The Convection Thread

[Denis69]

Wow what an intereesting discussion !
Thank you Dan for the initiative and everyone else for your thoughtfull input !

While reading it reading, chilling with my coffee and Lotus, it strokes me that indeed, as you guys were saying, coffee brewing parameters, while being closely related to ours, seem to have way more of an impact on the final result
Basically meaning you can esasily f*ck'up a cup of coffee, but it never happened to me to throw a bowl away because it didnt pack/grind it right

While it may look pretty natural to most of us, I have a hard time of putting my finger on why exactly that is... is it medium density ? Particules size ?

" [...] tongue surface models, where the tongue surface is traditionally modeled as a compartment that the fluid movement can convectively transport stimuli to the interface between tongue and liquid but can’t penetrate through the interface. In our diffusion-dominant sip-and-hold simulations, we already assumed that the interface is at saturated concentration and that the convective transport in the fluid zone is 100% efficient, but the simulation results still fall significantly short of Kelling and Halpern’s results. This indicates that the diffusion process alone, without accounting for fluid penetration into the tongue’s surface, can’t capture differences between two types of experimental setups. This also indicates that a range of fluid movement in the mouth may greatly impact taste perception, which needs to be taken into account in reviewing vast sip-and-hold experiments in the literature. For example, in some studies subjects are instructed to sip and hold still, while in others subjects are allowed to stir the fluid with the tongue or in the mouth. This could explain why the results between studies can be very different. This may also provide the mechanism to explain why higher-viscosity taste solutions have been reported to have reduced taste intensity. Potentially higher viscosities would restrict fluid movement more. In addition to fluid movement, does the diffusivity of stimuli affect taste perception? Diffusivity of a compound largely depends on its molecular volume as characterized by the classic 1905 Stokes–Einstein equation[35], with smaller sizes leading to higher diffusivities, higher diffusion rates, and quicker concentration increases. To test this hypothesis, we compiled data from the literature and showed that diffusivities for a list of sweet compounds greatly correlate with their measured taste temporal profile, with high diffusivity leading to shorter time to reach peak, with a steeper slope and shorter time lag to first perceive taste. This serendipitous finding further indicates that taste stimulus transport may significantly impact early taste perceptions. Thus, future psychophysics taste experiments need to consider not only the concentration of stimuli entering the oral cavity but also real-time concentration changes within the tongue surface. Other modalities of taste stimuli, such as bitter, umami, and sour compounds, also need to be investigated in the future. "

Taste of time: A porous-medium model for human tongue surface with implications for early taste perception

Author summary Taste perception is an important gateway for food selection, food intake, energy and nutrition balance–as world is facing epidemic of obesity and diabetes. Information conveyed via the taste system provide crucial behavior choices, e.g. in identifying edible and nutritious food...

journals.plos.org

So I am not really sure where I am going with this, but as you allready pointed out, we might be going in 2 different directions, if we are aiming for maximum extraction or rather the most 'balanced taste'
On the taste side, coffee brewers are using the coffee compas with particule size and coffee/water ratio parameters... is it relevant ? I dunno

 

[Dan Morrison]

@Denis69 Thanks for chiming in! I almost forgot about the whole coffee analogy. And you bring up an interesting point on taste and the idea of where and how we might be tasting the vapor. Neat stuff to think about for sure!

As I'm reminded about the coffee talk, I can't help but think that I now feel that cannabis is maybe more unlike coffee. Especially the fact that coffee beans are ground so that the internal structure of the beans are extracted.... while with cannabis you can choose whether or not you want to extract just the surface trichomes.... or grind finer to extract some of those planty volatiles.

Looking back, maybe I was too caught up with the analogy... and I was searching for ways that they are similar. hmmm.

__

I am reminded time and time again that there doesn't seem to be any one 'way' to best consume cannabis. It's really a very personal thing.

It also seems like the whole consumption experience is built in layers... with the farmer being the foundation, and then the harvest, handling, curing, aging.... There are so many steps done before you actually break up your flower and put it into your vaporizer.

If you think about it like that, perhaps the idea of adding an extra step, like manually pulling apart your flower, doesn't seem so crazy when you think about all the care that went into the flower up till that point.

__

I think I'll keep going down this road of manually pulling apart the flower. I'm getting the absolute best flavor with this method. I feel like it allows for even greater separation of the various terpenes and other volatiles.

Those first couple hits you can just kiss the outer surface of the leaf, targeting the trichomes. The flavors are so strong and bright. Once those flavors subside on the next hit or two, you're left with a more mild/smooth tasting vapor.... and then finally with the last clean up hit you can push to extract any leftovers and get some of those toastier plant matter flavors as the heat works its way into the leaf itself.

__

I have a CBD strain currently that just doesn't vaporize very well. I had used this flower many times with a medium or fine grind and it was pretty meh. It tasted mostly of hay and it didn't produce much vapor.

Surprisingly, using the above method of pulling the flower apart, this flower is definitely improved. The taste of hay is still strong, but somehow it's turned into a fresh hay taste that's more enjoyable. The vapor production is improved. There are flavors that I had never noticed before... a sweet tart note, for example.

I think that allowing for maximum airflow over the surface trichomes is what's been able to tease out a little more from this flower.

__

I'd like to get a macro video of my pull apart method (not that it's complication or anything, haha) and maybe list links for tools that I think would be helpful if anyone else out there wants to get into it.

 

[invertedisdead]

The big difference between coffee is it’s extracted with a solvent - water.

In the same way that solvent cannabis extractions also allow you to bypass much of those unwanted plant degradation flavors from selective extraction.

Coffee is roasted before brewing - but dry herb vaping is tricky as it’s doing both processes at the same time and trying to nail it.

The end goal no matter what is an oil extraction. Whether one uses hot air, ice water, or solvents. And those oils can be pre-processed prior to vaping for a different experience. Like the difference between just pressing rosin from whole buds, versus turning the plants into hash before pressing. By removing most of the leafy plant compounds first you get a flavor that is more true to the resin. But it’s also significantly more work. So it depends on ones comfort with input / output

I do think that ideally, starting with less plant material (sift) is still preferable for keeping the vapor ratio high. Just seems to vape cleaner and smoother for me!

 

[Alexis]

Just seems to vape cleaner and smoother for me!

I like how you put that. We have to be extra mindful how we present and argue things these days, it’s a far cry from the world I grew up in, when you could share honest experience, supported by logic and general consensus, which was often enough by itself without the Today’s World frantic demands for “Evidence”, or proof lol.

Your “seems” here serves as yet further confirming evidence of the exact point you make, logically indisputable, even without a link to a government funded peer-reviewed study, frequently required in the current era depending which crowd you keep company with, and without which your freedom to hypothesise or make suggestion is often limited or scrutinised.

 

[Vaporware]

I'd like to get a macro video of my pull apart method (not that it's complication or anything, haha) and maybe list links for tools that I think would be helpful if anyone else out there wants to get into it.

As I read your message I was thinking again that it would be great if you made exactly that kind of video, but you’ve got so many demands on your time I didn’t want to ask and pile on more.

If you already want to do it though, I’d like to see it! I’m sure if I got the right tools I could figure it out, but it would be nice to just watch the process up close. I’m sure there’s something to be learned from watching someone who’s been doing this for a while, and it would just be cool to see.

 

[GoldenBud]

The end goal no matter what is an oil extraction. Whether one uses hot air, ice water, or solvents. And those oils can be pre-processed prior to vaping for a different experience. Like the difference between just pressing rosin from whole buds, versus turning the plants into hash before pressing. By removing most of the leafy plant compounds first you get a flavor that is more true to the resin. But it’s also significantly more work. So it depends on ones comfort with input / output

that's why i stopped using my vapcap for now, while i'm home. ofc outdoors i will only use vapcap tho, it's so cool (metal in the nature lol) and useful
the Pre-Heat-Without inhaling of the vapcap takes comissssssion! oils are being heated not while inhaling, some oils are "wasted"

Important to mention that vapcap shines, really shines with ungrinded nuggets, but it will never be pleasant like the hot-air method

 

[El Rawn Hubbard]

Coffee is roasted before brewing - but dry herb vaping is tricky as it’s doing both processes at the same time and trying to nail it.

Bingo.

I think this is why some rather dated conduction vapes can still 'hold their own' for many situations. It seems easy to manage the Maillard flavours in a pleasant way.

If you think about it like that, perhaps the idea of adding an extra step, like manually pulling apart your flower, doesn't seem so crazy when you think about all the care that went into the flower up till that point.

Just as you'd do with specialty coffee, going to the effort of tailoring your particle size and extraction method to suit different raw materials seems totally sensible... that's what I keep telling myself

 

[archangelz001]

Damn! You all are so good! This is one of the best, most interesting conversations on this board. I have conduction, hybrid, and convection vapes and love to rotate their use. And just added a DynaVap 2021M. I use a small grinder that produces a fairly fine grind. But now I need to experiment with better ways to maximize the terpinoid taste experience. The Pax3 clouds are very satisfying, but taste suffers considerably to the first 2 ten second draws with the SwiftPro. Experiencing the aesthetics of vaporizing, and the aromatics and taste, in addition to the wanted effects on mind and body, encompass the complete appreciation and gratitude for the plant.

 

[darkstar72]

While 100% pure convection heating is an ideal goal, the reality is that conduction and radiant heat transfer are always a part of the equation, even though a smaller part.
The walls of the chamber and the basket screen holding the ground material absorb heat from the hot air stream. As they get hot, they conduct and radiate heat. The mass of ground herb also conducts and radiates heat. Some materials conduct / radiate heat at different rates and hold more heat than others. I find that wood conducts less heat and holds less heat than glass, steel, or silicone. More thermal mass of the container requires more heat to achieve the desired temperatures within the ground material.

The process can be thought of as a thermodynamic equation. The controllable factors in the equation for convective heating are temperature, pressure, surface area, mass, and flow rate.
The mass, shape, and density of the ground material is important to the equation. A puck shape, similar to that used when making espresso seems to work the best. If we want even extraction, the entire puck must be heated to the level needed to volatilize the desired plant oils.

Complete extraction also seems to be a tough point to define. The plant material contains a wide spectrum of oil densities. There are some heavy oils and tars within the plant material that we really don’t want to volatilize. Some are only released with the heat of combustion. The most flavorful oils are released at lower temperatures. It all depends upon how dense of oils you want to volatilize to determine your fully extracted point.

Temperature is a fairly straight forward factor to control. The wattage level of the heating coil controls the air temperature.

Pressure within the space containing the ground plant material can be controlled with the draw speed and physical air intake restrictions. A fast draw speed will drop the pressure within the chamber. A lower atmospheric pressure surrounding the puck, lowers the boiling point of the plant oils. This allows oils to be volatilized at a lower temperature. The lower the temperature, the better the flavor. A lower temperature air will also require less cooling before inhaling. The air temperature really only needs to be just hot enough to volatilize the plant oil. Applying too much heat, only requires it to be cooled back down to be comfortable.

Surface area is controlled by the grind of the material. A very fine grind will create a lot of surface area, but won’t be of help if he material packs down so that the hot air can’t reach the material. There is a happy medium in particle size. I find the best way to get good air flow through the material is to hand crush it. The moisture content should be such that the material falls apart after being crushed. If the material has too much moisture, all the water must be driven off before it will be able to achieve volatilization temperatures. The more mass of material contained within the puck, the more heat is required to raise the entire puck to the desired temperature. There should be an ideal puck size for even flow rate and fast heat up.

Flow rate of the air controls the rate of speed that heat is being added to the puck. Too slow and the heat can build up to the point of combustion. Too fast and the heat can be drawn through without reaching the desired temperature. Drawing too fast can also pack down the material in the puck, which reduces the air flow through it. There is a point where the benefit of a lower pressure from a fast draw speed, drops off because too much heat is being drawn away. Getting the draw speed just right can make a big difference in performance.

I think that coffee does provide some good parallels for convective heating and not just from the brewing aspect. The roasting of the green coffee is almost exactly like what is happening with our convective heating units. So much so, that I refer to the process as roasting rather than vaporizing. My units are called “Herbal Roasters”. Hot air corn poppers can be used for roasting green coffee beans, and it volatilizes so much oil that it must be done outside. Turns the beans from green to brown, just like we do with herbal material.

The normal flow of air in a chamber containing the herbal material has almost zero velocity at the perimeter. This makes it tough to get an even air flow rate through the entire puck. Most of the air wants to go through the center of the chamber. If you can force the hot air to enter the perimeter of the chamber/bowl, that would change the profile of the hot air going through the puck. That is what I am attempting to do with my slit end glass heater covers. It has been working well so far. Any brown spots that I do get are at the perimeter, so there is no need for stirring. Getting the air hot enough for a quick and complete extraction can create air that is uncomfortable for inhaling. Having the ability to also use conductive heat transfer at the very end of the roast is nice. The end of the glass tube is closed and round, so it can be used to contact the entire puck for a complete extraction without the need to stir.

Another thing I have been doing is to install a ss foil disc in the center of the heater screen (sandwiched between two screens) to force all of the hot air to the perimeter of the roasting bowl. The ss foil doesn’t have much mass to rob a lot of heat away from the roast. Never any center hot spotting.

To summarize.

Hand grind and puck shape for good air flow, draw speed to lower pressure and control heat rate, force hot air to perimeter, and adjust wattage to suit.

Treat the material as you would a marshmallow. Low heat, slow roast provides the best flavor roasted marshmallow.


Happy roasting

Wow Alan! Your passion for this is real. Love that your engineering brain is dreaming up design improvements.

 

[Dan Morrison]

After much tinkering, here's some ramblings.

• Vapor is composed of two fractions, the volatiles contained inside of the trichomes, and those contained inside of the plant material.
• Trichome vapor = all the good stuff, Plant vapor = not my jam.
• Convection heat is able to selectively vaporize the trichomes before the heat is able to penetrate and extract the plant material.
• The more effectively you can separate the trichome vapor from the plant vapor, the tastier your hits will be.
• Selective vaporization works best when the trichomes are intact on the surface of the flower.
• Manually disassembling flower leaf by leaf is the best method to preserve trichomes.

Let's elaborate.

Heat Penetration

Convection heating is not good at penetrative heating, because air carries a very small amount of thermal energy and it is a very poor thermal conductor.

BUT, these qualities are perfect for selective vaporization, because we can apply the heat to the surface of an object very quickly, before the heat is able to penetrate that object.

Imagine blowing super heated air over your arm for a split second. All of your arm hairs will burn completely off, but your skin will not be burned. What you just did was selectively vaporize your arm hairs without vaporizing your skin.

Now imagine that your arm hairs are trichomes.....

If we use convection heat quickly enough, we can vaporize the trichomes before the heat is allowed to penetrate into the plant material. The idea being, to fully extract the goodies before the plant material turns brown and begins to ruin the flavor.

Now for the cool part!

Nature has amazingly grown the trichomes in the most perfect way to be vaporized via convection. If we are able to keep the trichomes intact from harvest to chamber... you'll essentially have perfectly spaced trichomes held out in space just above the surface of the plant, ready to be heated by the air.

The cool thing about selectively vaporizing just the trichomes is that the taste and vapor potency should be as close to a dab of full melt hash as you can get from vaporizing dry flower.

So... okay... you wonder...I thought I've been doing this all along? How is this method any different than what I normally do??

Well... in order to fully experience the results, I feel like we need to change the way we're grinding in order to maintain the original trichome structure as much as possible.

I feel like a LOT of the trichomes are dislodged and covered by plant material when we grind our flower and pack our chambers.

I think the key is to keep those trichomes attached to their stalks, so they protrude out, away from the plant material.

The second most important part is to load the chamber with intact leaves and calyx, with enough airspace around these bits so that the majority of the trichomes are sitting in open air space, not touching anything else. Any trichomes that are touching plant material directly (or worse, covered or buried) will vaporize last, or not until the plant material starts to brown.

You can test this theory by loading a single trichome laiden calyx/leaf into your chamber and flash vaporizing it quickly at a high temp in one hit. You'll see that you can fully vaporize the trichomes well before the plant material starts to brown.

 

[invertedisdead]

You'll see that you can fully vaporize the trichomes well before the plant material starts to brown.

Have you tried re-vaporizing the ABV in a temperature controlled device to confirm that it’s fully vaporized?

In my experience, you can’t really fully vaporize a load without browning the material. The boiling point of THC is ~400F.

IME the only way to selectively vape just the trichomes is to vape hash.

 

[Dan Morrison]

I'm pretty much just going on my observations and hunches. I'd love to keep going deeper, I think testing the ABV for full extraction would be awesome, I'll try to figure something out.

In my experience, you can’t really fully vaporize a load without browning the material.

I still have the exact same experience, my chamber loads still have many loose and buried trichomes in them.

I should have mentioned in my ramblings that this concept of selective vaporizing pretty much requires the perfect setup to achieve. I don't know if it's actually realistic to expect that level of fussyness.... and most often you just can't start with undamaged flower.


It's only when I am hand picking a perfect tiny flower, covered in intact trichomes, and loading it into the chamber so that every single trichome is suspended in open air, am I able to taste and see the potential that I think is here. This is why I think the theory is sound. But at this scale it's just not enough material for a normal session.0

The moment I try to pack more plant material into the chamber, it becomes more difficult to both prepare said material and also pack it in a way that maintains even airflow over every individual trichome.... and so this is where expecting perfection is currently impractical.


I agree we need those high temps, higher than 400f, even. But my thought is to apply the heat quickly enough so that it does not penetrate the plant material.

I also agree that starting with hash is the only way to selectively vaporize just the trichomes. I guess I'm just looking at ways to get closer to that ideal. If there is plant material in the chamber, I do think it's impossible to avoid heating it entirely. I just want to avoid heating it as much as possible.

 

[Stu]

@stickstones told me years ago how vaping unground nugs is the tastiest way to go and he was right (for a change). I can't argue with anything you've said, Dan. It'd be interesting to be able to test the differences between plant vapor and trichome vapor. Maybe if we all pitch in we can buy a badass spectrometer and do some serious science shit.

 

[RustyOldNail]

@stickstones told me years ago how vaping unground nugs is the tastiest way to go and he was right (for a change). I can't argue with anything you've said, Dan. It'd be interesting to be able to test the differences between plant vapor and trichome vapor. Maybe if we all pitch in we can buy a badass spectrometer and do some serious science shit.

I eventually tried WHOLE NUGS... very tasty indeed. I’ve had better luck with my conduction vapes, Mighty, IQ2, oven roasted. Minutes ago before seeing the last few messages, I tried two tiny nugs in my brand new Hopper IO. Chamber is too narrow, got a lot of hot air that dodged around the nugs, but on high temp there was some extraction. Dans idea of staggered nugs is intriguing, seems a custom bowl would have to be developed.

 

[Farid]

When I have time I do exactly what you describe, picking apart only calyxes, and loosely filling a chamber. Then I do a single on demand hit and discard. Even with a conduction vape I find that I get a flavorful hit with this method. It helps that the quantities I'm using are insanely small ~0.02g.

That said, there are certainly actives left. I firmly believe it is impossible to extract all the vapor/cannabinoids without also gettinng those less desirable flavors. I believe this is related to the plant matter acting like a sponge and absorbing some of the liquid trichs/recondensed vapor after the first wave of heat is applied. But with smaller loads and less dense packing this can be greatly reduced - which is what Dan is getting at with his method.

No matter how you prepare the cannabis there is a compromise betweeen flavor and full extraction. I've found with a low enough tolerance I stop caring about getting every single active.

 

[Victarion]

Very very very interesting topic. Nothing constructive to add but I'm learning stuffs here.
Thanks guys.

 

[KeroZen]

But with convection when you pack too airy, you tend to immediately end up with the "sucking on a hair drier" effect: the vapor to air ratio is pretty bad. It might be tasty but it's to me not at all satisfying of a hit. It's wispy tasty.

Contrary to what I often read here, I compact (gently) my bowls with all my convection vapes. For conduction, it's not even an option to not pack tight and use the puck technique otherwise you get poor results, especially in all those sub 20W low power vapes.

Compact too much = tunneling effect. Compact not enough = hair drier effect.

 

[arb]

After much tinkering, here's some ramblings.

• Vapor is composed of two fractions, the volatiles contained inside of the trichomes, and those contained inside of the plant material.
• Trichome vapor = all the good stuff, Plant vapor = not my jam.
• Convection heat is able to selectively vaporize the trichomes before the heat is able to penetrate and extract the plant material.
• The more effectively you can separate the trichome vapor from the plant vapor, the tastier your hits will be.
• Selective vaporization works best when the trichomes are intact on the surface of the flower.
• Manually disassembling flower leaf by leaf is the best method to preserve trichomes.

Let's elaborate.

Heat Penetration

Convection heating is not good at penetrative heating, because air carries a very small amount of thermal energy and it is a very poor thermal conductor.

BUT, these qualities are perfect for selective vaporization, because we can apply the heat to the surface of an object very quickly, before the heat is able to penetrate that object.

Imagine blowing super heated air over your arm for a split second. All of your arm hairs will burn completely off, but your skin will not be burned. What you just did was selectively vaporize your arm hairs without vaporizing your skin.

Now imagine that your arm hairs are trichomes.....

If we use convection heat quickly enough, we can vaporize the trichomes before the heat is allowed to penetrate into the plant material. The idea being, to fully extract the goodies before the plant material turns brown and begins to ruin the flavor.

Now for the cool part!

Nature has amazingly grown the trichomes in the most perfect way to be vaporized via convection. If we are able to keep the trichomes intact from harvest to chamber... you'll essentially have perfectly spaced trichomes held out in space just above the surface of the plant, ready to be heated by the air.

The cool thing about selectively vaporizing just the trichomes is that the taste and vapor potency should be as close to a dab of full melt hash as you can get from vaporizing dry flower.

So... okay... you wonder...I thought I've been doing this all along? How is this method any different than what I normally do??

Well... in order to fully experience the results, I feel like we need to change the way we're grinding in order to maintain the original trichome structure as much as possible.

I feel like a LOT of the trichomes are dislodged and covered by plant material when we grind our flower and pack our chambers.

I think the key is to keep those trichomes attached to their stalks, so they protrude out, away from the plant material.

The second most important part is to load the chamber with intact leaves and calyx, with enough airspace around these bits so that the majority of the trichomes are sitting in open air space, not touching anything else. Any trichomes that are touching plant material directly (or worse, covered or buried) will vaporize last, or not until the plant material starts to brown.

You can test this theory by loading a single trichome laiden calyx/leaf into your chamber and flash vaporizing it quickly at a high temp in one hit. You'll see that you can fully vaporize the trichomes well before the plant material starts to brown.

Man..........sounds like kieff to me.
However you vape that for a bit and you will pretty quickly taste the mistake here.

 

[cannasoor]

Leaked image from Dan's investigations:

 

[Dan Morrison]

@Farid Sounds like we are on the same page here. And yes, unless I'm using a tiny quantity, it has not really been possible to reach absolute complete extraction. When you have multiple calyx/leaves in the chamber, it's damn near impossible to avoid covering trichomes with plant material.

I think it comes down to physics, and all other factors equal, the real limiter is chamber diameter.

With portables the relatively small chamber diameter doesn't allow you to pack a decent amount of material into the chamber in a shallow single layer... you need to pack it deeper. With a deeper pack, you have more buried trichomes, and trying to selectively heat the trichomes with a quick application of high heat will result in the top layer being overheated while the bottom layers are under-extracted.

With desktops, I think you've got a much better shot at full extraction in a single hit because you can pack a very shallow chamber. So long as the heat is even over the entire diameter of the chamber, you'll get better results compared to using a smaller diameter chamber.

@RustyOldNail and @Stu , I've tried the whole nug method as well, and while it does produce great results on the first hit, I do find that there are so many hidden trichomes inside of the nug that the only way to fully extract them is to break up the nug half way through a session. If you like the experience of whole nug vaping, I'll say that the experience of vaping pulled apart nugs is even better. It's the same great taste, but greater vapor density, and no need to break up the nug mid session.

@KeroZen Oh, yeah! I totally agree with the "sucking on a hair drier" analogy. If the load is so loose that material is able to blow around in the chamber, the vapor density drops off in a drastic way.

I seem to remember you like to tease out your chambers for like....some ungodly amount of hits, hahah. In that case, a denser pack and finer grind are totally viable. And actually, I really do enjoy a session of medium grind, lightly tamped. It's great.

I will note that with the selective trichome vaping technique that I'm experimenting with, I've been getting super dense hits. So I am not just getting wispy-but-tasty hits here. Like you, I don't like wispy hits at all. I'm shooting for as dense as possible.

@cannasoor, HAHA! Dude.... you're not far off.

 

[cannasoor]

Man..........sounds like kieff to me.
However you vape that for a bit and you will pretty quickly taste the mistake here.

OK @arb , I have to ask: what's the “mistake” that one will quickly taste with kieff? I have never separated out kieff, but just from a broad principle of wanting the “whole flower effect” (well, in the sense of all the components: I usually do grind). But maybe I am not familiar enough with “folk wisdom” to recognize your allusion: is it generally agreed that vaping kieff alone will be a “mistake” for flavor?

More broadly, I must say that my practices & techniques, developed in relative isolation, seem to be waaay off the norm for the board (despite my having read fairly well here during my initiation), and I feel it especially in this thread. I apparently grind way too fine, and sip slowly for way too long, compared to most. Some of this may have to do with other aspects of my approach, but I am still always surprised to hear of single-hit (or 2-4 hit) extractions: I load about 1/30th of a gram in my standard Nano stems, but I take something like 40+ hits off each stem before I consider them done. These are, admittedly, little 5-10 second sips to start with, rather than heroic 40-second draws, but they are also timed/spaced out differently: I have found that giving the load some time to “breathe”, while I am off hitting another stem or device, often “revives” it a bit, so returning back to it I get a larger mount of visible vapor (and flavor) in the first sips after the break.

Maybe my session profiles have been skewed by my multi-strain, compare-and-contrast approach (I usually have 3-5 strains running in separate stems/devices at once): this aspect definitely affects the rhythms and patterns of my hits.

I tried to document my process in another thread with an infographic—I'll paste it below.

The main takeaway I get from this is “Geez, this cannasoor guy is way off in left field sittin’ on the long tail of the distribution, with respect to his technique.” And I am actually fine with that, as I get absolutely fantastic results (IMHO), but I must admit I am intrigued by others’ approaches.

[ I just loaded up an ice stem for the Nano with a small whole nug, inspired by the conversation above, and it is so far just pure loveliness ... but then the strain is also one of my favorites, and fresh, etc. (Megafauna #4 from Deep Creek Gardens). I couldn’t tell you that this unground nug and the last ground stem’s worth from this same gram are that different: they’re both just sublime! ]

 

[arb]

OK @arb , I have to ask: what's the “mistake” that one will quickly taste with kieff? I have never separated out kieff, but just from a broad principle of wanting the “whole flower effect” (well, in the sense of all the components: I usually do grind). But maybe I am not familiar enough with “folk wisdom” to recognize your allusion: is it generally agreed that vaping kieff alone will be a “mistake” for flavor?

More broadly, I must say that my practices & techniques, developed in relative isolation, seem to be waaay off the norm for the board (despite my having read fairly well here during my initiation), and I feel it especially in this thread. I apparently grind way too fine, and sip slowly for way too long, compared to most. Some of this may have to do with other aspects of my approach, but I am still always surprised to hear of single-hit (or 2-4 hit) extractions: I load about 1/30th of a gram in my standard Nano stems, but I take something like 40+ hits off each stem before I consider them done. These are, admittedly, little 5-10 second sips to start with, rather than heroic 40-second draws, but they are also timed/spaced out differently: I have found that giving the load some time to “breathe”, while I am off hitting another stem or device, often “revives” it a bit, so returning back to it I get a larger mount of visible vapor (and flavor) in the first sips after the break.

Maybe my session profiles have been skewed by my multi-strain, compare-and-contrast approach (I usually have 3-5 strains running in separate stems/devices at once): this aspect definitely affects the rhythms and patterns of my hits.

I tried to document my process in another thread with an infographic—I'll paste it below.

The main takeaway I get from this is “Geez, this cannasoor guy is way off in left field sittin’ on the long tail of the distribution, with respect to his technique.” And I am actually fine with that, as I get absolutely fantastic results (IMHO), but I must admit I am intrigued by others’ approaches.

[ I just loaded up an ice stem for the Nano with a small whole nug, inspired by the conversation above, and it is so far just pure loveliness ... but then the strain is also one of my favorites, and fresh, etc. (Megafauna #4 from Deep Creek Gardens). I couldn’t tell you that this unground nug and the last ground stem’s worth from this same gram are that different: they’re both just sublime! ]

First hit tastes great second hit is meh and sours from there out fast.
Weirdly for me the first hit will whitewall the piece yet have barely if any visible vapor on exhale.
‍♂

 

[cannasoor]

First hit tastes great second hit is meh and sours from there out fast.
Weirdly for me the first hit will whitewall the piece yet have barely if any visible vapor on exhale.
‍♂

Very interesting: this goes along with my intuitions and, to some extent, with my experience. I don’t separate out kieff, but I do grind up my stems in an electric hand grinder, getting a mixture of “low-rent kieff dust” and busted up stems. If I separate out and vape just the dust, it behaves as you describe. But with the stem fragments in, it lasts longer. I imagine (perhaps in ignorance) something like the heat spreading out more, being absorbed into the stem fragments as well, and thereby not toasting the dust too quickly. (I use this stuff, though not very often, as a little “booster” for stems gone stale too quick.) I would expect the effects with ground whole flower versus kieff to be similar … though perhaps only for unreliable imagination reasons.

Ahh! And your mention of “whitewall” reminds me of another big difference in my approach (apparently): until this past summer, I rarely vaped through water, usually just straight up with stock stems/whatever for the vape. But in using my Orbiter more (usually with the Nano), I find that I take much bigger draws (naturally, I guess) and that the loads quit out more quickly, not only in number of hits, but also in overall time-in, so to speak, i.e., total seconds of draw across all hits taken. I expect that a lot of FC’ers are drawing through water much of the time, and so perhaps this also accentuates differences with my approach. (But I must admit, in this particular thread, it sounds like most people are also running dry, so that’s not all of it.)

 

[invertedisdead]

Weirdly for me the first hit will whitewall the piece yet have barely if any visible vapor on exhale.
‍♂

That’s because you’re not exhaling a bunch of water vapor in the sift

 

[invertedisdead]

I've tried the whole nug method as well, and while it does produce great results on the first hit, I do find that there are so many hidden trichomes inside of the nug that the only way to fully extract them is to break up the nug half way through a session

Agreed, I’m not a fan of whole nug vaping at all unless one can afford to just suck the terps out and load a fresh one. Otherwise there’s too many hits left with no flavor for me.

I actually find it more and more challenging to load a single hits worth in a lot of vaporizers as the cannabinoid density is so high on flower these days. I find a small bowl being more and more desirable for my preferred style of vaporizing.