The Best Ways to Clean Your Gear of Weeds
The powerful smell of cannabis comes from a unique combination of chemicals, many of which are present in the resin released from the growing plant or extracted from the harvested plant. This resin is extremely hydrophobic and can coat anything it comes in contact with, as many farmers and processors in sticky coveralls can tell you. It can also be damn difficult to scrape off all the accessories you use to smoke. It’s rather obscene to leave a brownish, rather smelly residue of tar left over from smoking or dab in your bongs, pipes, mouthpieces or dab fixtures, and it’s all too easy to get a sticky part of a sticky unsightly surface too – which is why your canna tools, regardless of their application, must be cleaned regularly. So let’s make things easier for ourselves with a few tips.
Alcohol is your friend
Good old rubbing alcohol is the number one weed killer. It’s available in abundance and it’s safe to use on skin and most surfaces, as long as you avoid sparks until it evaporates. Alcohol cleans so well that you can even “turn” that tar into something you can consume – just let the alcohol evaporate completely and you can add what you’ve scraped off to a bowl, joint, or even food.
There are many ways to use alcohol for cleaning, from a quick soak to a very long soak in a mixture of (almost) pure ethanol. Some brands that make specialty vapes, like the Zeus Arc GT , even come with their own branded alcohol swabs and wipes to keep your rig spotless between vaping, which is critical to retaining the best flavor possible when vaping colors or concentrates.
Soaking is the best method for metal and glass instruments, while wiping or wiping with a swab is best for ceramic and silicone items. Abrasive salts can be added to an alcohol rinse to help scrub the tar off the inside of the bong, but you can’t use table salt or Epsom salts on their own, as they won’t remove stubborn dirt.
Get a custom kit
There are many brands out there willing to take the guesswork out with gels or solutions to soak your rough tools in until they look like new. While I personally prefer the inexpensive alternative mentioned above, the kit can offer convenience and speed as the alcohol can take time to break down the resins and will put your tool out of action while they soak.
The kit may include a solvent-based or alcohol-based cleaner, as well as special pipe cleaners, modified cotton swabs and brushes. Others are a large bag of reusable clay-based gel. These solutions are designed to clean in minutes and rinse completely, which is a distinct advantage over long, time-consuming but much more expensive cleaning than plain pharmacy alcohol.
Clean oil with oil
Until you compress several pounds of vegetable matter into oils, butters, and blends, you don’t know what stickiness is. The grass is really remarkable in that its main psychoactive components spread easily, just sticking to everything. Oil can help you remove cannabis stains from dishes.
Filters, spatulas, and all kinds of cooking tools can get crusty with cannabis resin if you’re not careful, and even if you’re careful. One of my favorite marijuana baking tricks is to use an oil wrap to wipe off any leftover concentrate—the oils in the oil break down the concentrate and together they emulsify into a nice little infusion. Soaking a paper towel with any vegetable oil has the same effect and is a great way to clean a nylon sieve; I used this method to clean my Ardent Gen 2 sieve , which acts like a herb french press. Warning: never use vegetable oil near smoking or vaping tools – you can leave traces of oil, and burnt oil is dangerous for your lungs ( if you’ve already forgotten about the 2019 vape crisis ).
Getting the best possible experience is the whole point of weed, no matter how you use it. That’s the whole point of tool cleaning – the tars from last week’s smoke dryers can seep into (and contaminate) your current experience. Given the sheer amount of endpoint differences between cannabis strains, it’s important to experience each one individually, without yesterday’s Blue Dream resin replacing today’s Gushers.