Will a Grinder Damage Trichomes In Weed?
If you have been looking into whether or not you should invest in a weed grinder for your cannabis, you might have come across some users of the herb suggesting that a traditional grinder can ruin the flower.
This method of grinding cannabis buds can in fact damage some of the trichomes on your weed as the sticky flower will get stuck on the teeth of the product, however, the loss of these trichomes is pretty insignificant and should not affect the THC content of your cannabis that much.
We have composed a short guide below that will give you a better insight into trichomes and how they impact your ground weed, as well as reasons to still use a grinder and how to use an average grinder effectively for the best potency and grind.
What Are Trichomes?
To start with, let’s understand some more about what trichomes in your premium flower are and why they are one of the key components of cannabis flowers.
Trichomes are responsible for the taste of these dry herbs and the potency of the cannabis, these trichomes are used to protect the plant from natural enemies too such as insects and look like small hair crystals on your cannabis.
You can typically only see these crystal trichomes on your cannabis when the bud has already flowered.
Are Trichomes Important For The Cannabis Flower?
Trichomes are very important for not only the cannabis itself but also the smokers as this is where the highest concentration of THC from the cannabis flower is found.
Rough handling of the cannabis flower can harm these trichomes, which is why a lot of people don’t like ground cannabis from a grinder and would prefer to get the consistency with their hands instead.
Will Grinders Ruin Trichomes?
No matter what, even if you use the highest quality traditional grinder method to grind your weed, you will lose out on some trichomes during the processor grind.
However, the number of trichomes that you will lose out on even as a seasoned smoker is pretty minimal and is unlikely to affect how high you will get or the overall quality of the ground cannabis.
Besides, unless the THC content of your raw cannabis is a big deal to you and you would rather use a non-grinder method, grinding your cannabis comes with huge advantages such as allowing you to achieve a finer grind and perfect consistency which we will talk more about next.
Reasons You Should Use a Weed Grinder
If you want to be able to have ground herb with a smokable consistency, then there are still plenty of reasons you should use a grinder despite losing out on a few tasty trichomes.
We have listed some main reasons as to why you should use a weed grinder for all strains of cannabis below.
- They save you time – A standard grinder for your cannabis flower can save you a lot of time than using a finger chop method to grind your weed, especially if your flower from bud is very sticky, allowing you to smoke sooner.
- You can roll better – This grinding method allows you to grind your cannabis flower down to a proper consistency, leaving you with plenty of herb to tightly pack into joints which will allow the bowl or joints to have a slower burn too.
- They can help maintain potency – Some people argue that broken trichomes are more likely to happen via finger grinding weed as the sticky trichomes get stuck to peoples hand when the flower in bud is ground.
- You can catch the keif – Grinders allow you to catch keif which is the finest flower part of your cannabis and is wasted by other grinding methods, this often makes up for the loss of trichomes that can happen during the grind process.
Alternatives To Using a Weed Grinder
So, if you are still against using a professional grinder for your weed, then you might be looking at alternative ways to grind your cannabis flower for smoking.
We have listed out a few other ways you can grind up your weed without a typical grinder below.
Use a Blender
If you are against a traditional cannabis grinder, a blender can also help your grind your cannabis flower, but will probably still be quite rough so will inevitably damage some of the trichomes you wanted to keep. Make sure you use pulse mode for better control.
Try a Pestle & Mortar
Leave your weed out to dry and grind it up with a pestle and mortar, this method might allow you to keep more yummy crystals but you will miss out on potency kief whereas you wouldn’t with a grinder.
Use Your Hands
You can grind your cannabis flower with your hands if you wish, just simply break the bit of herb down into smaller bits until you achieve your desired consistency, some people say this method is less rough than grinding, which does preserve more THC.
Try a Grinder Card
Grind cards are very underrated and easy to use, but they are not the best for keeping trichome heads as they waste a lot of weed when your grating to grind the cannabis up.
Coffee Grinder
Coffee grinders can be used as an alternative to a weed grinder for grinding your unrefined cannabis but work similarly to weed grinder so will still end up damaging a few trichomes, always wash your coffee grinder after use unless you want THC spiked coffee!
Final Words
To conclude, grinding your weed to produce ground cannabis will damage some trichomes during the process, but this loss of trichomes is not noticeable during smoking weed and will not affect the overall quality of the cannabis flower that you are smoking.
Chamber grinders, in particular, have a lot of advantages as they catch the keif from your weed where a lot of these crystals end up.
If you would prefer not to use grinders for smoking your weed, you can try grinding with your hands or using the alternatives above, but in nearly every grinding process, a few trichomes will be lost.