Utillian 5 V4
Utillian 5 V4 Wax Pen is perfect for waxy THC concentrates. With a 1500mAh battery, USB-C charging, 2 high-quality coils, 4 heat settings (2.2v-2.8v), and an integrated dab tool mouthpiece, it’s a powerful, affordable upgrade!
In stock, ships in 1-2 business days.
If you’ve just bought your first dry herb vaporizer, or if you’re an experienced user trying to really dial in the best technique, check out our dry herb vape cleaning guide to figure out how to best keep your cannabis vape in tip-top shape!
Tip: Don’t throw out your bud! That stuff (AVB) is useful and can be used to make cannabis edibles! Read our AVB edibles recipe guide here for more info!
No matter which device, a portable dry herb vape with glass stems or a mouthpiece, wood, or butane vape, we’ll go over the best cleaning methods and techniques to use! Scroll down to the very bottom for a quick summary.
Contents
How to know when to clean your vaporizer
As a rule of thumb, we clean our portable vaporizers every 4-6 sessions or so. This can depend from unit to unit though and a device like a Mighty Plus needs to be tidied up every 3 sessions or so to really keep it working best, while something like a Dynavap M can easily go a dozen sessions before getting gunked up.
- The best time to clean a dry herb vaporizer is really when the performance starts dropping – less vapor production, the flavor is worse, and airflow gets cut down. As soon as you notice these factors changing, then give your vape a quick cleaning before the next session.
How to clean a dry herb vaporizer?
The best way to clean a dry herb vaporizer is with a few cotton swabs, isopropyl alcohol, some coarse salt, some paper towels, and a glass. In most cases though, coarse salt isn’t needed. For a great all-around kit, check out the Zeus Purifying Cleaning Kit that even provides bristle pipe cleaners for those hard to reach and tough to scrub vital bits. Depending on the herb vape you have, then the next steps will vary. Most vapes function the same.
Chambers
The bowl you put your dry herb into will often get dirty or even marked by brown stains. Between each session or so, scrub it out quickly to loosen any gunk in there. Brush the screen quickly too.
- Take a cotton swab and dip it into iso quickly, then scrub away at the chamber until it cleans up.
- All the areas around too just give a quick scrub and you’ll see how quickly the q-tip gets satisfyingly dirty.
- Run an empty session at high temperature to evaporate any extra iso and so you won’t inhale some.
If you have a ceramic chamber with brown stains that won’t come out, then you have luck in sight! While isopropyl alcohol may not do the trick, a magic eraser type cleaning sponge will do great! Just be careful because the sediment can rub into the vapor path, so clean your units bowl upside down! Brown stains on the bowl for Storz & Bickel units, Flowermate vapes, and DaVinci vapes are quite common, so use the above magic eraser trick to deal with that.
Mouthpieces
Glass stems like on an Arizer Air MAX or mouthpieces from units like Storz & Bickel Mighty Plus also like the iso treatment. These can all be basically submerged in isopropyl alcohol for 10-15 minutes and left to soak to remove all the residue from them. If you have a unit which uses O-rings in the build, get those off before soaking!
Vaporizers and isopropyl alcohol 101
Zeus Vaporizers have some of the best cleaning supplies available and if you don’t need the whole kit, you can pick up either their Grime Wipes or Grime Sticks. And we undoubtedly have to mention our own Tools420 Cleaning Sticks which will work great as well.
- But of course, you can get isopropyl alcohol on its own at a pharmacy or drug store. Most big box drug stores will have 1L jugs of this stuff for $5-10, but often cheaper. Denatured alcohol/spirit is also acceptable, and sometimes iso is called ‘rubbing alcohol’. All of these will work. Some other big box chains like Wal-Mart sell these too. Of course, the higher the % the better, but even as low as 70% iso is just fine. The best cleaner we currently sell, hands down, is Orange Chronic Pipe Cleaner for glass!
For the savvy connoisseurs out there, soak your sticky pieces in some high fat milk to make stem milk – it’s surprisingly potent and works well!
How to clean wooden vaporizers?
If you have a wood vape like the Vapman or Ditanium, you’ll want to treat it differently. Using isopropyl alcohol is mostly a no-go, and instead we recommend to dip a cleaning brush in lemon juice and scrub away any parts of build-up before wiping away with baby or wood oil.
- Baby oil is also known as mineral oil, and is safe to use on wood and even to be used as a basic wood conditioner. Just use a rather small dollop on a cotton pad and wiping away the residue as it is. If you have a place really exceedingly grimy, then use a very small amount of iso, and ensure you clean that iso out and re-oil the wood as soon as possible!
- Once that’s all cleaned up, then you can wipe a very thin layer of baby oil on all the wood parts using a small cotton pad or fabric. This will keep the wood all healthy and pretty until you need to re-oil (roughly every 3-6 months, perhaps more)
To oil a wood vape, opt for either wood-specific oil, beeswax, or mineral/baby oil. Olive oil will go rancid and smell bad, don’t use it!
Final Thoughts
Isopropyl alcohol is your best friend when it comes to the best way to clean your herb vape. For any glass, metal, and ceramic piece, it’ll quickly make work of any residue that builds up. Use an ear swab dipped in iso to clean other places.
Just make sure to be careful with isopropyl alcohol around O-rings and especially wood. Do a burn off session after cleaning to evaporate any of your cleaner. Like we linked at the top, go to the AVB Edibles recipe guide to give your used bud an unexpected second life!
We hope our dry herb vape cleaning guide helps you do just that – a happy herb vape will keep the flavor and performance at tip top shape! Thanks for reading, if you have questions feel free to fire away!