So, everyone has their favorite consumption methods… for me, you just can’t beat the simple joint. Something about both burning the flowers and vaping them (the hot airs vaporizes the flowers lower down in the joint as the cherry burns) does something magical for both the flavors and effects of our favorite plant. I’ve been rolling joints (and at one point cigs) for a long long time now. I’ve done it just about every different way you can imagine. King sized L’s with crutches. Giant crutched cone joints. No crutch hippy joints rolled easy etc etc. That said, for quite some time now I think I’ve landed on the perfect way to roll one up if all you care about is A. the flavor of your joint. B. the smooth burn of your joint. So without further adieu:
Step 1:
First off - you’re going to need some ground flower. Do not over-grind your flower! Usually a half turn in a decent grinder (i like mendo mulchers) in either direction is more than enough. You want more surface area protected / unexposed to the joint vaporization that occurs. This greatly improves the flavor of your joints already. A powdered joint won’t burn evenly either. The goal of your grind should be to grind it enough so it will burn decently but no more than that. Sometimes, if I have a lot of time on my hands and the weeds morphology has that og/chem kind of “many little bracts” morphology, I’ll break it up by hand and just put the individual bracts into the J. Along with your flower of course you’ll need a paper. I recommend element rice papers. In my opinion they provide a nice middle point in practicality, price and flavor. Old modianos, pure hemps and raws all deserve honorable mentions. Please don’t use orange zigzags 
. Also, never, ever use a crutch unless you’re smoking with someone who has no idea how to smoke through a joint. Crutches destroy the flavor of the flower and, although they make drawing on joints “easier” if you are unfamiliar with how to draw on a crutch-less joint, they actually make the joint cherry too hot which skunks up the rest of the unburned weed and also negatively impacts the taste of the joint even more than the gross crutch flavor they impart.
- One you have your weed ground and your paper handy. Take the paper and crumple it up into a tiny little spitball like this:
This will help the paper contour much better to the ground up weed once you get to rolling and will result in a much tighter and slower burning joint that never runs. I learned this originally from an old school jamaican guy. At first I doubted it and it sure looks weird but, it makes a huge difference!
- Next you’ll want to unroll the paper and then fold it inside out and make a new crease about 1/3 of the way up the paper like this:
- Then, take your ground flower and load it into the paper. Make sure the glue is “backwards” !! eg. if you hold the paper up in front of you it’s on the bottom facing away from you. Once you get the flower in the paper slowly compress it by rolling it back and forth like you might if you were trying to make a clay snake. You want to pre-form the flowers into a joint shape before you roll. This makes for a much tighter and thus smoother and slower burning joint. Eventually after a few rolls it should look like this:
- Ok, so here’s the (slightly) tricky part. Once you’ve got the flower taco-d nicely in the paper. Slowly roll the bottom of the paper up and then tuck it in so the paper is doing one single full loop around the flower and the glue is on the inside facing up. Lick the outside (non glueside) of the paper where the glue is kissing it and hold so it sticks. This single loop of paper is probably the most important part of this inside out technique. It often will halve the amount of paper on your joint which makes an immense difference in both flavor and how slow it burns. Without all the excess paper you can really taste your flower and it’ll burn ultra slow and even. You’ll end up with a single loop of paper around the flowers with a funny half paper sticking straight out like this:
- Next, take a lighter and burn off all that excess paper! It’ll look like this afterwards:
- Crumple and roll the tips of your joint to further compress the flower inside and to create a comfy mouth piece to then use to smoke through! The final product will look something like this:
- Spark up and enjoy the smoothest, tastiest, slowest burning J you’ve ever smoked
Anyways, this is just my method that I landed on after trying out literally every way I could think of to roll one up. Let me know what you think, if you roll like this, or if you roll some other better way!
. Have to load my bong with whole nugs so it doesn’t pull through.