How Can I Vape Without Using a Grinder?

Grinders and Dry Herb Vapes

Some things just happen to go together. Nachos with cheese, a steak with sauce, you get the picture. Using a grinder with a dry herb vape is no different. But, sometimes, there is no cheese, and there is no sauce. That’s okay! If you have a dry herb vape with some herbs, you can have a successful vape session.

While it is true that grinding will chop and mince your herb finely without rendering it into pulp or powder, you can still achieve a moderate level of success without one. If your herb comes out nice and crumbly, you should have no problem managing without a grinder. Fortunately, grinders are plentiful and quite cheap if they are made from plastic. Most will be made of aluminum or titanium, however.

So long as you have a means to grind up your dry herb material, having a successful vape session will not be that hard to accomplish. In fact, even with your fingers alone you can grind up your material if that is all that you have. Using your hands is a legitimate way to grind up your material, plus it gives you more control of the product.

How to Grind Your Material Without a Grinder

While using your bare hands and fingers to grind up your dry herbs might seem like the best way to do it without a grinder, there are better ways to manage. First off, your fingers will leave behind dirt and oils that will influence the flavor and potentially destroy the trichomes and terpenes within the dry herbs.

Using a small pair of scissors is perhaps the next best thing if you do not happen to have a grinder. By holding your dry herb material on the bottom stem, you can gently clip away buds and slice them up one by one until you have the right amount with the proper consistency. Another method is to use a mortar and pestle.

This consists of a small ceramic or wooden bowl, and a blunt instrument used to crush your dry herbs. The problem here would be that since your dry herbs might be a bit sticky, your mortar and pestle will have to be wiped down and cleaned after using it to crush your dry herbs. Care must be taken not to pulverize your material to a pulp and make a powder out of it.

What If I Don’t Grind My Material?

Since dry herbs must be chopped and minced to properly vaporize, they will fail to do much if left intact. Chopping up your material allows heat to be evenly distributed among the dry herbs, allowing for more coverage to heat up and release terpenes and other aromatic compounds.

If you were to simply put whole nuggets of dry herb in your vape, you would quickly come to find that no vapor would be produced. This is because heat is not reaching the center of the nugget and is not able to heat up and release its vapor. If you have nothing but your fingers, then use them to grind up your dry herb material.

Scissors offer a more precise way to properly chop up your dry herbs without the risk of pulverizing it into a fine powder. If you have dry herbs that are overly dry, this could result in a more finely chopped end material, despite just using scissors. 

What About Over-Grinding?

Trying to vape material that has been overly ground up and powdered will result in sucking in dry herb material that resembles ash. The problem is that because fine material has no air space, it can clump together with what and result in the same problem as having not ground it up at all! The middle road is the happiest road here, and you do not want to have dry herb material that is whole or ground up too much.

The airway inside a vape is not as closed off as it would be using a metal screen. Holes are big enough where dry herbs can be easily sucked in and inhaled into your mouth and lungs if your material is too fine. Another downside to this is even if you were to have a moderately successful vape session with finely ground material, your vape would have to be cleaned much more often.

Heat will release resins and other compounds that are sticky and will accumulate a whole lot of gunk and residue as dry herb particulates stick onto the resins. This will result in a vape that has to be constantly cleaned to prevent it from clogging up and preventing you from taking a hit. This could also be bad if material happens to reach down onto the heating chamber itself.

Final Thoughts

The truth is that you do not need a grinder to vape. If you chop up your material well without it coming out too fine, you should be good. The good news is that scissors are easy to get, and some grinders are very cheap.

Either way, you want to make sure your dry herbs are high-quality. Because of this, it would be wise to go down the route of investing in a good grinder instead of using your fingers to chop up your material.

The best way to enjoy a good vape session is with clean material that doesn’t have your oils and dirt smothered all over it. Therefore, using scissors or other contact-less methods are so essential. If all you have is your hands though, then, a good session is better than none.

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