Hey guys, thank you so much for joining me for this special Christmas instalment of Vape Talk. I hope you had an awesome time over the holidays, Santa was good to you, and you got everything you wished for. Let’s get right into this special episode of Christmas Vape Talk.
Dosing Capsules
The first thing I want to talk about is dosing capsules. Dosing capsules have to be one of my favourite accessories because they help to keep things organised and clean, which I am a big fan of, though you might not believe me if you look through my house.
So what is a dosing capsule? It’s an alternate way to load flower into your vaporizer. Rather than loading your flower directly into the bowl or chamber of your device, you are going to load your flower into a dosing capsule, and then you will put the dosing capsule in your bowl. Dosing capsules are generally made of metal and come in two parts. They have the larger cup section, which is where you load your flower, and they have a lid which closes the capsule.
Dosing capsules aren’t really a universal accessory, they’re usually device specific. If you have a Crafty+, you need to get dosing capsules that are made for the Crafty+. If you have a Healthy Rips Rogue, you need to get the dosing capsules that are made for the Healthy Rips Rogue. There is always going to be some overlap and you will sometimes find dosing capsules that are made for one device will also fit in other devices, which is always a great discovery. I just caution you to be very careful when you are test fitting a dosing capsule that is not made for that device, if you get it stuck in the bowl it can be extremely difficult to get out. Other unforeseen issues can also pop up, for example with the Tinymight, a Storz & Bickel dosing capsule will fit in there, but once you push your stem down, it will push the screen onto the heater and it can ruin it, which I found out the hard way, so please learn from my mistake and don’t do that.
Dosing capsules have a number of benefits, one of my favourites is that they help to keep your device clean. If we look at a Mighty+ for example, if you are pinching flower in your fingers and loading it in there, you are inevitably going to get some around the exterior, which can be tough to clean. When you load your flower into a dosing capsule, put the lid on it, and then put that in your bowl, you’re going to avoid virtually all flower spillage. Second to that, it’s also going to keep the bowl itself cleaner, as bits won’t get stuck to the side and build up over time. I ran about 25 dosing capsules through my Mighty before I just straight loaded the bowl with flower one time, and the bowl was dirtier after that one straight flower load than after the 25 dosing capsules runs combined. Keep in mind that the cooling unit will get just as dirty, as that’s where the vapour is flowing through and dosing capsules have no effect there, but in general these are a big help to cleanliness.
The second thing I love about dosing capsules is that they make it far easier to take multiple ready-to-go bowls with you. If I’m heading out for a day or two with my Mighty+ and I load up 10 dosing capsules to bring along in a little plastic bag or container, I’m essentially taking 10 full bowls with me, as they don’t reduce the volume of the bowl that much at all. It’s so much easier to just swap out a dosing capsule when it’s done, compared to bringing a grinder, my flower, grinding the flower, unloading and then loading my bowl every time.
Because they are made from metal they won’t have any impact on the flavour of the herb, and being so thin means they don’t have any sort of effect on performance either. If your vaporizer allows you to use dosing capsules, I highly recommend you give them a try, I think you’re going to be a big fan.
Iolite Wispr 2
Now I’m going to take it back to the old school and show you the Iolite Wispr 2. Somebody reached out to me on Instagram to let me know that a website was blowing out their inventory of these, and since I’ve never used or owned one I decided to pick up a piece of classic Vaporizer history. The box for the Wispr 2 says ‘copyright 2012’, so this one is coming up on being 10 years old. It’s mind blowing to think about how far the vaporizer industry has come in the last 10 years, the Wispr 2 seems pretty archaic now, but not so long ago this was one of the few portable devices on the market, and one of the first (if not the first) butane devices.
The Wispr 2 was made by Iolite in Ireland, and when I first looked at it I did not expect this to be a butane device, as the body is made from plastic and the butane heating takes place entirely inside the device. It must do a pretty good job of venting the heat though, the plastic doesn’t get too hot while you’re using it, though it definitely gets quite warm. It’s pretty small and very light, coming in at about 3.5” tall, 2.75” wide, 1.25” deep, and weighs 129g with the filling chamber attached. At the bottom of the device you will find the butane filling port, and it has a large butane tank, they say it’s enough for around 2.5hrs of heating which is a long time for a single fill.
To load the Wispr 2, grind your material up nice and fine, and then load it into the filling chamber. This is a huge filling chamber, it says it can hold up to half a gram of material if you want to really load it up. When you look into the Wispr 2, you’ll notice it has a metal oven with a large spike inside. The spike in the centre is designed to give your bowl even heat distribution, this is a similar concept to what you see in the Vapman.
The filling chamber is attached to the flexible silicone mouthpiece, and you are going to take this whole assembly and insert it carefully into the Wispr 2. On the side of the device you will see the two position switch which controls operation. When you push it down part way you will hear the gas flow initiate, and when you press it down completely it triggers the igniter to light up the gas. I find it works pretty well if you just do one slow press all the way down, rather than treating it like a two-stage process. Once it ignites they call that the ‘whisper’ you hear of the gas heating the oven and spike. On the opposite side of the device, you will see an LED which will be on whenever the device is heating up.
At this point you might wonder how you control the temperature, and the answer is that you don’t. It has a single set temperature of 410°F which is quite warm. When the oven reaches 410°F and the thermostat is tripped, the LED will turn off, and you’ll hear the whisper stop as the flame either turns off or just turns way down. At that point you can inhale. They say it takes 30 seconds to arrive at temperature, but it can take a little bit longer for the material to actually get warm, around 45 seconds usually. They recommend a nice slow and steady inhalation, and when the thermostat detects that the temperature is dropping, it will automatically turn the flame back on to get the oven back to temperature, it’s a pretty slick system actually.
They say that when it’s fully loaded you should get around 10 minutes of vapour production from a single load, but either way, whenever your session is done, push the switch back up to the top position to turn it off, then simply bend the silicone mouthpiece over and lock it in place for maximum portability.
Overall, it’s a pretty unique design, I’ve never seen a butane powered vaporizer that has all of the heating action taking place inside and out of sight. I won’t lie and say I’ve spent a whole lot of time testing this, but I have run through a couple of bowls and it seemed to work pretty decently, though it’s certainly not going to win any awards for vapour quality when compared to modern devices. I’m really glad I picked one of these up, it’s cool to own a bit of vaporizer history, and exciting to think about how if they have come this far in 10 years, where they will be 10 years from now.
Puffco Peak Pro
I often get asked what my favourite device is, and for flower Vaporizers I have a really hard time even trying to answer that question. For concentrate devices though, it’s a much easier question since I am far more of a flower guy than concentrate guy, but I also feel that the concentrate process is a little easier to nail down. When it comes to concentrate there are two devices that I use the vast majority of the time. At home it’s my Mininail set up. I love this thing, it’s hooked up to a timer which turns it on every morning and turns off at night, some days I don’t use it at all, but it is always ready to go whenever I want a hit. For on-the-go use, I mainly use my Puffco Peak Pro. I’m not a huge Puffco fan, but I am a huge fan of this thing, I think they pretty much nailed the portable water cooled dab experience with it.
Puffco calls the Peak Pro a smart rig, and I think with this latest iteration it pretty much deserves that title. In the atomizer, there are multiple temperature sensors that help to keep your dab at a very consistent temperature throughout the hit, adding or subtracting heat as necessary to maintain that temperature. The new atomizer is less customizable, but I think it is better overall. It seems to be way more reliable than the old version, and it’s also significantly larger, perfect if you like to do bigger hits. Because you can’t disassemble it there will be no bowl changing, unless you want to modify it, and you also can’t torch your bowl to get it clean. These do seem to hold up better than the old ones though, and Puffco also have a new 3-D chamber out that I haven’t tried yet, which is supposed to heat up even faster. The atomizer also has an integrated carb cap which snaps in place with a press and also has directional airflow to help spread your hit around for a more even vape, so there’s less pieces to worry about or break during your session.
The water piece holds significantly more water than older models, and the cooling is superior too. There are also a lot of different glass tops available for it, we have a couple of options on our site, like the Bent Neck Peak Pro Top, but even the default one is significantly improved in terms of cooling compared to the old version.
One of the best things about the Peak Pro is that it takes all of the guesswork out of your concentrate experience. It has single button operation, and it includes four preset temperatures. Even if you’ve never used it before, if you can figure out how to turn it on, initiate a heating cycle, and put your dab in the bowl, you will have a fantastic concentrate experience with no learning curve at all.
The Peak Pro has Bluetooth, which allows you to use an app (on iOS it’s a web app, but it works just like a normal app) that adds crazy customisability to the device. You can change the temperature of every preset with single degree control, add or subtract temperature profiles, customise the length of your heating cycle, and even change what colour the device shows when you cycle through your temperatures. This level of customisation is awesome, I especially like that you can set your own colours as it helps to personalise your device. It also has some cool light modes which are kind of fun to have on while it’s sitting out during a session. It comes with USB-C charging which is a nice upgrade, and it also has the option of wireless charging, which is handy as you can just sit it on a wireless charger as its usual resting place, and lift it off with a full charge whenever you want to do a hit.
It heats up in around 30 seconds and it is producing vapour as soon as it vibrates. You’re going to get around 30 hits from a charge, depending on the length of your cycle and what temperature you are using it at. Overall the Peak Pro is a huge improvement over Puffco’s last model, although it is certainly not a cheap system, but if you want to pay for a super easy-to-use device that gives you an excellent concentrate experience every time, it’s a worthwhile investment.
Thank you so much for reading and watching guys, I really do appreciate it. We have our 2021 Vape Awards coming up on December 31, so make sure you tune in to check out my top picks for 2021. Have yourselves an excellent New Year’s Eve and all the best for 2022 from us to you.
Keep it green, keep it sneaky!
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