Thinking about how to smoke resin because your wallet is empty and you just toked your last gram of Cherry OG?
It’s okay to admit. We’re all friends here and we’ve all thought the exact same thing at least once in our life.
To help you achieve the best experience when you can’t afford fresh bud, the all-things-cannabis experts at Honest Marijuana have created this complete guide on how to smoke resin.
At the end, we’ll give you one sure-fire tip to make all your resin adventures better than you ever dreamed possible.
What Is Resin?
Resin — a.k.a. pipe resin or weed resin — is the gunk that accumulates in your pipe or bong when you smoke several times without cleaning your tools.
Resin consists mainly of tar, ash, and carbon with a tiny bit of THC and other cannabinoids thrown in. And when we say tiny, we mean TINY!
There is so little THC in this sticky, nasty residue that it’s almost not worth the effort to learn how to smoke resin.
But when life’s got you down and you’re fresh out of pot, it can be a handy skill to have in your toking toolbox.
One word of warning before we continue: burning down on resin is one of the unhealthiest ways of trying to get high because resin contains high levels of elements you don’t typically want in your lungs (e.g., ash, tar, and carbon).
We would recommend almost anything else — bumming off your friends, emptying out old roaches, rifling the couch and your car for loose change, even going without until you can scrape together funds for a dime bag — before we’d recommend smoking resin.
But, as we said, in a pinch it can be a lifesaver. Having said that, proceed at your own risk.
For more information on how to get rid of resin in your pipe or bong, check out these helpful articles:
Resin Vs. Live Resin: A Crucial Distinction
There’s a crucial distinction between resin and live resin that you should never overlook.
Pay close attention to these definitions, commit them to your long-term memory, and use the terms correctly in any weed-related conversation so you don’t come across as a complete and utter neb.
Resin: Residue that accumulates on a pipe or bong after repeated toke sessions.
Live Resin: A concentrate — like wax or shatter — that is high in terpenes and other cannabis material.
Basically, resin is dirt; live resin is marijuana gold.
Highly trained professionals with expensive equipment make live resin by freezing fresh cannabis plant matter — not the dried and cured variety — and stripping off the terpenes, cannabinoids, flavonoids, and other good chemical compounds using butane extraction.
This results in a concentrated oil that’s high in cannabinoids — sometimes two, three, or even four times as high as the marijuana plant matter from which it’s made — and much closer to the flavor profile of the original plant.
If you want even more information on live resin, take a few minutes to read our article Live Resin: What Is It And Why Is It So Awesome?
How To Smoke Resin
There are many ways to use resin — some good, some bad, some just plain stupid. In this section, we’ll describe some of the best methods of how to smoke resin.
1) Dry Pipe
The simplest way to use up all the resin in your pipe or bong is to apply heat to the outer surface until the resin vaporizes, and then toke away.
If you choose to try this method, keep in mind that everything is going to be very hot. You’ll definitely need a potholder, oven mitt, or tongs of some kind so you don’t burn your fingers.
And be careful when you put the pipe or bong to your lips. The mouthpiece may be warm (or even hot).
If hitting the pipe dry isn’t your thing, try these alternative methods that require removing the resin first.
2) Bong
For the rest of the methods in this section, you’ll need to remove the resin from your pipe or bong first.
To do that, find a bobby pin or paperclip and a small plate or bowl.
Run a lighter or torch over the surface of the pipe or bong to warm up the resin (so it doesn’t stick to the inside surface as hard). Then start scraping with the bobby pin or paperclip.
Collect all the resin on the plate or in the bowl.
When you’ve removed all the resin that you want, roll it into a ball and pack it in the bowl of your bong. Apply heat per usual and smoke away.
In this case, it’s best to use a bong with fresh water in the bottom to help filter out as much of the foulness as possible.
3) Dab Rig
You can also try smoking your resin with a dab rig. Clean the resin out of your pipe or bong (as described above), roll it into lumps, and then dab yourself silly.
Be sure to put fresh water in the bottom of your rig so the taste and harshness of the resin don’t overwhelm you.
4) Hot Knives
Like the dry pipe method mentioned above, the hot knives method is going to be very harsh and will most definitely stink up the area where you choose to smoke.
Here’s how the hot knives method works:
Supplies
- Resin
- Two metal knives (the wider the blades the easier it will be)
- Stove, fire, or torch (something with which to heat the knives)
- Oven mitts or potholders
- Funnel (optional)
Instructions
- Scrape the resin out of your pipe or bong.
- Form it into small lumps (sometimes called “spots” or “dots”).
- Heat the knives. We find that the burner on a stove is the easiest solution, but you could also stick the knives in a campfire or heat both of them at the same time with a torch.
- Don one oven mitt.
- Place the lump of resin on the blade of one of the hot knives.
- Place the other hot blade on top of the first blade and gently squeeze.
- Inhale the resulting smoke through your nose or mouth (remember, it’s going to be harsh).
To make sure all the smoke goes where it’s supposed to go — into your lungs — you can hold a small funnel in your mouth, maneuver it over the hot knives when you put them together, and inhale from there.
If you don’t have a funnel, you can make your own out of whatever materials are on hand. The easiest DIY solution is to cut the top off a plastic water bottle and use that as a funnel.
This is also known as a spottle, bowser, hooter, or toker.
How To Smoke Resin: Quality Bud Yields Quality Resin
If you want the resin in your pipe to have any chance of being smokable at the end, you have to start with a high-quality, sustainably sourced, organically grown cannabis bud like those from Honest Marijuana.
Resin, by nature, is extremely low-quality stuff. But if you start with extremely high-quality bud, the leftovers will be much better low-quality stuff.
Think about it this way. If you pack your pipe with gold — don’t do this, by the way; it’s just an illustration — the leftover resin will be partly gold.
But if you pack your pipe with dirt — don’t do this either, my stoner — the leftover resin will be dirt as well.
So if you pack your pipe with one of the best Blue Dream strains on the planet from Honest Marijuana — the gold in the above illustration — the resulting resin will have a much better chance of getting you high.
But if you pack your pipe with dregs, the resulting resin will do little more than taste awful and give you a headache (with the very real possibility that you’ll just get sick).
It’s not worth the risk.
Talk to the budtenders at your local dispensary to find out what strains they recommend. If you live in Colorado, find some Honest Marijuana and discover what the purest marijuana experience on the planet feels like.
The Honest Marijuana Way
At our Rocky-Mountain-based grow facility, we employ world-class organic growing methodologies to provide cannabis connoisseurs with the purest marijuana experience on the planet.
We grow our plants the way Mother Nature intended: in organic soil without chemicals or pesticides. We even hand-trim our plants so that they’re organic from the ground up.
Not only does that make all your smoking, dabbing, and edible experiences infinitely better, but it also means that the resin you scrape from your pipe or bong is better as well.
So don’t settle for inferior resin. Start with the best strains on the planet — the Honest Marijuana strains — and experience cannabis and resin the way it was meant to be. You won’t be sorry.
For more information on all things cannabis and to check out our 100-percent all-natural marijuana products, visit HonestMarijuana.com today.
