Everything You Need to Know about Herb Grinders

Herb grinders are an essential tool for grinding herbs, rolling, loading a hand pipe, packing a bong, or anything similar. Grinders contain several chambers and often come in multiple parts. All you need to do is make it work by crushing and cutting your herb into smaller pieces.

A good grinder matters because it will spare you the sticky and painstaking process of selecting some parts of the herb by hand. 

Multi-piece grinders use several pieces and connect them to create a space for storing and grinding. For many smokers, these grinders are quite useful, especially for the extra storing space. Hence, these extra spaces can vary because it depends upon the size and diameter. 

Material: Grinders comprise many different types of materials, such as aluminum, acrylic, or anodized metals. Nearly everyone prefers a metal grinder because of their feel and durability.

Compartments: Some grinders have several layers. A multi-piece grinder contains a compartment for pollen and kief. On the other hand, the two-piece grinder simply grinds your herb.

Size: Only the size of your grinder can decide the exact amount of herbs you can grind. Large grinders obviously mean more herbs to grind at a time, but large grinders are heavy and bulkier to carry around.

Good Quality Herb Grinders 

Stainless steel chambers and blades are not cheap. They are a bit expensive, but it’s a one-time investment. Cheap grinders are made of zinc alloy and aluminum, so rather than a cheap grinder, we advise you to opt for a stainless steel grinder.

Because these metals wear away over time and can leak flakes of aluminum into your herbs, the consumption of aluminum or flakes of aluminum can lead to Alzheimer’s. As for your health concerns, we certainly suggest a stainless steel grinder. 

For a good-quality herb grinder, you must notice one thing - the efficiency to grind herbs into even pieces. The soil weeds are much smaller and steadier than the weed you would get from a manual grinder. 

After using it, you will realize that kief gathers in the chamber because better quality grinds results in more kief. We would prefer you to use dry herb vaporizers like Pax, Air, Volcano, or Firefly because a good-quality grind carries a tastier and smoother hit.

We recommend multi-functional grinders because they not only grind your weed but also store and dispense it. All you need to do is to keep your weed in your multi-functional grinder as long as you want it. 

You can remove the magnetic cap from your grinder and dispense your bud into your bowl, into a joint, or into your vape chamber. Multi-functional grinders are more suitable than a traditional grinder. It is not difficult to unscrew the lid and pinch the weed.

Electric Grinders

Electric grinders are for those who hate manually grinding their herb. An electric grinder is a blessing to you if you are fed up with manual grinding. All you have to do is put your herbs in the electric grinder and press the button. After pressing the button, the device will do its work to make the grinding process convenient for you.

However, below are the concepts that these electric grinders follow strictly;

• Rotation of blades is extremely fast due to which grinding is quicker.
• There is also a high voltage battery attach for 500+ grinds.
• You can easily charge it anywhere with a usual micro-USB-socket.
• Electric grinders are small, shiny, and pocket-friendly.

An ideal electric grinder not only grinds your herb completely every time but also provides you the opportunity to choose the refinement/thickness of your grind. You can control the grinding for the duration (number of seconds) you press the button of your grinder. If you desire an extremely fine grind for the transmission of vapes, we advise you to grind your herb for almost 10+ seconds. But if you prefer a fluffier grind with volume, grind your herb for around 3 to 5 seconds.

The top opening of an electric grinder is ideal for loading the ground herb into your paper or vape immediately. Through this technique, you will be able to save effort and time. The only possible shortcoming with the electric grinder is while building kief. You do not want to lose kief, but you are unable to do that with this device. Because when you start emptying the grinding chamber, it just immediately comes out. You need a 4-piece grinder to build a kief.

The blades in the grinder are so fast and sharp, due to which you cannot get the same fluffy grind every time. Furthermore, you can explore all the electric grinder types for fluffiness and consistency. As for potential safety reasons, it would be best to avoid low-end weed grinders, but they are usually the best.  

Aluminum, metal, or plastic micro-parts can mix your herbs very well, especially when you use these grinders for a longer time. However, some low-end weed grinders are perfectly safe for users. But they will lag in performance and ease of use as compared to the high-end and mid-range weed grinders.

Types of Weed Grinders

Herb grinders are mostly known for grinding weeds. There are different types of weed grinders for all kinds of marijuana-lovers. These differences in weed grinders mostly lie in the following features:

• 2-piece vs. 3-piece vs. 4-piece grinders.
• Small vs. medium vs. large sized grinders
• Materials used in the grinder.

For beginners, this section will provide necessary information regarding a weed grinder so that you can choose a suitable and best grinder.

2-Piece vs. 3-Piece vs. 4-Piece Grinders

All of these numbers and pieces refer to the number of blades your grinder has.

2-Piece Grinders

You will have only a single compartment with a 2-piece grinders. Every particle that comes from your herb or weed stays in this compartment. With 2-piece grinders, you need to brush the kief out with the help of a brush. They are quite easy to use, compact, small, and the most portable and practical.

3-Piece Grinders

An extra compartment is present in a 3-piece grinder, so you can take the finer parts of your bud. (with the element that is coarser than kief).

Since you can easily store a lot of your herb in the extra compartment of your 3-piece grinder, you can call it as a ‘storage' compartment.

4-Piece Grinders

$-piece grinders come along with 3rd compartment with an excellent screen to hold and build up the kief. We prefer a 4-piece grinder only if you would like to catch and build up your kief.

Small vs. large grinders

Below are the different sizes of herb grinders:

• Small;
• Medium, and;
• Large.

Although small grinders are pocket-friendly, with the average size of hands, you should go with a medium and large grinder. Because it would be easier for you to grind, and you can also save time by operating your grinder in your hand. Plus, medium to large-sized grinders will crush your herb with more simplicity than small grinders.

Small / Mini Sized Grinders

Normally the diameter of a small grinder is 40 to 50mm (millimeter) or approximately 1.5 to 2 inches. There are some mini grinders available with a diameter of 1 inch. Small and mini grinders are perfect for people who seek for discreet and portability. 

Travelers prefer this type of grinder because they carry it with them without worrying about extra luggage. Also, these grinders are perfect for those who grind a small number of materials like a half gram or less.

Medium Sized Grinders

Medium size grinders are around 62 to 70mm (millimeters) or almost 2.5 to 3 inches in diameter. This grinder is suitable for casual and regular consumers. The motive of medium size grinder is to offer a middle ground to both of them. 

Still, they are quite discreet and pocket-friendly, but they present quite a bit more space to grind your materials. Usually, medium size grinder can handle grinding up to 2-3 grams of material at separate times. Even if you are not big of a smoker, it still works flawlessly for smaller hauls too.

Large Sized Grinders

Large-sized grinders are larger than small and medium-sized grinders because their diameter is 75 (millimeters), but they can be larger and reach up to 110mm (millimeter). However, they are ideal because they can plow up a large quantity of material. Due to their size, you cannot keep these grinders in your pocket and travel without any hassle. They are the leading class and perfect for heavy consumers.  

It can grind almost 3.5 to 7 grams of herbs at a time. Some of them can grind even more than 7grams of herbs. Usually, large-sized grinders are durable, heavy, and good-quality.

Materials used in weed grinders

There is a ton of materials that combine to make a perfect weed grinder. However, the most commonly used elements are as follows:

• Metal (aluminum, titanium)
• Wood
• Acrylic

Metal 

It is a fact that metal grinders, usually made of aluminum, are the best quality grinders in the market. However, the aluminum used has to be anodized and of high quality as well.

Otherwise, it would be better to avoid such regular grinders that don’t have high quality. One major issue with such grinders is that the aluminum particles begin to mix with the herbs. 

If we talk about titanium grinders, they are also high-quality and are a good material for a grinder. This is because it doesn’t require much cleaning and gives a premium vibe.

Wooden

It’s hard to find wooden grinders these days. One has to admit that wooden grinders look classy, and the material itself is durable and strong. However, wooden grinders tend to absorb more kief from the herbs, resulting in the loss of precious and potent trichomes. Therefore, it would be better if you go for aluminum or titanium grinders instead.

Acrylic

These are probably the cheapest grinders you can find, which is why they tend to break very easily. Since the material that they are built with isn’t as strong as aluminum, they aren’t durable enough. However, some acrylic grinders are of high quality like the Storz and Bickel.

Even if these grinders do last a longer period, they are really difficult to clean as you can’t dip them in ISO. If you do use ISO on the grinder in any way, you will damage the material. 

The most expensive type of grinders are the 4-piece ones. You would only need this one if you have planned to build and catch up with a lot of kief. However, if that’s not the case, just go for the 2-piece grinders instead.

Okay, so this is all that you need to know about the common grinders available out there. Now, getting one is totally dependent on your preference. Some people don’t even need weed grinders; they find other alternatives. 

Manual VS Electric Grinders

It can be tricky deciding between a manual or electric grinder. Here are some advantages of using a manual grinder, other than the fact that they are convenient to use. 

• You don’t need to charge them nor have to worry about their battery life. 
• They have built-in receptacles that catch and allocate the ground herb
• The top quality manual grinders rarely need any cleaning
• Easy to carry around and are user friendly

Not everyone is familiar with electric grinders because the manual ones came out first, and nobody had any issues with it. Plus, electric grinders lack some functions that you have with manual grinders. Another negative factor of electric grinder is that it requires a lot of cleaning and maintenance. However, they also have some advantages.

Anyone can use it, and you can easily calibrate the consistency of the grind. However, most people, even newbie vapers, go for manual grinders. If you face trouble with manual grinders, you could go for the electric one instead. 

What is the importance of a grinder?

Well, grinders break down the herb and allow it to have a better surface area, so it easily and efficiently fills the vape's oven. The oven can evenly heat the herb after this. This will add more flavor and vapor of the herb, and will result in getting a better high. 

This is because the terpenes and cannabinoids become flexible and release in the herb more effectively. Ground herbs will also improve the airflow of the vape, resulting in the heated air passing through the ground herb smoothly.