Hello!

So I've had my classic VG for about 5 months, and it's always worked great (once I mastered using it!). Countless bowls of cannabis and quite a few DMT sessions have gone more-or-less without a hitch with very efficient vaporization, perhaps some minor charring if the bowl was roasted.

However, recently the bugger has begun to combust my cannabis! Maybe 2-3 tokes in (maybe 5 to a bowl, it's a bit small), the herb combusts and tastes/smells awful - not even remotely like normal combusted pot. Has anyone had this issue with a well-used VG? there is a rather small area of soot from using butane lighters, and I have yet to clean it, but it's been like this for a while without issue.

I don't know what the deal could be, everyone who's been hitting it knows how to, and it's only been in the last 3 days.

Any ideas?

Not sure if this will help because of my inexperience with GVG's. But when my friend first got his GVG we decided to smoke a bowl of weed out of it. There were about four of us and we were just passing it around. It got to one of my friends and the weed started burning. I think this was due to the amount of intense heat put on the bowl. And like you said it smelt and tastes very nasty. All we did was let the bowl cool down and it worked fine. If I were you I would just be less direct with the flame maybe. Not really sure just some ideas. Like I said I don't have a ton of experience with these things.

Hope that helps some!

SWIM has had this happen with changa that had too many harmalas in the mix, when the heat would get too intense and the herb would complex. Like WDR suggests, try backing off and letting the bowl cool down between each hit.

Maybe being more comfortable using it, you are getting carried away with the flame. Maybe before you were being on the conservative side and not realizing it. Maybe your herbs are a little drier than usual, I know mullein will combust easily when not combined with other things.

Just don't apply so much heat. I highly doubt the pipe changed. The biggest problem with the ceramic filter is becoming clogged with soot from a carbon-heavy flame, but that only makes the pipe harder to draw.

I've had this happen quite a few times and I agree that it happens most frequently when I get overzealous with the heat. Just wait a little bit between hits and that should help immensely.

Yeah, it's fairly easy to burn weed in a VG/GVG, and it does taste awful! As these guys said, it's not the end of the world, just be more gentle ;

Also, if the funky taste persists in any way you probably should clean it out-- I usually have to clean mine out after every 2-3 weeks of heavy use to keep it tasting fresh.