With the rise of cannabis in the culture of Colorado has come a variety of ways to consume cannabis and cannabis concentrates. Perhaps one of the most cost effective means of medicating is the use of a dab pen. Not to be confused with a cartridge-based pen, dab pens work by loading concentrates into a chamber in the pen. But what are the small things hat one should note when buying and using a dab pen? If this question is on your mind, fear not.
A True Dab Pen
There are a multitude of dab pens on the market and each one has a different experience and different values. Some people would rather get two cheap pens instead of one expensive pen. Others would rather shell out dollars for a quality pen with various warranties or attachments. All of that being equal, let’s first consider how a dab pen is properly used. Rather than their self-contained friends, the cartridge, dab pens require a bit more attention in exchange for an ever changing high that is considerably less wasteful. Dab pens are usually made up of a battery, an atomizer and a cap. Pens come in all shapes and sizes but each person has to decide what appeals to them most.
It’s All in the Atomizer
For those concerned with function over form, we recommend you take time considering the atomizer of the dab pen. As the place where most of the “magic” occurs, the atomizer is the piece of technology that an intelligent consumer will be most discerning of. The best pens out there have atomizers made entirely of, or lined with ceramic in the “bowl piece” as well as dual coils to provide more heat for vaporization. Make sure to keep an eye out for whether the coils are wrapped around metal or quartz rods in your atomizer.
How To Use It
Once you have your dab pen, it is time to put it to work! For most pens, nice stable wax or crumble is often preferable due to its ease of handling if you don’t have a travel size dabber with you. When loading in your concentrates, make sure to not overfill it, you can always put more in later. Should a freshly packed pen cease to hit, it’s because the wax has melted to form a seal, preventing smoke from reaching the mouthpiece. Grab your dab tool and carefully poke a hole through the wax. Doing so off center is usually best to avoid damaging the coils in the atomizer.
Best Practices
One thing to be wary of is keeping your pen straight up and down while hitting it. Holding it horizontally coming out of your mouth will cause the oil to melt all over the cap, which proves to be a total mess. If you’re at home cleaning up the mess, try to burn vaporized any remaining concentrate from the device before cleaning with a cotton swab and very little isopropyl alcohol. Besides charging your battery, you can maintain your dab pen by allowing it to full drain of battery every once in a while and by buying a new atomizer about every 3 months. These will keep you very satisfied with your purchase.
When you’ve chosen your ideal dab pen, check out our Store Locator page to see where the more recent DabsLabs concentrates are at a store near you! DabsLabs offers some of the highest quality, small batch extracts in Colorado including wax, shatter, true spectrum, live resin, budder, sugar, and more!