Tips of the Trade: Cannabis Pro Tips

Who wants to learn about simple, yet effective tricks of the trade, important tools, cleaning solution recipes and anything else that can prove to make your stoner life easier? If you said yes, you're in the right place! I will try to cover some great "Stoner Pro Tips"

Cleaning:
If you own any kind of smoking/vaping piece it will eventually get dirty. Getting that sticky resin off of everything can be difficult with just soap and water so I’ve come up with a very good cleaning solution recipe to get the toughest gunk off of your glass. There are many products in stores but they are way overpriced considering you can make it yourself at home with a little experimenting. For those of you who don’t like to experiment, don’t worry, I’ve done the hard work for you.

Strong Cleaning Solution*:
2 parts 91-99% Isopropyl Alcohol
1 part Acetone Nail Polish Remover
Abrasive Sand or Salt or small beads/PVC Pellets
1-2 Drops of Dish Soap
*Will dissolve most plastics. Use with glass only

Alternatively, if you have acrylic pieces or ones that aren’t all that dirty, you can use Isopropyl Alcohol (91-99% preferred) and some Kosher salt or food-grade rock salt.

Now as far as cleaning tools, bristled pipe cleaners (with one tapered end if you can) are probably one of the best things to have. Bottle and bottle nipple brushes work well for some pieces as well. You can invest in special pipe cleaning brushes but a box of pipe cleaners are cheaper and much less maintenance. Q-Tips should be part of your cleaning kit, as well as small brushes like you find in with men’s electric shavers. They are great for scrubbing your grinder before you clean it and other pieces too.

Odor Control:

It should come as no surprise when I tell you that cannabis has an odor. While most cannabis enthusiasts enjoy the smell, those around you may not. There are many ways to reduce and even eliminate cannabis odors and below I will go into more detail.

Every experienced smoker will tell you to go with incense usually. However, I know this isn’t always something people like because it can be overpowering. If you’re into them though, go for it. They work great.

Oil warmers/Wax melters have got to be one of my favorite ways to eliminate odors. I love candles and good smells and this combines both into a nice table piece. You light a candle below a reservoir of scented oil and just let it burn while you smoke. The fragrance is strong but not overpowering and reduces the smell almost completely.

Air neutralizers are another way but they can be pricey. Good products like “Hogwash” have no odor to the spray and just neutralizes the smell to eliminate it. Products like this can get pricey though.

Air it out! Open your top and bottom halves of the windows in your house. The top being open allows circulation to take place. The top will suck hot air and smoke out (smoke rises) and the bottom half will bring in fresh air. This won’t eliminate odor right away but it will keep the smell from lingering after you’ve finished smoking. You can add an exhaust fan to the window as well.

Odor Eliminating Candles are another good one. They range from 4-8 dollars and are sold in smoke shops and pet stores. Pet stores have them labeled as Pet Odor Eliminators but they are the same candles. They actually work quite well to reduce the smell as you smoke.

If you rent and you have a surprise visit and need to mask the smell right away, burn popcorn, burn bread in the toaster or cook/burn bacon. Those smells quickly overpower the smell of cannabis.

Dual draft door guards work great at keeping your apartment/room insulated and also keep the odor in your apartment/room and not outside of it.

“Sploofs” are a name for a homemade device (and now actually made commercially) for masking the smell of the smoke you exhale. Essentially you would take an empty paper towel roll and attach a fabric softener sheet to one end and exhale through the other end to create a fresh smell without the odor. There are variations on sploofs. Commercial ones use activated carbon in a breathable chamber so it naturally gets rid of the smell. You can make your own with activated carbon by filling a soda bottle with the carbon (get from a pet store) and poking breathe holes on the bottom of the bottle for smoke to exit. Make sure you wet the charcoal though. It makes it work better.

Misc. Pro Tips:

If you have a 1-hitter/bat, use it as a roach clip for joints and blunts. If you don't have one, alligator clips that you can buy at Radio Shack and similar stores work very well too.

If you like rolling joints, make sure you use slow burning papers made from hemp like Skunk brand, Raw, and Elements to name a few. Skunk has non-flavored papers as well as sweet hemp (skunkalicious), blueberry, strawberry, and Piña colada. Skunk brand are my favorites personally.

The best way to keep your cannabis fresh is by keeping it in an air-tight jar like a mason jar. It will help keep the odor down as well too.

If your cannabis is too dry, adding an orange peel to your storage container for a day or two should revive your herb and give a nice flavor to it.

Getting the Most Out of Your Weed

Feel like you go through your cannabis too quickly no matter how much you buy? Don't worry, there's many ways to get the most out of your cannabis without sacrificing your high. Below I will go over some of the best ways I’ve found thus far.

One of the best ways to conserve your cannabis is to vaporize. When you vaporize cannabis you heat the herb just below combustion point and extract only THC vapor (depending on your temps you extract CBD and other cannabinoids as well). As long as you vaporize and not burn your herb, you can save what is left over after there is no more vapor and save it for edibles. “Vapor poo” as I call it is great for making cannabis butter and tinctures. However, with thoroughly vaporized herb, you do not get as much THC so you will experience more of a “couch lock” high with those edibles. Once you’ve made your edibles, save the herb you strain from whatever mixture you make and you can place some in empty pill capsules, add it to food . That right there just gave you 3x the amount of use from one batch of cannabis!

Every time you buy at least a 1/4 oz. save at least one decent-sized bud and label its strain if possible in a separate baggie, in a stash jar. After a couple restocks you will have built up a great stash for a rainy day jar or for whatever occasion. Not only will you likely have a lot of stashed away, but you will have a great variety to do a tasting, much like wine tasting but with more munchies, laughter, and fun.

One of the most important things to have when you smoke, isn’t a piece to smoke or vaporize it from, it’s a good grinder! Having a good grinder is key to conserving your cannabis. The finer the grind, the more surface area your herb has and the less you need to use to fill a bowl or smoke. A good grinder will grind finely and have at least 1 pollen catcher under the herb chamber. That pollen chamber is where all of your trichromes collect and as long as you learn to forget about it for a while, you will be pleasantly surprised when you open it on a rainy day to find it packed of that yellow/green goodness. The pollen, or kief as it’s typically called is THC in one of its strongest forms. This is what hash is made of and will get you very high. Buying efficient pieces also helps save your herb but that will be talked about more at a later time.

Remember children, be wise and use all of the buffalo!

DIY: Hash/Hashish

Hash is a very potent cannabis product. It is THC in one of its highest concentrated forms and very little is needed to have you feeling its effects. It is made using the pollen or kief or trichromes of the cannabis plant and forming it into a solid mass. It is then easier to burn and a lot more potent than the buds are. There are many, many different ways of making hash, each producing a slightly different type and quality of hash. Today I am just going to go over simple "5-minute hash". Now don't let the name "5-minute hash" fool you. I had someone pass out right after a hit of it and smash right through a glass table. Know your limits and take little bits at a time.

Where do you get the kief? The easiest way is to get a 4 piece grinder with a keif catcher chamber in the very bottom. As you grind your herb and move the contents about, it will naturally lose some of the kief and it will then collect in the bottom chamber. In addition to that, many people add nickels or small items of similar weight and size into the herb chamber of the grinder and shake it up a bit to knock even more kief off.

What you need:

• Kief
• Small pot of water 
• Foil 
• Wax paper or heat resistant plastic baggie
• Hard book or other hard object to press

Step 1: Get the kief collected and put it into a foil/wax pouch Seal well!
Step 2: Bring a pot of water on the stove to a boil.
Step 3: Dip bag into the boiling water( holding it with tongs) for about 7-15 seconds. Then take it out.
Step 4: Immediately after you take the hash out put it under a book and squish it.
Step 5: Repeat this as many times as you want depending on how pressed you want it.
Step 6: Take out the hash from the bag and there you will have a little hash patty :)
Step 7: Waving foil pouch quickly over open flame and repeating steps 4 & 5 until desired consistency is reached