Vaporizers - Vaporizing cannabis using a Hookah.

[purplehaze]

Phaze has never tried this before, nor really thought to try it but by smoking from the hookah the way intended with shisha (molasses tobacco) but replaced with cannabis actually causes a vaporizing effect. Using strictly cannabis on a clean bowl with natural charcoal, this is important, the other stuff produces loads of carbon monoxide and can kill you.

So this is how Phaze done it.
He ground alot of cannabis into powder placed it in the bowl.
Put a piece of aluminum foil over the bowl, poked a few small holes in the aluminum foil, then placed heated natural charcoal ontop of the aluminum foil.

The hits were very greenish, the taste didn't taste burnt at all.
The high was very clean, and very narcotic.
It was very easy on the lungs.

Phaze would rate this a 4/5 for smoking.


Has any other swimmers ever tried vaporizing cannabis in a hookah?

Swim has a 3 ft tall hookah and a miniture hookah which is only like 7 inches tall.

The big hookah could easily hold anywere from 8-14 grams which deems it inefficient and impractical.

The smaller one named, mini me, is perfect for the job. The bowl holds any were from 1-3 grams of ground up bud. It has a cap to set on top of it (the aluminum foil) and seems to help keep things at a good temperature with 5 star shaped holes nicely placed threw out so the charcoal can breathe. The big one is named hubble bubble (FYI)


Science.

"Common practice is to keep temperatures to degrees which do not "char" the hookah; that is within a temperature range of 100-150 C. (Chaouachi K: Patologie associate all'uso del narghile). The effects of these lower temperatures on tar are inconclusive, though Chaouachi indicates the tar would be less harmful"

Source: http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Hookah#Health_risks


"Vaporizing is an alternative to smoking. Rather than burning the herb, which produces numerous harmful by-products, a vaporizer heats the material, ideally to 180°C (356°F), so that the active compounds contained in the plant melt, causing a phase change of the matter, which is now an aromatic vapor. This new gas is not smoke from combustion, but an evaporated vapor that has the appearance of smoke."

Source: http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Vaporizer


Related Science.

1. A bic burns at around 1200 degrees F when just sparking up and putting the flame to a bowl. If the lighter is held for some time it can reach +-1700 degrees F.

Source: google, spent about 20 minutes looking at different avgs were people had gaged it. Bics are complicated because they don't mix oxygen well with the butane making them burn at different temperatures.

2. Butane (torch) lighters burn at around 2200 degrees F, this is probably impracticle for use with cannabis but just referencing. Torch lighters can exceed 2800 degrees F from google.



Conclusion. A hookah seems to be a very good way to vaporize cannabis, probably not as efficient as an actual vaporizer but did conclude with positive effects which left phaze very pleased with the process. Also without having to light the bowl and pass and cough etc the smoking session was even more enjoyable without those small irritations. The taste was also something to speak of, amazing, its like smoking a whole bowl that taste like the very first hit; until its done, then it oddly enough resembles a popcorn taste.

[grg3135]

swim has been using a hookah to smoke his bud for over a year now. It is a very smooth smoke...also very relaxing. He actually prefers to mix with a mint flavored tobacco but occassionally smokes with just the bud. Swim can put about 2 grams of high-grade cannabis in the bowl mixed with tobacco (he has a very large bowl, well he actually has several but he uses the large bowl for his bud) and smoke it leisurely over the next hour.

fyi...you can buy smaller bowls for the larger hookah. Most bowls are universal and if they are a little loose you could just use an extra rubber grommet to seal it

[purplehaze]

For a bowl to smoke from (put a lighter to) swim has a metal bowl that came with one of those straight acrylic bongs everyone has. It fits perfect into the huge hookah and holds about the same as a regular bowl. around .5g then you can just smoke from it and pull it up like a normal slider bowl and clear it.

But its a very nice and unique experience to vaporize the cannabis using the hookah and charcoal.

This is related i meant to add it the first time.

Extraction and delivery capabilities

The wide range of results from tests of different vaporizers suggest that the choice of vaporizer is a major factor in determining extraction and delivery efficiency as well as the amount of harmful byproducts produced, or not produced, as in the case of a superior system. In Cannabis, and many other medicinal plants, the components responsible for the aromatic nature of the plant will often vaporize at a low-end temperature in the range of extraction temperature values for all the bioactive components. In Cannabis, the temperature range across which the actives will vaporize is at least 56°C (132°F) starting at around 127°C (260°F) where only aromatic compounds of minimal bioactivity will release and going all the way up to 200°C (392°F) with the higher end of this range representing where the cannabinoids of higher bioactivity appear to be released. It is believed that both the total amount of actives delivered as well as the breadth of spectrum delivered per inhalation is critical in determining the value of the delivered dose and, in turn, systems that deliver the highest amount of actives and broadest spectrum of actives per inhalation are believed to be the most effective for medicinal applications: i.e. venturi enhanced extraction / convection based systems.
Proposed factors affecting output include:[2][3]

• Temperature
• Specimen density
• Weight, content of water and essential oils
• Consistency of material in the filling chamber
• Variety and potency of cannabis used
• Different preparations such as crude flowertops, hashish, hash oil, etc.
• Storage time of the vapor
• Proportion of THC exhaled (breathing technique)

Not all those have been scientifically tested. Research using the vaporizer found the delivery efficiency highest at around 226°C (439°F), falling to about half efficiency at 150°C (302°F) to 180°C (356°F) degrees depending on material [3]. The purest preparations produced the highest efficiencies, about 54% for pure THC versus 29% for plant material (female flowertops) with 12% THCA content. Besides THC, several other cannabinoids as well as a range of other plant components including terpenoids were detected in the plant material. Using pure THC in the Volcano Vaporizer, no degradation products (delta-8-THC (D8-THC), cannabinol (CBN), or unknown compounds were detected by HPLC analysis [3] .
The longer vapor is stored, the more of the THC is lost as it condenses on the surface of the vaporizer or the balloon. This loss may be negligible over a few minutes but may exceed 50% after 90 minutes [3] .
Interestingly, the Leiden Univsersity study [3] found that as much as 30%–40% of inhaled THC was not absorbed by the lungs and simply exhaled. However, they did not find large individual differences in the amounts exhaled.



Source: http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Vaporizer



After thoughts: it might prove helpful to keep a butane lighter around incase the charcoal isnt hot enough you can pick it up off the hookah head and re-heat it until its glowing and set it back down on it.

Also when using cannabis phaze thinks its important to make the aluminum foil sit down in the bowl pushed down ontop of the cannabis that way maximum heat transfer occurs.

Letting the coal sit for as little as 1 minute without hitting the hookah can cause the coal to lower its temperature and stop the chemical reaction meaning its gonna need heated up more before smoking. When you hit the hookah the coal will heat up so keep it going and keep the coal at the hottest temp possible.

[Swimmortal]

SWIM finds that placing cannabis in a hookah can have a very nice effect HOWEVER it does waste a lot of material. SWIM has found that marinating the nuggets beforehand, much like one marinates hookah tobacco, gives the best effect, pulls the smoothest smoke and wastes the least amount of cannabis. This prevents the buds from burning and instead induces the THC to evaporate.

[jux]

or you could try mixing up some kief with shisha (hookah tobacco)....cant say from personal experiance, but it seems to me that this would be the least wasteful way to do it....

[Swimmortal]

Originally Posted by jux

or you could try mixing up some kief with shisha (hookah tobacco)....cant say from personal experiance, but it seems to me that this would be the least wasteful way to do it....

Actually that's the worst thing to do...SWIM tells me he never got high off of shisha when he mixed tobacco+weed. It's a huge waste too because noobs tend to put loads of weed expecting to get really baked. Take it from SWIM, it just doesn't work as well.

[purplehaze]

If your mixing cannabis with shisha put the shisha in first and put the cannabis on top of the shisha, its very important that you grind the cannabis into powder before topping the shisha with it.

Make sure the aluminum foil is directly on top of the cannabis for maximum heat transfer. Phaze uses three kings charcoal from holland and it seems to heat up enough to get the job done. And using shisha gives it a hella nice taste. There should be no problems using bud, it doesnt have to be hash or kif.

[Bajeda]

Swim can recommend using hashish with hookahs, but he doesn't really mess around with smoking weed in them as he doesn't think it would work nearly as well.

[jux]

heh, after all this talk the drifter fire his up (shisha only) mmmm....romani banana split

[elcoop]

swim has a hookah but it is so hard to hit swim and his friends almost never bother
what's the procedure?
does swiy need charcoals?
help plz

[purplehaze]

Well in regards to shisha you do not smoke it with a lighter. This is tobacco with syrup all over it and its very wet and sticky. The idea is to place the tobacco in the bowl and put aluminum foil over the bowl. Put charcoal ontop of the foil and it will roast the shisha. This tobacco is not meant to be burned with a lighter, do not use a torch and force it to smoke. Smoking one bowl of shisha with a torch lighter creates about as much tar as a whole pack of cigarettes.

Once you use the charcoal it will be easier to hit and it will taste a hell of a lot better. Visit some of the wiki links ive posted regarding hookah.

http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Hookah

Dont forget to poke holes in the foil.

[cosmicruler]

interesting topic,

but swim was wondering how do you get the coals burning properly??

[purplehaze]

Use tongues sold for this purpose, swim uses wire pliers, then heat it with a lighter, preferably a torch lighter, it will begin to glow red. You can also use a stove eye but this didnt work well for swim, just burn it with a lighter and set it on the hookah head, which first you prepare with aluminum foil.

purplehaze added 1 Minutes and 1 Seconds later...

p.s. make sure to use natural coal sold for hookahs, the other produces to much carbon monoxide and will kill you.

[Swimmortal]

Originally Posted by purplehaze

p.s. make sure to use natural coal sold for hookahs, the other produces to much carbon monoxide and will kill you.

Also, make sure SWIY's coal is fully open/lit (no sparks) before toking.

[cosmicruler]

thanks.swim had pretty good success just using the coals(BBQ) he was given with the hookah and shisha swim bought 2nd hand from a middle eastern man.didnt notice any adverse effects and grape flavour was really good.
Swim just used his gas BBQ to ignite the coals and then placed them onto hookah.
swim will probably invest in proper quicklight shisha coals and a few other shisha flavours pretty soon...