Cover: 7head clusterfuck psilocybin mushroom cap by @trip_a (still available as of today via @xfadeglass)

My first carb cap was the titanium (Ti) cap that came with my Chinese knockoff Ti domeless nail. Soon I discovered I preferred the flavour of dabbing off of ceramic, and I found a specialized carb cap for my ceramic domeless.

Standard Ti carb cap

Because of the shape of most domeless nails, I was limited to the same cup-shaped carb caps. These work great for low-temp dabs, so I had no real reason to complain. Unfortunately the limited variety of styles and types of caps got to me after a while. Most are just like the one above; plain Ti or ceramic. Some may have a slight shape variation in the dabber, or an anodized finish, but other than that they are all exactly the same.

Alien Flower Monkey Glass from Quartzbangers.com

Soon after I get my ceramic nail set up, I purchased a quartz banger. The first carb caps I used were experimental, bc bangers are just flat. I tried a marble, a toonie, a jade pendant (the circular one w a hole thru it) and a pebble. I was pretty surprised at how well they worked.

AFM mushroom carb cap function video

This was about two years ago, and now I have four nice hand-blown boro carb caps. (see below) My favourite is the mushroom carb cap by Alien Flower Monkey. It works great with the reactor banger (also by AFM) and looks so great on my dab tray. It also sits in a much more stable way bc of the flat bottom. My other caps are always in danger of rolling off the table when I use them!

L-R JS Glass no-temp cap, AFM Mushroom Cap, Helix Glass bubble cap, THC spinning top cap

You might notice that three of my caps have nozzles, and two of them have bubble chambers. The nozzles serve two purposes. The first, and most obvious is they are very useful for directing the air to move your dab around the inside of the banger. The second, less obvious effect, is they allow you to increase and decrease the amount of air going into your banger, therefore increasing or decreasing pressure. This allows you to find the optimum pressure for the lowest temp (and most flavourful) dabs. The bubble chambers are slightly less important, and are more for aesthetics and for conserving that little bit of your dab that goes up into the bubble, rather than the air.

So carb caps are absolutely essential if you want to get flavourful dabs, as well as conserve your meds. What you use for a carb cap, on the other hand, is up to you. You could use a loonie, or you could buy a beautiful unique heady piece like the one on the cover, that takes hours of work and is worth hundreds of dollars. (Check out more like it at @xfadeglass)