dab rigs, quartz bangers & more
You hear it all the time, but with a seemingly infinite amount of ways to consume cannabis, be it sublingual, vaporized, smoked, ingested… you’re finding it harder to keep up with the latest cannabis trends. And we don’t blame you! Dabbing, not to be confused with the viral dance move, is the act of consuming cannabis concentrates with high levels of THC, typically using a dab rig. Now, if you want to learn more about what type of concentrates to smoke, let us direct you to our concentrates podcast. But for this blog, we’re going to discuss different products and glassware to smoke out of, how long to heat glass nail, quartz bangers vs glass dab rigs, and tips and tricks to get the best out of your dabbing experience.
You’re about to read a conversation among four female founders in the cannabis industry, each with their own take on dabbing. Find links to our favorite dab products throughout, as well as best ways to maintain each hardware.
The High Guide asked women working in weed to answer 5 questions essential to a great dab sesh:
Raeven Duckett, Founder of JOHNNIE // @raeven_elyse
Bess Byers, Cannabis Influencer // @imcannabess
Megan Bauer, MS Cannabis Science & Therapeutics // @mlb_ing
April Pride, Creator & host of The High Guide podcast // @aprilpride_
- Which dab rig should I invest in?High Guide Bess Byers offers: I’ve been fortunate because of my influencer side on Instagram. I’ve been able to try a lot of these products for free and I think a lot of them do work pretty well upon initial use, but then maybe after a couple of weeks or a month, or trying to take it on a hike or something, it sometimes gonna break, it’s always gonna happen, so for me, it was never really worth the cost of maintaining one and having all that. I like glass that really fits with my aesthetic, and so Purr Glass… P-U-R-R glass, they have really beautiful pieces that just kind of fit into my home decor. It’s very geometric. It’s like all their stuff’s made in Chatsworth, California.High Guide Megan Bauer: I definitely have my daily dab rig, but then if I wanna really bring out my good stuff, I’ll do my blow torch and my thick nail and do my higher end pieces. I personally don’t feel like some of the travel pieces hit the same. For example, hitting it on glass, and then also the thing about dabbing and just like the industry in general, ’cause I feel like it’s so fun to see all the glass art and all the just industry created from it, and so when I look for glass, I look for supporting local artists.High Guide Raeven Duckett: I bought a Puffco Vision, which is really a dab pen that you can take on the go. It’s kind of like a party trick. So I bring it out and be like, ‘You guys wanna get fucking lit?’ And my friends are like, ‘What are you talking about?; And so I’ll do a dab for them and they’ll just be gone. So I use dabbing to just get my friends really, really high at house parties.
- How do I heat my dab nail to the right temperature?High Guide Megan Bauer: There are two ways you can heat your dab nail, you can either use a butane torch and use a glass or quartz bangers, or you can use an e-nail. Knowing how long to heat glass banger is a critical part of using a dab nail. If you use the glass nail, it’s like a blow torch, and then you do the temperature check, you wait until it gets cool. But for me, I personally love an e-nail. It just makes it so easy to turn on. I use the mini nail. It’s just like you plug it in. There are so many great tools now to keep track of the temperature. We used to just use a timer or the wrist check, but now I love the Dab Rite, which is great. It gives me a little alarm when it’s ready to take the dab ’cause you know how frustrating it is when you heat it up and miss it, so that’s a great tool that I use.If you use the glass nail, it’s like a blow torch, and then you do the temperature check, you wait until it gets cool. But for me, I personally love an e-nail. It just makes it so easy to turn on. I use the mini nail. It’s just like you plug it in. The temperature I like to do is anywhere between 420, maybe 550, depending on the bowl piece and size. Some people like hotter dabs, for me, I like ’em really low temp ’cause I feel like it just really brings out the flavors. I prefer low temperature dabs because it’s not gonna torch your throat againI am a huge fan of solventless extracts, so that’s hash or rosin or full-melt. These are processed without any solvent, so they just wash the weed basically, collect the trichomes, and that’s what you’re smoking. If it’s rosin, it gets pressed at a low temperature, but then you have this concentrate that you can dab marijuana. I definitely dial in my temperature depending on what type of concentrate I’m dabbing. I enjoy it at a lower temperature more, because it has more plant matter in it, so you don’t wanna do it too hot.
- What’s the difference between quartz bangers vs. glass?High Guide Bess Byers: I’ll smoke with a quartz bangers if I’m on the go but otherwise, I love glass and that’s my go-to. It tastes cleaner. Also it’s when you clean it, I don’t know, I feel like that the glass is… You Q-tip it and it’s just like a cleaner bowl to heat every time, and it’s like you really can’t go wrong with a blow torch on thick quartz bangers. It’s like as long as you clean it afterwards and you don’t heat hit it too hot, it’s like, you’re good almost every time.
- How do I clean my dab rig?High Guide Megan Bauer: I feel like the ceramic almost absorbs some of the material each time you heat hit it. You’re never gonna get it fully clean after the first time you heat hit it. Rather than Q-Tips, I use Glob Mops and 99.9% ISO alcohol to clean up. After I take a dab on a Terp Slurper, I just dunk the whole thing into isopropyl alcohol, so you don’t really have to clean up as tediously as you do with other setups.High Guide Bess Byers: You should be able to turn it up to a pretty high temperature and just let it burn off for a while and don’t use it for a long time after. After you’ve had it up that high burning the old stuff up, just leave it for a while, let it cool back down then you’re good to go.
- What are the best dabbing accessories?High Guide Megan Bauer: Big large dab mats that we put on the table, just because we collect glass dab rigs, and you don’t wanna set glass on a hard surface, so these mats make it a good thing to sit on.
I can either use a bucket to dab off of, which is probably one of the most common nails or a Terp Slurper, which is a newer one. I feel like I can never take my first dab of the day off of a Terp Slurper, because it just hits harder than a bucket.
