A lot of people believe that glass is the best option for smoking cannabis in a pipe. In our opinion, there is no contest. Hands down, ceramic will give you the best smoking experience when it comes to pipe or bong smoking. And here are a few of the reasons why we believe that:
First of all, ceramic is a stronger material then glass. While it is still fragile, knocking your pipe against a counter likely won't do much to your ceramic pipe but it could destroy your glass one. Porcelain (one of many types of ceramic clay and currently the kind we use at High Koalaty) is fired to over 2200 degrees F while glass is only baked to about 1400 degrees F. The hotter you go the stronger the material generally is. Granted there are ceramic pipes that are fired cooler out there (terra cotta/earthenware to name a couple clay types), which are a softer usually unglazed clay, but even they are fired hotter then glass (minimum is approx 1800 F). You can usually tell how strong a ceramic piece is by wetting an unglazed (non glossy or looks like bare clay) section of it. If it absorbs the water (or has zero unglazed areas) it's likely a softer clay. If it beads up and doesn't absorb its a higher temperature clay that can handle a lot more abuse. It also won't absorb odours or bacteria if its a higher temperature of clay much like glass.
Ceramic behaves the same as glass, at least our pipes do that is. The colour or "glaze" we apply on our pipes is essentially a layer of glass mixed with clay to make it opaque, shiny and easy to clean with a beauty you just can't get with glass. Check out our other blog post about cleaning to see all the different ways you can clean a ceramic pipe here: https://highkoalaty.com/blogs/whats-new/how-to-clean-a-ceramic-cannabis-pipe-or-chillum
Another great benefit of ceramic pipes is they can come in pretty much any shape or size you can think of. The limit is only your imagination and skill. Glass just doesn't have the same options due to its fluid nature when heated. Don't get us wrong though, there are beautifully sculpted glass pipes and bongs out there, but they just can't reproduce the same shapes and colours.
Ceramic is also an amazing insulator. Which means (especially if you stick it in the fridge for a bit before smoking, we don't recommend the freezer though), it aids in cooling down smoke as you toke (infact it will do this even without the fridge but not to the same extent) and will give you the smoothest easy hit ever (and a potent one too).
And lastly our favourite benefit of ceramic pipes. Unlike glass, ceramic pipes are opaque. They hide the resin build up, which I'm hoping we don't need to explain just how important that is. While google suggests you should clean your pipe daily, we all know that isn't real life, and you don't want to look at the build up when you haven't had time or wanted to clean your pipe.
So that's our list. What do you think is the best feature of ceramic pipes? Have we changed your mind on glass? Let us know in the comments.