After a few ounces of grinding, your grinder will eventually get gunked up to the point of annoyance or even failure. Cannabis flower is sticky, and those trichome heads build up quickly. Even the best grinders need a little maintenance to keep them grinding smoothly.

There are several ways to clean a grinder, but these two methods will cover everything you need to restore your weed grinder to its original state.

What You Need

Can’t find what you need around the house? Amazon to the rescue:
– wooden pick
– isopropyl alcohol or Everclear / Food grade ethanol
– cleaning brush
– ziplock bag or soaking container

Your grinder teeth have been chewing up trichomes and precious cannabinoids for months or even years. Harvest as much as possible first without any solvents. The resulting kief dust will be rich in THC and flavor.

Step 1. Put your grinder in the freezer

Freezing your grinder will help the trichome heads and grinder hash release from the metal surface. As the grinder’s aluminum surface freezes, the grinder hash will become less sticky and easier to remove. Aluminum weed grinders will freeze in less than 30 minutes, but they’ll also thaw more quickly. Stainless steel weed grinders should be left in the freezer for an hour or two.

Step 2. Brush and Pick

With a freshly frozen grinder, use an old toothbrush or other soft-bristled brush to sweep out the loosened trichome heads and grinder hash. Use a toothpick or broken chopstick to pick the tight crevices. I usually avoid metal picks because they can damage the Aluminum grinder, but sometimes, I’ll pull one out for tougher cleaning jobs.

Bristled brushes work best for loosening up the THC-rich gunk that gets caked up on the grinder teeth. If the caked-on gunk is thick enough to scrape or pick away, use a wooden pick to avoid damaging aluminum grinders.

Cleaning your grinder too often? Get a better grinder!! The Brilliant Cut grinder NEVER NEEDS CLEANING! See my full review.

All of that caked-on gunk? That’s a naturally occurring cannabis concentrate – grinder hash. Add it straight to your next bowl or joint. It’s stronger than usual, and you don’t want to waste it.

Step 3. Isopropyl Alcohol Bath Time

When you’re satisfied with your harvest or tired of picking, it’s time to bathe your grinder! Isopropyl Alcohol is the bathwater of choice for cleaning your grinder. THC doesn’t dissolve in water, but it does dissolve in alcohol. I like to use 91% isopropyl alcohol. 71% isn’t strong enough, and 99% is unnecessarily strong and needlessly expensive.

If you want to be a hardcore harvester, use food-grade ethanol to dissolve your grinder gunk and drink your harvest.

Put your grinder in a thick ziplock bag or a mason jar and cover it with alcohol – don’t worry, you can re-use this alcohol over and over again, and it won’t go to waste.

Be careful with glass jars. I’ve used the technique in the video dozens of times, but shortly after shooting this video, the jar in the video shattered and dumped dirty ISO all over myself. It was scary and dangerous, and it could have been avoided.

Gentle shaking and stirring will help the alcohol wash away the stubborn grinder grime.

Appreciate my honest and objective approach to cannabis products? Support me on Patreon

Step 4. Dry Your Grinder

I don’t do this religiously. Alcohol evaporates fast. Lab workers often use alcohol to dry their glassware so it has no streaks or water spots. It leaves surfaces clean and dry with no trace of alcohol or any other contaminants.

That said – you’ll probably want to wipe down your grinder anyway. Use a paper towel to wipe off any remaining alcohol or remnants of weed juice.

Let it air dry for 5 minutes or so before grinding your first nug just to be sure there is no alcohol remaining in the teeth.

NEVER CLEAN YOUR GRINDER AGAIN

I stopped cleaning my grinders in 2017. Any grinder that *requires maintenance* is a failure.

Modern weed grinders have improved dramatically. Today’s best weed grinders are completely threadless, and they offer luxurious fluffy grind consistencies, as well as maintenance-free grinding,

Click here to see my list of Best Weed Grinders.