How to Clean and Maintain Your Glass Bong
How to Clean and Maintain Your Glass Bong
We all love taking big bong rips, but we all know that those things can get real nasty if they aren’t cleaned regularly. It happens to us all, and hey, who can blame you for not cleaning your bong immediately after taking a massive hoot? At the end of the day though, regular cleaning and maintenance will make your bong hits taste better and healthier, it’s simple really!
How to care for the glass that takes care of you
Beyond just wanting better tasting hits (no one likes nasty bong water flavour), dirty bong water can actually be a health risk to you and your buds. Stagnant water is the ideal home for all sorts of bacteria, fungi and microbes. This stuff can form a substance called biofilm which can combine with the plant matter in your bong water to form mold. (ew). You wouldn’t drink out of a swamp, so you shouldn’t be inhaling similarly dirty water from your bong…
Maintaining Your Bong
Good news! Cleaning and maintaining a bong doesn’t take a ton of effort. First tip is to change your water as much as possible. Dumping your used water at the end of a sesh or the end of the night and refilling your before your next session will not only give you nice fresh hits, it will also remove some of the time for biofilm to grow, keeping your bong cleaner. Changing your water will go a long way, however it still will gather resin, so eventually you want to do a proper clean. You can delay this buildup by using RezBlock, which you can find at a few of our dispensary locations! Adding RezBlock prevents resin from sticking to your glass, allowing you to pour out that gunk with everything else you don’t want in your bong.
Which Cleaner to Use
So you started changing your water out regularly, but your bong still gets dirty. Don’t panic! There’s typically two categories bong cleaners fall into; shakers and soakers.
Shakers
This type of cleaner, shakers, such as Orange Chronic or Randy’s Black Label combine the cleaning solution with an abrasive grit. They are generally the fastest way to clean a glass piece. Simply give the bottle a shake, pour a little bit into your bong, cover the holes, and give it all a good shake. Your bong should be looking pristine in just a few moments.
Soakers
Like the name suggests, soaking solutions such as Purple Power are designed to soak inside your bong. Fill your bong with the solution, let it rest for a few hours or overnight, then dump out the cleaner and give it a good rinse with hot water. Most soakers are reusable, but it’s not a bad idea to run them through a paper towel or some other filter to get some of the rez out before returning them to the bottle.
Homemade Cleaner
Isopropyl Alcohol & Salt
This is a classic, tried and true method to clean almost anything you use to smoke cannabis out of. You want to use 91% isopropyl alcohol, not rubbing alcohol for this. Rubbing alcohol isn’t quite as potent as isopropyl. For the salt, any large grain salt will work, whether its sea salt, kosher salt or even epsom salt! This helps knock loose debris and resin from the sides of the glass interior. If you happen to have an acrylic bong, you should know that you shouldn’t attempt to clean it with alcohol. This can dissolve any adhesive holding the bong together and render it unusable. (Which is almost, if not more sad than just breaking your bong)
Baking Soda & Vinegar
This isn’t the most fantastic method because it does take a significant amount of cleaner to get it spotless, and it can get a little messy. However, if you don’t have anything else and you do have baking soda and vinegar, it’ll get the job done! Place your bong in an area that’s okay with getting messy, and pour ½ cup of baking soda into the bong’s chamber. You may want to put some directly through the downstem to get it into the bottom of your bong. Once that’s there, fill your bong up with white vinegar and give it a good shake!
Lemon Juice
After rinsing your bong out with warm water, squeeze about ½ cup of lemon juice, add some distilled water and a few tablespoons of a large grain salt into the bong. Shake the mixture in your bong vigorously and then let it sit for awhile. The acid from the lemon jusice will remove resin and reduce the old-weed smell that can be stuck in your bong. Not only can lemon juice be used for cleaning, but it can also be used as a preventative like RezBlocker! Use 5-10 drops of lemon juice in your bong water to help prevent resin from sticking to the glass.
Bowls and Stems
The bowl and the stems on bongs often gather thick, hardened layers of resin and will need to be cleaned separately from the main bong body. What I found to work well is giving them a soak in some bong cleaner inside of a Ziploc bag or Tupperware container. Really rezzed up pieces might need a little bit more help from a pipe cleaner or brush.
Here at Farmer Jane we have all these accessories and cleaners you need to keep your bong clean and happy! Plus, we got all the products you need in order to use that shiny clean bong of yours!
