How To Clean A Grinder And Smoke It

A Step-by-step Guide On How To Clean A Grinder

Grinders are critical to a blissful smoke session. But after steady grinding your herbs and puffing on already finessed bits of kush, outstanding service to your grinder would come knocking. Also, the more you blow, the sooner your weed grinder needs servicing. Eventually, it will come in handy that you know how to clean a grinder.

As time goes on, bits of herbs will get stuck to your grinder while trying to smoothen your herbs for a premium smoking experience. However, if you invest some time and a few of your household stuff, you could get your grinder back to high performance pretty soon.

Why You Need To Clean Your Grinder

Now, besides a poor grinding experience, using a grinder without cleaning would be far from hygienic. Too old weed bits can cause mold to form in the grinder, especially when it is not maintained correctly. This will invite various bacteria to make your grinder their new haven.

Even if you can grind weed without using a grinder, a proper herb grinder is more effective, and to keep it that way, you must keep it in top working condition. The bottom line is that a clean grinder will perform best, and makes it easier to shred your herb into smokable bits.

In this post, we want you to get informed on the cleaning process, the materials you'll need — mostly household materials, so don't fret — and how to identify when your grinder needs a replacement.

Cleaning anything can be hectic for some people. Perhaps that won't be when you could salvage some caked weed from a cranky grinder that doesn't work as fluid as it used to. Let's start with the materials you'll be needing for this quick exercise.

Materials Needed

Before going about how to clean a grinder, you most likely already have most of these materials you'll soon get to know about in your home. However, if you don't, it doesn't cost a fortune to get them.

A toothbrush with soft bristles
Cotton Buds
Isopropyl Alcohol / Rubbing Alcohol
The freezer
Ziploc or Glass jar
Rolling tray

Step-by-step of Grinder Cleaning Process

It is crucial to follow these cleaning steps to get your grinder back to what it used to be like when you first got it. Perhaps shiny if it was stainless steel, but most importantly, free of residue and Kief, and easy to use again.

1. Pull The Dirty Grinder Apart

Regardless of the material, your grinder is made of; there's usually the grinding area — an essential part — also, there is the retaining compartment where the finished product goes into. And other pieces that assemble the grinder into one piece. To clean your grinder deeply, you'll need to fully dismantle all parts so that you can have a go at all the hidden corners containing plant matter.

2. Clean Out Residue

Hitting the grinder parts delicately on the rolling tray would help you get some residue out before you deal with the stubborn ones. One way to get out stubborn herb particles is to put your dismantled grinder in the freezer. This procedure would also help you salvage some herbs you can use in your next smoke session.

3. Make Use Of The Freezer

The freezer would make the particles come off quickly from the parts of your grinder. Nevertheless, tiny particles would remain, then you can make sure of using alcohol to clean the remnants.

4. Soak In Isopropyl Alcohol

Get a Ziploc bag or a glass jar. Fill it with isopropyl alcohol and dip your grinder parts into it. Make sure you shake so that the alcohol can clean your grinder off the remaining tiny sticky bits. If you have a plastic-type, it would be better to soak it in boiling water than alcohol. The use of isopropyl alcohol has come against remarks about how unsafe it might be. On the contrary, rubbing alcohol is very safe. According to an article byHealthline that has nothing to do with metal grinders, you do not have to clean surfaces with water after use because the alcohol will evaporate.

5. Scrub The Grinder Clean

This is where the toothbrush comes in handy. Use the brush to scrub the teeth of the grinder clean. The toothbrush is safe to clean your grinder, whether plastic or metal grinders. Cotton buds will hell you get into tight corners.

6. Rinse With Warm Water And Dry

Now that your grinder is free from herb particles, you can rinse with warm water. Leave it to dry. The metal grinders need this so that they don't develop rust. Generally, all grinders should be left to dry because a wet grinder can get moldy fast. Use a paper towel to clean your grinder and get it dry quickly.

Frequently Asked Questions

There are some frequently asked questions about cleaning grinders worthy of a few words to clear the air of uncertainty.

How do You Clean a Stainless Steel Grinder?

To clean a stainless steel grinder, you use the same procedure as cleaning every other grinder. However, you might want to be careful about going too hard on the plastic grinder and using alcohol since they might be less durable than the stainless steel counterparts.

What do I do With The Stuff at the Bottom of my Grinder?

The stuff at the bottom of your grinder is called a kief. It is plant matter and also the sticky substance that clogs most of your grinder parts. The Kief is fine textured resins from herb flower. You can get more Kief if you have an extra chamber beside the one collecting the regular ground herb. Kief is just as potent as CBD oils; it contains more cannabinoids. Hence, it would also be filled with the immense benefits of marijuana.

You can do with Kief anything you would do with regular ground weed; roll up, spread on edibles among the many options. However, Kief is fragile and can make a mess if you do not handle it properly.

How do You Get Kief Out of a Plastic Grinder?

To get Kief out of a plastic grinder, you can use alcohol to clean the insides. It would also be best to know how to clean a grinder with boiling water.

Meanwhile, to clean plastic grinders is no different from how you would go about it with a metal grinder. Getting Kief out of your grinder is vital for reuse, especially if you have left it unclean for too long, and it hasn't become moldy. So let's look at some methods on how to get Kief out of the grinder.

It's easier to gather Kief when you have an extra chamber to collect it specially. So, if you only have two chambers, why don't you consider adding the third chamber? Some grinders come with spatulas so that you can easily collect the Kief in the bottom chamber. If you want to get the most of the Kief stuck in corners of your grinder, the best practice is to put the grinder parts in the freezer. Since Kief is just an incredibly small sac of oil, it can be messy dealing with it at room temperature. When residues are frozen, it is easier to pull them apart from the parts. Otherwise, use a soft-bristled toothbrush to get the residue out.

When To Replace Your Grinder

Now you've learned how to clean a grinder; you should also know when it needs replacement. Grinder cleaning won't always bring your grinder to top performance, especially when there's something wrong with it. For instance, the magnets holding some parts of the item together might get weak. Then, you'll know it's time to replace it.

Some other situations to look out for before replacing your grinder are;

If the rubber rings are lost or worn out from use
Lost or bad screens
Broken teeth
And if you notice metal shaving.

Conclusion

Grinders are easy to clean. The materials you need are either right behind you or not expensive at all. You'll find that with little or no money, you can take the necessary steps to clean your grinder. Meanwhile, you can get rewarded for your cleaning if you aren't doing it too late. Leaving cleaning till it's long overdue means that the leftovers in the item won't be useful since they could have grown mold. But if you clean more frequently, you are bound to gather a reasonable amount of your herb back.