The short answer
Pack a small bowl of ground flower, fill the bong with enough water to cover the percolator slits, seal your mouth on the mouthpiece, and light the bowl while you pull. Once the tube fills with smoke, lift the bowl or slide out and keep inhaling to push the smoke into your lungs. Exhale. That is the whole technique. Everything below is the detail that separates a harsh hit from a good one.
What you need
- A bong with a matching bowl and downstem
- Ground cannabis, medium grind
- Water, cold or room temperature
- A lighter, hemp wick, or butane torch
- Isopropyl alcohol and coarse salt for cleaning
Step by step
- Grind the flower. A medium grind burns even and pulls well. Powder clogs the bowl and gets sucked through. Whole nugs burn uneven and waste the hit.
- Add water. Pour until the water sits just above the percolator holes or the bottom of the downstem. Too little and the smoke hardly cools. Too much and you get a mouthful of bong water.
- Pack the bowl. A pinch is enough for one or two hits. Keep it loose instead of tamped down. If you are sharing, corner the bowl and light only one edge so the green lasts.
- Set your grip. Lips sealed around the mouthpiece, one hand on the bowl so you can lift it later, the other hand on the lighter.
- Light and pull at the same time. Hold the flame near the edge of the bowl and draw. The pull drags the flame down into the flower. Keep the lighter moving so you are not torching one spot.
- Clear the chamber. When smoke reaches the top of the tube, pull the bowl or slide out and inhale the rest in one steady motion. Leaving the bowl in place stalls the hit.
- Exhale and set it down. Two to three seconds in the lungs is plenty. Holding longer does not add much and it does irritate your throat.
How to make hits smoother
Water cools smoke and traps some tar and ash, but it does not remove THC or make smoking harmless. What actually helps:
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- Cold water or a few ice cubes in an ice catcher
- Smaller bowls, which means less charred flower and less bite
- A hemp wick instead of a lighter if butane taste bothers you
- Fresh water every session. Stale water tastes like a swamp
- Pacing yourself. Three small hits beat one massive one
Clean it or it gets gross
Bong water is a growth medium, not a filter you can ignore. Dump it after every session. A dirty piece tastes bad and passes bacteria to your mouth and lungs.
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- Empty the water and pull out the bowl and downstem
- Pour in coarse salt and isopropyl alcohol, 91% works best
- Cover the openings and shake for a minute
- Rinse with hot water until the alcohol smell is gone
- Refill with fresh water and you are done
Mistakes that ruin the hit
- Overpacking the bowl so air cannot move through it
- Filling water past the percolator so it splashes into your mouth
- Forgetting to pull the slide before you inhale
- Passing a mouthpiece around a group without wiping it down
- Smoking from a bong that has not been cleaned since last month
Before you load up
Cannabis is legal for adults in a growing number of US states, and the age is 21 in every state that allows recreational sales. If you are new, start with one small hit and wait ten minutes before taking another. Bong hits land faster and harder than a joint because you take in a larger volume of smoke at once. Do not drive afterward, and talk to a doctor first if you have a heart or lung condition.