This guide was written for you if you have experience with herb grinders and want to learn more or are totally new to this topic.
We thought it was necessary to compile our experience in one place and spend time exploring the differences between hand grinders and electric grinders, although there are other online guides that cover this subject.
Herbs should be enjoyed: their entire purpose is, after all, to improve the taste, aroma, and appearance of whatever they are added to. Herbs are intended to increase pleasure, so it only makes sense to have the right instruments at your disposal to make the most of your herbal enjoyment.
Herb Grinders 2021 Guide
Here are the sections that we’ll cover:
- What is an herb grinder?
- That is a grinder used for?
- The different types of grinders
- More types of grinders
- How to use an herb grinder
- How to grind herb with a grinder
- How to make a grinder
- How to clean your grinder
- How fine you should grind your weed
- Why grinding your weed is important
- The history of marijuana grinders
WHAT IS AN HERB GRINDER?
Herb grinders are instruments that grind herbs. The simple way they’re operating is this:
- You place the dried herb into the grinder
- The grinder shreds and slices the herb through its grinding process to reduce it to smaller fragments.
These wonderful little devices, crafted from a variety of different materials, are capable of converting different herbs and plant material from large, full-size pieces into smaller pieces that are better suited to whatever you want to use your herbs.
Why you should grind your herbs?
To get flavor out of herbs, to reveal the flavor, their surface area needs to be increased. This is what a grinder does, and it helps herbs to unleash their fragrance and flavor.
But why not just purchase herbs that are pre-ground?
Refreshment!
Weed can become stale over time. The more they are torn apart, the faster this process happens. A long time ago, pre-ground herbs from the store were presumably ground, and much of their flavor and value was lost in the time between grinding and final use.
It’s best to keep them intact until they are required to maintain the positive qualities of your cannabis. Then, to prepare them for your planned operation, a grinder can be used.
If you are using a vaporizer to enjoy the herb, it is vital to obtain a consistent, fine grind for the vaporizer to do its job, so a grinder is a must-have item in such a case.
What is a Weed Grinder Used for?
Grinders are used to grind. Yeah, there’s a little bit more than that to it. Plants, such as marijuana, that are used for their therapeutic and pleasure-inducing properties are often not enjoyed in their natural state. The greatest effects of cannabis are not obtained by consuming the raw material of the plant: some preparation is necessary. By drying the pot, it lasts longer and can be smoked, and grinding makes more surface area for better, more even burns, which releases more of the plant’s effects.
Cannabis grinders, pot grinders, bud grinders: all these words apply to marijuana grinders specifically made for this plant.
The Different Kinds of Herb Grinders
Large vs. small weed grinders
Let’s start by looking at the size of the grinder you want, and instead of getting too technical, we’re just talking about big and small.
Let us be clear, first of all, that we will not be describing commercial grade grinders. Pharmaceutical companies and companies that grind weed for their customers may use large size grinders.
If you are only the occasional user of a grinder or a new grinder, a small grinder may be the best. These grinders are suitable for a single bud or a very small amount of material and are also often quite compact. They usually don’t offer a lot of storage for your soil weed.
Large weed grinders can normally handle a few buds or flowers in a single grind, and grinders such as the Mamba V2 which dispense the grind while the grinder is in operation allow this large amount to be dispensed as needed. These types of grinders offer the benefit of a small grinder on a single-dose basis while still providing the user with a large grinding capacity.
Other large marijuana grinders are a little messier and physically larger with different plates that need to be opened up to dispense the weed, so they could be more than a single user wants.
Hand Grinders
A hand grinder is possibly familiar to most individuals reading this post. These simple, hand-operated devices contain teeth on plates which, by rotating against each other, grind herbs.
A variety of materials come from hand grinders: metals such as aluminum and hard plastics such as acrylic are the most common. Also wooden ones are on the market.
It is safer to go with metal when choosing a hand grinder, even though they are likely to cost more, since the strong teeth can last for far more grinds than any other material.
Although quite simple in design, hand grinders often contain magnets to help the ends stay together while grinding, and many units have multiple chambers to allow the user to filter the ground herbs in multiple sizes.
The benefits of hand grinders are often lower prices (although the cheapest hand grinders will quickly fail, so eventually you will end up spending more) and simplicity. They’re also fairly portable, and there are a lot of different options, whether you’re buying online or from a store.
However, they’re not without their drawbacks.
Hand grinders are slow to use and need both hands, so you may feel sore after a big grinding job and they may not be a choice for you at all if you have health issues related to their service.
If they are poor quality, they can also be inconsistent with the grind they create and their seals and magnets can fail. Finally, it is difficult to clean units with multiple chambers, so be prepared to spend time on their treatment and maintenance.
Novelty Grinders
Some grinders are just novelties and are not really up to the grinding job. They can be decorative or made from poor materials, and while they can make pleasant ornaments or presents, since they may eventually prove unreliable, they are not suitable for use in herb grinding.
More Types of Grinders
While the various types of grinders have just been mentioned, this section will briefly explain some other particular types of grinders that you may have heard about or will begin to learn about if you are reading a lot about grinders. While the above section does a decent job talking about the key grinders groups, there are several other styles of specialization and without us talking about them too, this guide will not be complete.
Dry Herb Grinder
Some grinders are specifically designed to dry herbs. In construction, these are most often cheaper, as dry herbs are simpler to smash and shred. For example, dense weed buds containing some moisture and oil are harder to grind than plant material that is completely dry. Dry herb grinders are possibly lighter-duty for this reason and not as versatile as an all-purpose grinder.
Marijuana buds are mostly what a grinder is bought for, and to shred the bud, this kind of grinder needs to be powerful enough. The bud contains and is also abundant with oils and some moisture. Because of these properties, without clogging, bud grinders must be solid, robust, and able to load the big bud particles.
Tobacco Grinder
Tobacco grinders are, well, tobacco-made grinders. While possibly not as common as when individuals rolled their own tobacco smokes from large leaf pieces they would have been back, these grinders still exist for those interested in grinding their own tobacco leaf. Tobacco is an oily plant, and it is not best to have the tobacco fully dry, but rather slightly moist for those looking to enjoy a pipe or cigar. This makes it important for any grinder intended for tobacco to be specifically designed for the purpose, along with the large size of tobacco leaf parts.
Herb Grinder
Herb grinders may refer to a variety of things, but they most often mean a grinder that can grind a variety of plant materials. Owing to legality concerns in various countries, a manufacturer may not use terms referring to marijuana such as weed, bud, and dope, so herb grinder most frequently refers to a grinder that is intended to grind marijuana. Since it is a common, broad term, a large number of different types of grinders may refer to herb grinders.
4-Piece Grinder
These types of grinders have several parts for different grinding components, and grinds can also be divided by scale. The standard alternating grinding plates with teeth, a screen that filters grind by scale, and a separate compartment that catches kief specifically are usually included in a marijuana grinder with 4 parts.
Weed Grinder
Pot grinders are grinders that have been developed and sold exclusively for marijuana. These grinders may be used on other plants as well, but are more commonly used for grass. This is sort of a blanket word, like a herb grinder.
Titanium Grinder
Titanium grinders are any kind of grinder where titanium is made of the main grinding components – the cutting teeth and plates, although the rest of the system may be as well. These grinders, like aluminium, are lightweight and solid, and in terms of toughness, they definitely beat out the plastic competition. They are also very costly, however, and offer no major advantages over aluminium grinders.
Aluminum Grinder
Aluminum grinders have their grinding plates and teeth made of aluminum, much like the section above on titanium grinders. These grinders are light and robust, and are also considerably cheaper than titanium, though titanium provides all the same benefits.
There have been some misleading statements of aluminum grinders possibly causing aluminum shavings to cause health problems, although this is not currently the case.
Aluminum is a good material for grinders because it does not decay over time because it naturally oxidizes to protect itself from further corrosion. Since aluminum is stronger than the material it is grinding, shavings are not created during operation and since washing a grinder before its first use is a good practice, shavings from the manufacturing process will be addressed here and the same problems will occur with titanium or any other new grinder. These false claims should be addressed here, as otherwise a person can spend a lot of extra money on materials such as titanium when aluminum is suitable for their intended use.
How to Use an Herb Grinder
Herb grinders operate by capturing and then tearing plant material between teeth, shifting from each other in opposite directions. This is the fundamental action which produces the grind.
Hand Grinders
The majority of hand grinders are made up of teeth plates that can be taken apart. When split, it is possible to load a herb into the teeth and then bring the plates back together. The teeth grind the weed when the ends of the grinder are turned by hand.
There are several compartments and screens for some of these grinders that allow the ground grass to be separated by size. When grinding is complete, the grinder must be removed to dump out the ground herbs.
How to Grind Herb with a Grinder
- Clean, if not already clean, grinder.
- Load the herb into separate plates, ensuring that no substance damages or constricts the seals of the grinder.
- Place the plates together, and then spin the grinder until you get the desired grinder. During grinding, it might be appropriate to open the grinder to see how much more is needed to get to the consistency you want.
- Open your grinder carefully and pour the contents into a jar. As these grinders can be messy, it can be better to capture stray stuff, such as a paper funnel, with something.
- Clear and dry grinder before storage.
How to Make a Grinder
We want to pay some attention to the DIY and home-made solutions that are also available to a motivated and likely broken person, now that we have identified the many types of commercially available grinders on the market and listed our preference. After all, grinding herbs can be achieved without investing in a high-quality grinder, so we don’t want to say that there are no such solutions, and some of them will be listed here instead.
Using What You May Already Have
Have you got a grater for cheese? Have you got a grinder for coffee? What about the glass of a shot and some scissors? What’s up with your fingers?
These are some of the alternatives that you might already have at your disposal to weed and herb grinders. A cheese grater can be used for shredding herbs, if you are patient.
You’ll need to be vigilant to keep your fingers away from the grater while you’re doing this. In fact, for safety reasons, we don’t suggest this approach at all, but since we know some people do this, we wanted to mention it.
A coffee grinder may act as a grinder of quick but crude herbs. Although it may be easy, on the inside of the machine, you may lose product and the blades will damage the herb and not give a consistent grind, but this can be a very quick way to grind up some product in a pinch. Some people swear to put buds in a shot glass and break them up with scissors using the old school methods. Others just want to grind themselves by hand.
These are methods that will get you by if you need to grind and don’t have any special instruments available. It should go without saying, however, that neither of these approaches can produce a great grind or a fast grind.
It is a smart idea to learn how to grind your cannabis without a store-bought grinder available when you’re in a bind. You may need these abilities at some stage, after all, and even if you don’t, they make for fun party tricks.
However, while we wanted to address the DIY options available to you, let’s be clear: considering the potential savings, we don’t recommend any of them over anything professionally-made.
The basic concept behind weed grinding was taken by a quality manufacturer and their experience and quality control procedures were used to create a durable product, something that is very difficult to match at home.
Cleaning Your Weed Grinder
It is an incredibly necessary part of the grinding experience to clean your cannabis grinder. Although not actually part of the grinding process itself, you can keep simple cleaning in mind when shopping for a grinder because it is a must to clean a grinder.
After you first purchase your grinder, prior to the first use, a thorough cleaning will be required. You can leave unnecessary residues within the grinder in the manufacturing and shipping process, and you do not want this kind of material in your grinder.
Then you’ll need to get into the habit of cleaning it regularly when you continue using your grinder so that you don’t mix your fresh product with stale residue. Also, you will have to clean even more often if you live in a humid environment so that the grinder does not grow mold.
How Fine You Should Grind Your Weed
The texture and consistency of the grinder matters when it comes to grinding any kind of herb. Different herbs need distinct grinds, so you’ll need to consider texture in your grinder purchase depending on what you intend on grinding.
In order for it to be vaporized and smoked efficiently, Marijuana requires a particular fineness in its grind. For instance, Munchmakers Aluminum Grinder is designed to produce a perfect marijuana grinder ready for bongs, vapes, and joints instantly.
And it’s not just a matter of winning the finest texture: grind too much and spoil the grind. And the overly-coarse texture will not burn equally on the other side of things.
Why Grinding Your Weed Is Important
We have an entire article about how important it is to grind your cannabis and other herbs. If you’ve read about cannabis grinders up to this point in this post, you probably already understand why. There are, however, those new to the practice who do not know all the ins and outs of grinding weed.
Did you know the various grinding textures burn differently from each other? That in each inhale, a coarse grind and a fine grind will produce different THC levels? An experienced consumer sometimes takes this kind of knowledge for granted, but those only considering trying cannabis do not know anything required to make educated buying decisions.
In terms of recreational cannabis use, several nations are new to the scene, and there are other countries that could be on the verge of legalizing the drug. In the near future, many individuals will be getting into recreational marijuana use, so we agreed in an entire article to address the reasons behind cannabis grinding.
The History of Marijuana Grinders
Did you know that, in 1905, the first grinder of herbs was patented? This is the first example of a device that looks like a modern hand grinder that has been documented. There is more than you might think about the history of these magical little devices, however.
As long as people have been using herbs for their medicinal properties, in ways to enhance storage and the effects of the herbs, they have dried, cut, and processed them.
Although it is not mandatory to understand what makes a great grinder, it will add to your appreciation of these devices to learn a little bit about the history of grinders and also provide you with some reading material for your next joint.
