What is an Ice Pinch?
How can you improve your smoking experience? Have you ever been to a buddies house watching them add ice to their water pipe and think to yourself, “That’s not going to do shit.” Hold onto your butts, my friends, and we take your smoking session to the next level of chill.
Water pipes are a preferred way of smoking for many people mostly because water cools smoke down enough to make the draw easier on your lungs. Adding a percolator can cool your smoke down even more. Back before water pipes started getting fancy things like percolators, smokers started adding ice cubes to the water at the bottom.
At some point someone asked “what about ice?” Adding ice to your smoke session is totally up to you, it's not a requirement. But it does help cool the smoke even further. So, what are ice catches? Take a look at the photo below. See those three pinched sections of glass at the neck of the pipe? Bingo! That section is designed to hold ice up out of the water so that your hits are cooled.
If you finish smoking before all the ice melts you can either let the ice melt and fall into the water chamber or you can dump it out.
Ice catchers are always placed above the percolators.
Ice catchers are becoming the new standard with water pipes. But what are the benefits?
- The ice filters the smoke. Allowing a smoother, cleaner, and better tasting hit.
- Similar to percolators, ice filters smoke so you can take longer and easier hits.
- Since the ice catchers are above the water chamber it doubles as a splash guard against that nasty used water in the chamber. A real lifesaver.
- It looks cool. Getting a clear pipe is beneficial if you want to watch the process.