In Defense of the Apple Pipe

New users today are so spoiled with retail hash pens and edibles that they don’t know what weed on vacation used to be like. The seedy process of flying with it or trying to buy it from strangers was enough of a hassle. We didn’t need to bring an electronic dab rig, too.

This is a generational divide. With the exception of a good rosin pen, apples are my go-to for a quick puff on vacation. As much as I love joints, they’re not always convenient in hotel rooms or on the go, especially when smoking solo. I wouldn’t recommend using the same apple longer than a few hours at most — it’s still decaying fruit at the end of the day — but apples are cheap and available at gas stations, and a fair amount of hotels offer them for free in the lobby.

The fall harvest season is the best time of the year for stoner MacGyvers, with a wide array of fruits and vegetables that are easily converted into functional smoking devices. Butternut squash even stands up like a bong thanks to its round base, while cantaloupes, eggplants, pears, zucchinis and chiles can all become pipes using a similar technique. Remove any stems in the way, create a chamber and mouthpiece with some sort of skewer, and voilà!

Whether you're in a pipeless jam or simply want to make use of produce before it goes bad, here are eight smoke-worthy fall fruits and vegetables, ranked for ease of construction and user-friendliness.

Apple
Cheap, trustworthy and easy to find. It doesn't matter if you're putting a mealy, disgusting Red Delicious out of its misery or giving a bittersweet end to a juicy Braeburn, they all work the same. Apples are a go-to for toking on vacation or on the road, and just about every market, hotel and convenience store carries them. Appreciate the apple, for it never leaves...no matter the season.

Squash
Gourds make fine decorations and meals, but the right shape and size can also make a fine piece. Our favorite was the butternut squash, with a round base creating a bong-like structure that provided some of the largest hits of the bunch. If you've ever wanted to smoke pot like a pilgrim, this is the way to go.

Zucchini
Don't let some small, earnest zucchini fool you into settling. If you want to rip it like a champ, then go big or go home. The meat of zucchinis is soft and easy to bore through, and the shape makes for a natural steamroller. Have a bunch of mid-grade weed and want to spice things up? As much as we hate wasting food, zucchinis work a helluva lot better than a Pringles can.

Cantaloupe
Too delicious to waste on a pipe, in our opinion — but that doesn't mean it won't work. Cantaloupes can get too soft as they ripen, but if you find a younger, firmer one, creating a pipe is easy, and the fruit's lack of pulp makes for easy suction.

Pear
Pears are delicious and a great gift at Christmas time, but they're just an apple's lumpy, hard cousin when you're making pipes. The skin and meat of the fruit is a little too firm and tends to crack, limiting the suction and size of the bowl-piece, but it'll still work as a one-hitter in a pinch. If you have other options, though, it's better left in the fridge.

Eggplant
A surprise contender and extremely easy to make a pipe from. Eggplants are firm enough to bore through and come in groovy shapes and colors for smoking. The flavor is a little bitter, though, and the vegetable's pulp tends to clog the mouthpiece.

Sweet Potato
Potatoes are a little starchy, but their dense structure and oval shape still make for a serviceable pipe. Boring through them is a fucking workout, though, and sometimes you can push too hard with your skewer, breaking the vegetable in half. Sweet potatoes are even firmer than regular potatoes, and their gnarled ends need to be cut off before you create a mouthpiece. Not the most fun or easiest creation, but it's better to use a spud than foil or a can.

Chile Peppers
Chiles are just so...Colorado. Most peppers can be converted into pipes by pulling out the stem and ripping off the end to make a mouthpiece, for a chillum-style chile. Ripping the stem out can be frustrating, and you can easily rip the chile's flesh. The spicy smoke flavor isn't bad, though, and it looks a lot cooler than sucking on a sweet potato.