Now that you’ve figured out how to buy ounces of weed online, you may want to experiment with different ways to smoke it. The savings you realize by buying weed by the ounce add up quickly, and you’ll be able to invest in some paraphernalia that will enhance your cannabis experience.
Bongs, water pipes, billies, bubblers — smoking cannabis via water filtration systems has been going on for at least two and a half millennia. While clearing land for a power line in Russia, construction workers discovered gold bongs used 2400 years ago by Scythian tribal chiefs to smoke opium and cannabis. Bongs became popular in China during the Ming Dynasty (the 1500s). Early African bongs were made of pottery, animal horns. The word bong is an Anglicization of the Thai word for the bamboo pipes used to smoke weed, baung.
Bongs are, in many ways, a smaller, more portable version of a hookah, and while they can certainly be used alone, there’s a social aspect to doing bong hits that still seems somewhat celebratory and very social.
What Is a Bong?
Bongs consist of air- and water-tight tubes with a bowl and stem or slide that’s designed to rest in the bong water. The bowl and slide are usually one piece and, as the smaller, detachable part of the bong, can be easily replaced if broken or lost.
When the bowl is filled and lit, inhaling through the bong’s tube forces the smoke into and through the water. Some bongs have a hole (known by various names, but it functions like a carburetor in an internal combustion engine) above water level that needs to be covered while generating the smoke. Lift the slider or uncover the carburetor, and inhale. The distinctive noise of the water bubbling is basically percolation.
7 Reasons to Use a Bong
1. A smoother, cooler smoke
If the harshness of weed (or any other smoke) does your throat in, try using a bong before you throw in the towel and opt for edibles only. Passing through even room temperature water cools the smoke enough to make a significant difference.
While tiny bongs are cute and more portable, if cannabis smoke really seems harsh to your throat, try to find one with a tube large enough so you can slide a few ice cubes down it to really cool the smoke and enhance the flavour of your favourite strain. Pack a bowl with beautiful Black Rose, and let that smoke gently move through your system.
2. Better flavour
Smoke that’s been even slightly cooled tastes better because you’re not scorching your throat and lungs. It also tastes better because you’re not inhaling anything but cannabis. No paper, no glue, no filter. If you’re a fan of flavoured papers, carry on. But if you’re reluctant to smoke even organic hemp papers, bong hits are one way to avoid everything but the cannabis. It’s why Zombie Kush just tastes so much better from a bong.
3. No waste
Bonging is an incredibly efficient way to smoke cannabis with no waste at all. The mere act of passing a joint wastes good smoke, and that’s even if you’re not smoking with an absent-minded friend who inadvertently bogarts the joint or treats it like a cigarette and forgets to pass it.
For those who struggle to roll joints and have no desire to invest in a joint roller, they’re as easy to use as pipes or vapes. You can use a bong as a one-hitter if you like, and microdose with tiny amounts of weed.
4. Cleaner smoke
While glass pipes are probably as efficient as bongs, even if you use a screen with a glass pipe, ash and burnt resin particles end up in the stem and outer bowl of the pipe (especially double-walled glass pipes) and some of them inevitably end up in your mouth.
That section between the two walls of a glass pipe can be tough to clean. Ash deposit can’t happen with a bong. Those particles end up in the bong water, not in your mouth or lungs.
5. Easy to clean paraphernalia
When we say bong, we mean a glass bong. Glass bongs are specifically designed to withstand the high temperatures of burning weed. And good glass is worth paying for. “Scientific” bongs look like something you might have kugled together in your high school chemistry class, with its abundance of beakers and other useful gadgets.
Many are made of borosilicate, a type of glass (think Pyrex, the bora silicate trade name for dishes that can go from oven to freezer without cooling in between). Borosilicate glass can handle temperature differentials of close to 165 °C (329 °F) without breaking, and can be heated to almost 500 °C (932 °F).
The wide tube of most bongs is easy to clean with a standard bottle brush, and the sliders are small, translucent tubes so you can see any blockages and clear them with pipe cleaners dipped in pipe cleaning solution or isopropyl alcohol mixed with a little coarse sea salt.
You can also run them through the dishwasher, although that’s more likely to clean the outside of the bong rather than the inside — still an important consideration when sharing a mouthpiece.
6. Massive rips
Because you can let the smoke build up in the body of the bong before removing the slider or uncovering the choke, it’s possible to get a massive rip from a bong. A whole bowlful if you like. Handy if you’re in a hurry or if it’s been a particularly stressful day and you really need to chill. Just pack a big bowl of Nuken, and let ‘er rip!
Be careful, as with a glass pipe, not to pack the bowl too full or it won’t burn smoothly. Combustion does require oxygen. Make sure, because bongs aren’t usually designed to be used with screens, that you haven’t ground your marijuana too fine. Think medium grind rather than fine or extra fine.
7. Bongs are beautiful
Partly because of the ceremonial aspect of sharing a bong and perhaps because glass bongs are the 20th Century Western world’s adaptation of the hookah, whether made of clear, plain coloured, or decoratively coloured glass, bongs these days are works of art. They come in hundreds of different sizes, shapes, and colours, and each one has been carefully designed to provide an optimal smoking experience that’s aesthetically pleasing as well as highly relaxing.
When you have your bong, don’t hesitate to experiment with different strains to see which ones work best. If you want to buy ounces of weed online in Canada, Low Price Bud has an extensive selection of flower, be sure to check out the Deal of the Day. Or if you don’t want to invest in an entire ounce of a particular strain, check out our Bundle Deals and try two or four different strains for the price of a single ounce.