through a hundred and forty-eight cans assuming the shelf means more than it does.

The format itself, in detail

Since the mechanics of this product are simple, most pages give them a paragraph. They are worth more than that, because the format is the thing people are actually buying and the details are what separate a comfortable experience from an awkward one.

What a pouch is, physically. It is a small sealed portion with a soft outer wrap, sold loose in a can. It is not a lozenge, it does not dissolve and it is not chewed or swallowed. It goes into the mouth whole, sits in one place, and comes out whole. Nothing is consumed in the sense of disappearing.

Where it goes. Between the lip and the gum. The overwhelming majority of people settle on a spot under the upper lip, off to one side rather than dead centre, which keeps it clear of where the lip naturally presses. Some people use the lower lip instead and find it equally comfortable. There is no correct answer and it is worth trying both before deciding the format does not suit you.

How it should sit. Seated properly, a pouch is not something you are aware of after the first minute or two. Seated badly — too far forward, or right at the centre of the lip — it will shift when you talk and will sit where you can feel it constantly. If a pouch keeps migrating, the fix is almost always placement rather than product, and moving it further back and further to one side solves it in most cases. This is genuinely the only skill the format asks of anyone, and it takes two or three attempts to acquire.

Portion size. XQS uses a slim format rather than a bulky one. Slim matters mainly for comfort and for how much of a presence the pouch has under the lip: a slimmer portion sits in a smaller space and is less noticeable to the wearer and to anybody looking. We do not publish a millimetre measurement or a weight for the pouch and we are not going to estimate either — the can carries whatever the manufacturer declares.

The first minute. There is a settling period. A freshly placed pouch usually feels more present than it will a minute later, both in position and in flavour, and this is normal across the format rather than particular to any can. People who try the format once and dislike the first thirty seconds sometimes conclude it is not for them on the basis of the least representative part of the experience.

How long people keep one in. This varies enormously between individuals and there is no correct duration. Some remove one after ten minutes, some after considerably longer. The pouch gives no signal that it is finished — it does not shrink, change temperature or announce anything — so the decision is always the user's. We are not going to suggest a length of time, because that is advice about your own use of nicotine and it is not a shop's place to give it. Anyone offering you a recommended duration is going beyond what they can responsibly say.

One at a time. The format is designed around a single portion. That is worth stating simply because the cans hold many and the question occurs to people.

Eating, drinking and talking. All three are compatible with a seated pouch and none require anything from you. Hot drinks tend to flatten a cool note temporarily — a mouthful of tea will knock the menthol back for a minute or so, after which it generally returns. Cold water has much less effect, and on a cool flavour specifically it can make the note read more forward for a moment. None of that is a fault; it is ordinary behaviour of taste.

Taking it out. It comes out the way it went in, whole, between finger and thumb. There is no residue to manage and nothing to rinse.

The lid and the catch. The can has two parts: the main well holding unused pouches, and a shallow compartment moulded into the lid for used ones. The catch exists so that a used pouch has somewhere to go when there is no bin within reach. It holds a few, not many, and the discipline is to empty it at the first bin rather than the last — a catch lid left loaded for a week is thoroughly unpleasant to open, and it is far and away the most common complaint anyone makes about this format.

Disposal. Used pouches go in a bin, in general waste. Not down a sink, not down a toilet, not out of a car window, not into a hedge. The lid compartment is a holding bay with a short lease and not a disposal route. Empty cans go wherever your local authority directs plastic, and with ten of them you will be doing that ten times.

The can in a pocket. It is a flat, wide cylinder rather than a tall one, which is why it disappears into a coat or jeans pocket without creating a bulge. The lid latches rather than resting, so a can can go into a bag sideways without redistributing its contents. Construction is rigid enough to survive being sat on.

What the format asks of you overall. Almost nothing, which is the honest summary and the reason the format has the shape it does. There is no device to maintain, nothing to charge or replace, no consumable beyond the pouches themselves, and no learning curve past the placement. Compared to nearly anything else sold in a shop, the total operating burden is closing a lid and emptying a compartment.

Where the format does ask something. Two places, both minor and both real. The first is the catch compartment, already covered, which punishes neglect more than anything else about the product. The second is that the format is genuinely undramatic — there is no ritual to it, nothing to do with your hands, no moment of operation. Some people find that the whole point and some find it oddly featureless. That is a matter of preference and not something we would try to argue anybody out of.

A note on the first can from a roll. When ten cans arrive at once there is a temptation to open two or three, which is worth resisting for no more exciting a reason than that an open can loses its edge faster than a closed one. One in circulation, the rest sealed, is the arrangement that gets the most out of a pack that may be in use for months.

And the thing nobody mentions. The format is quiet. No click, no rattle, nothing that carries across a room. That is a description of the object and not a suggestion about where to use it — where you may use anything is a matter for whoever owns the building, runs the service or employs you, and their rules are theirs to state, not ours to interpret.

11mg, 17mg, and the trouble with reading numbers

This listing offers two declared figures, and the gap between them — six milligrams — is wider than the gap on most listings that offer a choice at all. That makes this the page on which it matters most to be precise about what these numbers are.

A declared figure is the nicotine content per pouch as the manufacturer states it. We record what they declare and display it unchanged. That is the entire nature of the number: it is label information, published so that you can see it.

Here is what it is not, and each of these is worth its own line.

It is not a dose. Nothing about a declared figure prescribes, implies or recommends an amount for anybody. It describes what is in a pouch according to a label, not what anyone should use.

It is not a description of an effect. We do not describe effects, in any direction, for any product on this site. A number on a lid tells you about the label and nothing about experience.

It is not reliably comparable between brands. Manufacturers measure and declare on their own bases. Two cans from two makers showing the same figure are two labels that happen to agree, which is a far weaker statement than two products that behave alike. When we group cans into bands, we are grouping declared figures, not certifying equivalence.

And it is emphatically not a quality ranking. This is the one that needs saying most bluntly. A larger number on a lid is not a better can. It is a larger number on a lid. The shelves run from the medium band through the strong band to the extra-strong band, and that arrangement exists as navigation — a way for somebody who already knows the range they are looking in to get there in one click. It is not a staircase, nobody is being invited to climb it, and there is no achievement located at the top of it. A shop that presents its strength bands as a progression is selling something other than information.

We cannot advise you on which strength suits you. Not on this page, not by email, not on the phone, and not if you press. Choosing a nicotine strength is a decision about your own use of an addictive substance, and it is not one a retailer is able or permitted to make for anybody. On a listing where the two options are six milligrams apart, that limitation is more conspicuous than usual, and we are not going to paper over it with a hint. The figures are printed on the page and on the can. The choice is yours, it stays yours, and it should be made with the actual numbers in view rather than with adjectives.

One point of fact worth having, offered neutrally: the two options on this listing cost exactly the same. £39.90 buys ten cans either way. That means price cannot inform this decision, which removes the one variable a retailer can legitimately comment on and leaves us with nothing further to add. Where a listing offers two figures at one price, the larger number is not better value in any meaningful sense — you are not getting more of something desirable for free, you are getting a different label.

It is worth spending one more paragraph on why our strength bands exist at all, given how much of this section is spent warning against reading them as a ranking. The answer is unglamorous: with hundreds of cans on the site, a shopper who already knows roughly what they are looking for needs some way to narrow the list that is not scrolling through everything. Grouping by declared figure is the only grouping the data supports, so that is what we built. The bands are an index, in the way that a library's shelf numbers are an index — useful for finding a thing, silent on whether the thing is any good, and carrying no implication that the higher numbers are the better section.

A related point about arithmetic, since this listing invites it. Six milligrams looks like a large gap next to eleven, and it is tempting to convert that into a percentage and treat the result as meaningful. We would gently suggest not doing that. A ratio between two declared figures is a ratio between two label statements, and inherits every limitation those statements carry. It is not a measure of anything you will experience, and constructing one is a way of generating false confidence out of numbers that were never intended to support it.

Where this can sits in the brand's range

Fourteen XQS listings sit on the brand shelf here, and all of them are £39.90. A flat price across a whole range is unusual on this site and it makes the brand straightforward to compare within: flavour and declared figure are the only two variables, and both are printed.

The range splits broadly into a cool half and a fruit half. The Menthol belongs firmly to the cool half and is the most single-minded listing in it — no fruit element, no sweetness on top, just the one direction.

The closest relative within the brand is XQS Arctic Freeze, which is also a cool listing and is recorded at a single declared figure of 11.2mg — which places it very close to this can's lower option on the label, though as set out above, a close figure is not a close product. XQS Blueberry Mint, at 8mg and 10mg, brings a berry note into the cool half and sits lower on the ladder. XQS Citrus Cooling does the same with citrus instead of berry, also at 8mg and 10mg.

On the fruit half, and a long way from this can in every respect, XQS Berrynana Twist at 8mg and 10mg is the sweetest listing in the range, XQS Black Cherry at 8mg is darker and less sugary, and XQS Cola Lime at 8mg is the outlier that belongs to neither half — a cola note with a citrus edge, and the only one of its kind the brand has on our shelves.

A structural note worth having: most of the XQS range sits lower on the strength ladder than this listing does. If you have arrived here from one of the brand's other cans, you are looking at a page filed on a different band from the one they sit on, and that difference is on the label rather than in anything we can describe. Read the figures rather than assuming a brand is uniform.

Cool cans we stock alongside it

The mint shelf is the largest we run, so there is no shortage of company. What follows are the nearest neighbours our catalogue offers, with prices, and one genuinely useful piece of news: every one of them is in stock at the time of writing, which is not something we can say on most pages of this site.

Cuba Ninja Ice Cool at £39.90 and Elf Bar Cool Storm at £29.90 are both cool-direction cans from larger ranges. Fumi Fiery Mint at £27.90 approaches the cool family from a different angle again, as its name suggests. At the cheaper end, Nordic Spirit Max Frosty Mint is a single can at £4.49 — which, at a fraction of the price of one can from this pack, is the obvious way to test a cool direction without committing forty pounds to it.

Two neighbours sit outside the cool family but appear here because they share shelves with this can: the 77 VB Edition Mini Arctic Berry at £39.90 and Killa Banana Ice at £33.50, both in stock. Neither is a menthol can, and both are linked because they are genuine catalogue neighbours rather than because we think they taste like this one.

For a wider browse, the Pablo range and the Cuba range are the two largest brand shelves we run and will give you considerably more spread in both flavour and declared figure than any one brand page can.

Storage and looking after a roll

Dry pouches are undemanding. Lid properly closed, ordinary room temperature, out of direct sunlight. That is the specification in full.

Heat is the one thing to avoid on purpose — a dashboard in summer, a windowsill, the shelf above a radiator. Sustained warmth is unkind to a flavoured product over time, and cool flavours are no more robust than fruit ones in that respect. This is a point about flavour holding its character and not a point about safety; we make no point about safety in any direction.

With a ten-can pack the sensible arrangement is one can in circulation and nine put away somewhere cool, dry and dark, rather than the whole sleeve travelling about in a bag. Unopened and properly closed is where a flavour keeps best, and a roll bought today may still be in use months from now — which is exactly why storage is worth a minute's thought on a roll when it barely matters on a single can.

Refrigeration comes up more often on cool-flavoured cans than on fruit ones, for obvious reasons. There is no requirement and we make no recommendation either way. If you do it, the practical effect is simply that the can and the pouches come out cold, which some people prefer on a menthol can and others find makes no difference worth the fridge space.

Keep the pack out of reach of children and away from pets, as with anything in the house meant only for adults. A sleeved column of ten cans is conspicuous on a worktop and belongs in a cupboard.

What there is to decide here

Two things, and only one of them is a real choice.

The pack size is fixed: ten cans, £39.90, with no smaller option recorded for this flavour. If that is more than you want of something you have not tried, the answer is not on this page — it is on the cheaper single cans linked above, one of which is under five pounds.

The declared figure is the actual decision: 11mg or 17mg, at the same price. We have set out at length what those numbers are and are not, and we have nothing further to add, because everything further would be advice we are not in a position to give. The figures are published. The decision is yours.

Ordering, delivery and age verification

Checkout works as you would expect and £39.90 covers ten cans at whichever declared figure you select.

This is an age-restricted product sold to adults aged 18 or over. Age verification is part of the order process, and ID may be requested on delivery — a courier is entitled to refuse to hand the parcel over if the person answering the door cannot produce it. Worth making sure somebody who can will be there.

We deliver to UK addresses. Current timings, carriers and charges appear at checkout, which knows today's arrangements in a way that a description written in advance cannot.

If a pack arrives damaged or an order is wrong, contact us rather than putting up with it. A scuffed sleeve with sound cans inside is cosmetic; a split can, or a declared figure on the lid that does not match what you ordered, is not, and we want to hear about the second kind.

Getting back to this page

Three routes lead here: the strong band by declared figure, the XQS brand page, and the mint flavour shelf. The brand page is much the quickest, since fourteen listings can be read through in under a minute, whereas the mint shelf runs to a hundred and forty-eight cans and — as set out above — will not distinguish this one from any other cool can on your behalf.

Shelf filters stack, so a combination like "mint, in stock" will cut even that long list down to something readable in a sitting. The strength bands are linked throughout this page if you want to look at what sits above or below this listing on the label.

Questions people send us

Is this menthol or mint?

The name on the can says menthol and our catalogue files it under a single tag, "mint", because we hold no menthol heading. Those two facts sit slightly awkwardly together and we would rather show you that than smooth it over. The label is the authority on what is in the can; our tag is only a filing decision, and on this listing it is a coarse one.

How does it compare to the other mint cans you sell?

Our catalogue cannot tell you, and nor can we. A hundred and forty-eight cans carry the same single tag, including every one of the cool-direction neighbours linked from this page, and our data records nothing at all that separates them on taste. Reading the names is the only reliable method on this site. Anyone offering you a ranking has invented it.

What is the difference between 11mg and 17mg?

Six milligrams on the declared figure, and nothing else our catalogue records — same flavour, same ten cans, same £39.90. We are not going to describe what that difference amounts to in use, because that would be a claim about how nicotine affects a person, and we do not make claims of that kind in either direction.

Should I get the 17mg?

We cannot tell you and we will not guess. Choosing a nicotine strength is a decision about your own use of an addictive substance, and no retailer is able or permitted to make it for you. The larger figure is not the better product and is not better value despite costing the same — it is a different number on a label, and that is genuinely all we can say about it.

How many pouches are in each can?

We do not hold that figure for this listing and we are not going to estimate it. Our data records the pack as ten cans and nothing more granular. The count is printed on the can itself, which is the authoritative source, and a guess from a product page has a way of ending up in somebody's arithmetic.

How long should I keep a pouch in?

That is not a question we can answer for you. Practice varies widely between individuals and the pouch gives no signal that it is finished, so the decision is always the user's. Suggesting a duration would be advice about your own use of nicotine, and it is outside what a shop should be saying to anybody.

Can I buy a single can?

Not of this product. XQS The Menthol is listed here only as a ten-can pack at £39.90, and no single-can option is recorded for it. Several cool-direction single cans are linked from this page at a fraction of the price, including one under five pounds, if you want to test the direction before committing.

Can I mix the two strengths in one pack?

No. You select one declared figure and all ten cans carry it. There is no mixed roll. Buying both would mean buying two packs — twenty cans and a substantial outlay for what amounts to a comparison.

Why is this on the strong shelf when other XQS cans are not?

Because our bands are assigned from declared figures, and this listing's figures are higher than most of the brand's. That is a filing consequence of what is printed on the label, nothing more. It does not mean this can is a different kind of product from the rest of the range, and it is not a comment on any of them.

Where is it made?

We do not hold that information and we will not invent it. Whatever the manufacturer declares about origin is printed on the can, and that is the source to trust. Anything we wrote here would be a guess dressed as a fact.

Is the flavour the same in both strengths?

As far as our catalogue records, yes — one flavour, one tag, two declared figures. Our data holds nothing suggesting the flavour differs between the two options. If you ever find a can that tastes obviously unlike the rest of a pack, that is worth telling us about rather than shrugging at.

What do I do with a used pouch?

It goes in a bin, in general waste. The compartment in the lid is there to hold used pouches until you reach one — a holding bay, not a disposal method. Empty it promptly rather than eventually. Nothing goes down a sink, out of a window or onto the ground.

Compliance

This is an age-restricted nicotine product for adults. We sell it only to customers who are 18+ and who already use nicotine. It is not sold to anyone under that age, and it is not offered or marketed to people who do not already use nicotine products.

Nicotine is an addictive substance. We state that plainly rather than burying it, and it applies to this listing exactly as it applies to every comparable product on this site — including, and especially worth noting on a page that discusses higher declared figures, at every point on the ladder.

This product is not a licensed stop-smoking medicine and is not offered, described or intended as one. It is not intended for non-smokers, non-nicotine-users, under-18s, or anyone who is pregnant or breastfeeding. We make no health, medical or cessation claim about it in any direction.

Age verification forms part of the checkout process, and ID may be requested on delivery; a courier may refuse to hand over an order if nobody present can show it. Keep the product out of reach of children.

The short version

XQS The Menthol is ten cans at £39.90, offered at 11mg or 17mg for the same money, a single-direction cool flavour with no fruit element, filed on our shelves under one word — "mint" — that it shares with a hundred and forty-seven other cans and which tells you nothing about how any of them differ.

The two declared figures are the only real decision on the page, and it is not one we can help with beyond printing the numbers clearly. If you are not yet sure this direction is for you, the single cans on the cool shelf start at well under five pounds and will answer the question for a great deal less than a roll costs.