With cannabis use becoming more and more common, a lot of people have been exploring other ways to enjoy cannabis that doesn’t require smoking. One popular way to enjoy the calming effects of marijuana without the taste and smell of smoking is to use dry herb vaporizers. These devices let you inhale a cloud of tasty vapor using only heat and ground cannabis, no oils or other complicated glassware needed.
Smoking has been the traditional mode of consumption for thousands of years, but the process is actually shockingly inefficient. In “raw” buds, the THCa has no effect. When you heat the bud, the THCa converts to THC, which does have an impact. When you burn your flower, this conversion process occurs, but a lot of the THCa simply burns away.
Dry herb vaporizers are designed to offer a more efficient alternative to smoking. The temperature where THCa converts to THC, known as the decarboxylation temperature, is about 230 to 250 degrees fahrenheit. The temperature where cannabis ignites is roughly 450 degrees fahrenheit, meaning that people are heating their bud over 200 degrees above the ideal temperature.
Instead of burning off a good portion of the cannabinoids, vaporizers operate at around 350 to 400 degrees fahrenheit. At these temperatures, the cannabinoids are converted into their useful forms without degrading due to burning. Vaporizers typically work in two different ways, conduction and convection.
Conduction vaporizers operate kind of like cooking with a frying pan. A surface is heated to the vaporization temperature and comes in contact with the ground cannabis. As you inhale from the vaporizer, you inhale the vapor that cooks off that hot surface. This vaporizing technology can be small and efficient, making conduction the mode of choice for portable dry herb vaporizers.
The biggest disadvantage of these vapes is the fact that they only reach the vaporization temperature on the surface of the oven. This means that they tend to vape your herb unevenly. For most conduction vaporizers, a light stir every few hits is all you need to get a nice, even vaporization.
Convection vaporizers work more like an oven. Typically the ground herb is placed in a heating chamber and the heating element is oriented below the chamber, generating hot air. When you inhale, the hot air is pulled through the herb, vaporizing it evenly and efficiently. Because of the need for a longer airway in convection heating, these vaporizers are typically larger, tabletop units with variable temperature settings. Their biggest advantage is that they are extremely efficient, producing plenty of potent vapor from only a small amount of herb.
There are a number of different vaporizers available today, and the technology used in these vaporizers has improved dramatically over the past few years. If you are looking for a means of enjoying cannabis quickly, easily, and without the taste and smell of smoking, vaporizers are the perfect option.
If you want to check out some quality dry herb vaporizers, visit Funky Piece. They have a variety of great options both in their online stores and their brick and mortar smoke shops in the greater DC area.
