This Machine Pours Weed Vapor Like It’s Draft Beer - VICE

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I didn’t realize hitting a vape cart had gotten boring until I started pouring one into a glass.

That’s basically what the Terp Tap does. Stache took the little 510 cartridge you normally screw onto a battery, stuck it inside a seven-and-a-half-pound tabletop machine with an actual tap handle, and gave you a tiny glass to fill with vapor. Then you drink it.

Not drink drink. There’s no liquid involved. The machine pumps vapor through the tap and into the covered glass, you pick it up, remove the top, and inhale the cloud sitting inside.

It’s completely unnecessary. It’s also one of the most fun ways I’ve hit a vape cart in a long time.

The Terp Tap feels like somebody built a novelty stoner toy and then got surprisingly serious about the execution. It has two cartridge ports, six voltage settings, USB-C charging, a digital display, optional dry-herb functionality, and an auto-fill mode that does the actual vapor pouring for you. It currently costs $180.

And while none of that makes my usual vape battery obsolete, that’s sort of missing the point. The Terp Tap takes one of the most utilitarian ways to get high and turns it into a whole damn ritual.

The Terp Tap is technically a tabletop vaporizer, but visually it’s much closer to a miniature draft system. It has a little raised platform for the glass, a real tap handle sticking out of the top, and a display and controls that make the whole thing look like someone shrank a bar appliance and decided it should dispense weed.

Stache lists it at 5.75 by 4.25 by 7.5 inches. Despite the company listing the weight at 7.5 lbs, it doesn’t feel particularly heavy or cumbersome to me. It’s compact enough that moving it around the house or bringing it somewhere isn’t a big issue. It’s just obviously not replacing the vape battery that disappears into my pocket.

This is where the gimmick really starts working.

Open the back and you’ll find two 510 connections with white silicone airflow tubes hovering over them. The whole setup looks weirdly like a pair of lungs, which is both slightly creepy and extremely appropriate for a machine whose job is essentially to breathe weed vapor for you.

Screw a cartridge into one side, connect the airflow tube, choose which side you want from the controls on top, put the glass underneath the spout, and push the tap handle forward.

Then it pours. Actual vapor starts streaming from the spout into the glass. That’s the moment the Terp Tap goes from “giant vape battery with a funny shape” to something I immediately want to show everybody who comes over.

The glass comes with a silicone lid that helps contain the vapor once it’s inside. From there, you remove it and inhale the vapor sitting in the cup. There’s even an opening in the cover that can accommodate a straw if you’d rather inhale it that way. The tap-and-glass process is also how Stache demonstrates the device in use.

I prefer the absurdity of just picking up the glass. It’s basically a shot of weed air.

This is ultimately what sells me on the Terp Tap. Vape carts are probably one of the least ceremonial ways to consume cannabis. But that’s also why they’re so useful. Screw one onto a battery, take a hit, put it away. There isn’t much ritual involved. And I say that as someone who uses them.

The Terp Tap takes that exact same cartridge and turns the hit into this weird little production. You choose your setting. Pull the tap. Watch the glass slowly cloud over. Pick it up. Pop the top. Drink your vapor. Suddenly I’m not absentmindedly hitting a vape pen. I’m being served weed.

The glass is a big part of why it works. It’s decorative and weighty enough to feel like actual barware rather than a plastic accessory tossed into the box. The cut-glass look gives the whole thing this weird elevated vibe that shouldn’t really work with something this silly, but does. It’s like cannabis bottle service for one.

I didn’t know that vapor needed glassware. I’m very glad someone gave it glassware.

The other reason the Terp Tap is more than an elaborate shell around a vape battery is that there are two 510 ports inside. You can run the left side, the right side, or both simultaneously. Stache also lets you pair one cartridge with its dry-herb coil, although you can’t run two flower coils at the same time.

Two carts at once opens up a completely unnecessary new category of weed experimentation. You could pair different strains. Mix terpene profiles. Combine different cannabinoid ratios. Put something fruity on one side and something gassy on the other and find out if you’ve created a masterpiece or the vape equivalent of mixing every soda at the fountain. You’re essentially making your own draft blend. And unlike a manufacturer blending two oils together inside one cartridge, you can change the combination whenever you want.

Do you need two vape carts firing into the same little glass? Obviously not. But we’ve moved very far beyond “need” at this point.

For something that initially looks like a stoner party trick, there’s a surprising amount of actual vaporizer hardware underneath it. The Terp Tap has six voltage settings: 2.5V, 2.8V, 3.1V, 3.4V, 3.7V, and 4.0V. Each one gets a different color on the digital display, which also shows battery level and coil resistance. It gives you a pretty wide range for carts.

I’d generally stay toward the lower end with a terpene-heavy oil if flavor is what I’m after, then move upward if I want more vapor. Having an actual display also feels like an upgrade over the mystery voltage situation you get from most of the basic vape batteries.

And because the machine is physically moving air rather than relying entirely on you to pull through a cartridge, it can fill the glass for you. That’s a fundamentally different experience from putting your lips on a battery and inhaling as hard as necessary. You’re basically ordering the hit and waiting for it to arrive.

The Terp Tap also comes with hardware for dry herb. So instead of screwing another cartridge into one of the ports, you can load the flower coil and use the same airflow system to pull that vapor into the glass.

Stache is actually pretty upfront that this isn’t supposed to replace a dedicated dry-herb vaporizer. The company warns that the coils can be temperamental if they’re mishandled and specifically says the Terp Tap wasn’t designed to function solely as a flower vape. That lowers my expectations for this part in a good way. I don’t really need the Terp Tap to beat my favorite dry-herb vape. Its whole personality is built around carts.

But flower does create one particularly strange possibility: you can use a cartridge on one side and herb on the other, then run them together into the same glass. Combining both sides seemingly produced a visibly denser glass than the flower attachment alone. The flower itself produced less visible vapor, resulting in better flavor rather than giant clouds. That’s something I’d treat more like a bonus than the reason to buy one.

Because apparently the glass wasn’t enough, Stache also promotes the Terp Tap for drink infusions.

The concept is exactly as strange as it sounds: dispense the vapor into or around a beverage instead of only filling the included glass. Stache specifically markets the Terp Tap for this purpose.

I’ve seen it demonstrated with coffee, too. Vapor gets dispensed directly into the drink before it’s consumed. Do I think this is suddenly going to turn your morning coffee into an edible? No. You’re still dealing with vapor that’s meant to be inhaled, not magically dissolving a meaningful dose of THC into your latte.

But as another bit of presentation? I’m listening. There’s something extremely entertaining about putting this machine next to your coffee or cocktail setup and acting like you’re running the world’s smallest canna-bar.

“Novelty” gets used like an insult with weed gadgets. Sometimes it should be. There are so many devices whose entire reason for existing seems to be looking cool in an Instagram Reel while making the actual smoking experience worse. I don’t think novelty is inherently a problem, though. Sometimes I want weed tech to be useful. Sometimes I want it to be fun.

The Terp Tap manages to be both because underneath the absurd presentation, I’m still using a standard 510 cartridge. I don’t need proprietary pods. I don’t need to transfer oil into something. I’m not fundamentally changing the weed I’m consuming. I’m changing the experience around it. That’s why I can see this being particularly fun with other people. Handing somebody a vape pen isn’t an event. Pulling them a glass of vapor from a weed tap absolutely is.

It’s the kind of device that sits on the table until somebody asks, “What the hell is that?” And then you get to show them.

Here’s the part where I have to acknowledge that you could spend a tiny fraction of $180 on a regular 510 battery and consume the exact same cartridge. If your only goal is efficiency, do that. Seriously.

A $180 tabletop vapor dispenser is never going to win a cost-per-hit argument against the battery you got for free at a dispensary. But that’s also a silly way to judge this particular product. You’re paying for the hardware. Mostly, though, you’re paying for the experience. It’s basically stoner barware. And compared with all of novelty cannabis devices I’ve seen over the years, at least this one takes something I already use and makes it more fun instead of making it more complicated for no reason.

The best argument for buying one is that the Terp Tap can make hitting the same cartridge you’ve hit a hundred times somehow feel new again. It isn’t meant to replace your vape battery. It’s definitely not replacing mine.

The Terp Tap is one of the weirdest cannabis devices I’ve tried in a while. It may also be one of the easiest to understand once you stop asking why it exists. It exists because pouring weed vapor out of a tap is fun. That’s it.

Stache could have stopped at the joke, but it didn’t. There are two cartridge ports, adjustable voltage, a digital display, optional flower vaping, USB-C charging, and an airflow system doing the actual work behind the scenes. But none of those specs are what I’m going to remember. I’m going to remember opening the back and realizing the tubes look like a tiny set of lungs. I’m going to remember pulling the handle and watching vapor pour into a fancy little glass. And I’m going to remember picking that glass up and “drinking” a hit from a vape cart I’ve otherwise used in the most boring possible way.

The Terp Tap makes carts an occasion. It adds a whole ritual to something that’s usually defined by convenience. And apparently that’s something I didn’t know I wanted until somebody put my weed on draft.