The flame is the shortest part of a joint’s life, and it gets the least thought. Somebody rolls with real care, picks out every stem, twists the end just so, and then jams it into the hottest part of a lighter and pulls like a person trying to drink a milkshake through a coffee stirrer. The first taste is butane. The second is scorched paper.

It takes about thirty seconds to do better.

The guides that rank for this question agree with one another, and on the basics they are right. Toast the tip, rotate the joint in the flame, reach for a hemp wick if you own one, and patch a canoe when one side runs ahead. We will go through all of that. What they leave out is everything after the joint catches, the second pull and the tenth, which is where most of the flavor in a good jar is either tasted or simply burned away.

Toast the foot first

Cigar smokers call the lit end the foot, and they toast it before they ever draw. The habit translates perfectly. Hold the joint level with the twist just above the tip of the flame, close enough to darken the paper and far enough that it never actually sits in the fire. Turn it slowly between finger and thumb. Do not draw yet.

What you are doing is drying the paper and the outermost flower into an even ring, so that when the joint catches, it catches all the way around at once. When the edge glows a faint orange on every side, stop. If the twist is long, pinch off the spare paper beforehand, or the first thing you light will be a little paper wick that flares up and drops ash in your lap.

The first pull

Bring the filter to your lips and hold the flame just under the toasted ring. Sip. Two or three short, gentle pulls do more than one long haul, because a hard pull at this moment drags the fire up whichever side happens to sit nearest the flame, and that side then runs ahead for the rest of the joint. Cigar people call it canoeing, and our guide on how to judge a pre-roll explains how an air pocket in the pack causes the same thing. Then take the joint away from your mouth and look at it. You want a complete ring of ember. If one edge is still dark, give that edge a second of flame on its own.

What to light it with

A hemp wick is our first choice: a length of hemp twine coated in beeswax. Light the wick, then light the joint from the wick, and the butane never gets near the paper. The wax lends a faint honeyed note to the opening pull. We like that. Some people find it distracting, and they are entitled to.

An ordinary butane lighter is fine if you use the soft edge of the flame and keep the contact brief. Torch lighters, the ones with the blue roaring jet, are for crème brûlée and nothing else; they char the foot black before the flower inside has warmed at all.

Wooden matches work beautifully, provided you wait. Strike, let the sulfur head burn down for two or three seconds, then bring it in. A long fireplace match gives you time for a proper toast. A paper book match barely gives you time to find the joint.

Candles are the emergency option, and the soot from a cheap paraffin candle is not a flavor anyone paid for.

The pace of the draw

This is the part the other guides skip, and it matters more than everything above.

A lit joint is a small fire whose temperature you control with your lungs. Pull hard and the ember flares bright and hot. Pull softly and it barely glows. Combustion of dry flower is usually put somewhere around 230°C (446°F), so the ember is at least that hot, while the aromatic compounds that make one cultivar smell different from another boil off far lower; our dry herb vaporizer temperature guide puts myrcene at around 167°C and limonene near 176°C. A greedy pull widens the burning zone and spends those compounds in the fire. A gentle one keeps the ember narrow, and the flower sitting just behind it warms enough to give up its aroma into the smoke before the flame arrives.

In practice, draw the way you would sip something too hot to gulp. Count two, then stop. Rest between pulls long enough that the joint is barely smoldering, and if it goes out completely, you rested a little long, which is a far better mistake than the opposite.

There is a test for this, and it costs nothing. Between pulls, hold the joint still and smell the thin thread of smoke rising off the tip. When the joint is burning slowly, that thread carries the cultivar, the same grapefruit or wet pine you caught when you opened the jar, and you can name it with the vocabulary from our guide to cannabis tasting notes. When it has been dragged hard, the thread smells of burnt paper and very little else. Your nose will catch a fast pace well before your throat does.

Relighting

Every joint goes out, and a joint smoked slowly goes out often. Before you relight, tap away the loose ash and blow once, gently, through the filter to clear the stale smoke sitting in the paper. Then toast and light as you did the first time, with the same short sips.

A relight never tastes quite as clean as the first light. Resin and tar gather toward the filter as a joint burns, which is why we judge any joint on its first third, and a half-smoked joint left in an ashtray overnight tastes like an ashtray in the morning. We would sooner roll smaller. Our guide on how to choose rolling papers covers sizing the paper to the flower, and a slim joint finished in one sitting beats a fat one rescued twice.

Fixing a canoe

If one side runs ahead anyway, hold the slow side to the flame for a moment and let it catch up, rotating as you go. The old trick of dabbing a wet fingertip on the fast side works too, though it leaves a damp patch that burns badly later. Most canoes start before the flame ever arrives, in a loose pack or in flower ground to powder. Our guide on how to grind cannabis deals with the powder.

On passing

Hand it over filter first, the way you would offer someone a pair of scissors.

Our position

We make pre-rolls ourselves, the Parlor Smokes in The Parlor, so we spend a great deal of time on the minute after a box is opened.

Light it however you like. Then slow down, far more than feels natural, because the draw is where the flavor lives. A serious grower cures flower for six to eight weeks, as our guide to what makes cannabis craft explains, to build an aroma that one impatient pull can send up in smoke in about a second.

How to Light a Joint