Cannabis Concentrates, Everything You Need To Know

If you’re unfamiliar, the swab inhales the vapor of cannabis concentrates. Two common ways to do this are with a Vape pen or a wax plant. There are many different concentrates that we will cover later in this article.

You probably guessed from the name “concentrates” that these products are a concentrated form of the marijuana plant.

How are concentrates made?

When making cannabis concentrates, trichomes, cannabinoids, and terpenes are separated from the marijuana plant and concentrated.

Scientists have identified 110 different cannabinoids and over 120 terpenes in cannabis plants. These are made in a part of the plant called a trichome. This is the name of these tiny white crystalline pieces that resemble small mushrooms and are found on the bud and leaf surface of the plant.

The terpenes not only give different types of marijuana their unique taste, but can also enhance or modify the psychoactive and medicinal effects.

Additionally, this part of the plant makes them sticky. It most likely plays an essential role in protecting the plant from insects and elements.

Cannabinoids are those chemical compounds that act on the endocannabinoid system of the human body and brain. THC and CBD are perhaps the most famous cannabinoids.

THC is the one that contains psychoactive properties – so it is mainly responsible for that euphoric feeling. CBD, on the other hand, contains the healing and pain relieving properties.

Solvent-based / non-solvent based concentrates

Concentrates can be divided into two groups: solvent-based concentrates and solvent-free / solvent-free concentrates.

Non-solvent / solvent-free concentrates.

Solvent-free concentrates are made using pressure, filtration, and heat to remove the cannabinoids and terpenes from the plant material. It takes more time than solvent-based extraction. However, it’s considered a more natural way of making concentrates. In fact, many of these non-solvent concentrates can be traced back to ancient India or China.

Non-solvent concentrates include kief, hash, charas, bubble hash, and rosin hash.

Solvent based concentrates

These are extracted from cannabis using a solvent such as propane, butane, or carbon dioxide.

Solvent-based concentrates include Shatter, Budder, Wax, Crumble, Live Resin, BHO, PHO, and C02 Oil.

Different concentrates

The names for many of these cannabis concentrates are derived from their appearance and physical properties.

Seven / Kief

Seven, better known as kief, is a simple form of cannabis concentrate with intense results.

It is made by sifting the dried flower over mesh screens and collecting the trichomes at the bottom. This resulting fine powder can easily be used in a vaporizer, placed in crevices, or sprinkled over bowls.

Something Smoke shops will do “living sifting,” this is a sifting made from the same frozen plant material that would be used with living resin. This gives it a tastier, smoother hit than traditional kief.

Kief / Sift is harder to find these days because it has lower margins and potencies than solvent extracts. It’s easy to collect your own at home using a filtered weed grinder to collect and store the kief of your ground herb.

Hash

Hash has been around for millennia and can be made in a number of different ways. Perhaps easiest is to compress kief into a small bar. Another way is to use ice water and pass the extract through the sieve to collect the concentrate. Hash is often smoked on its own or mixed with the dry cannabis flower.

Charas

Charas is a form of hashish that is slowly made from the hand rolling the flower and part of the stems of the cannabis plant. This releases a black tar-like substance that is made into a ball. It plays a vital role in the Hindu religion of India. The god Shiva is known for his love for cannabis and those who devote themselves to his worship smoke charas as part of their religious practice.

Bubble hash

Unfortunately, bubble hash has fallen in popularity as more concentration takes over pharmacy shelves. While this is listed as a solvent-free concentrate, it is created using water as the solvent. However, water is not considered a solvent, which can make its categorization a bit confusing.

The easiest, and therefore most common, way to make bubble hash is to put the marijuana in mesh bags. A mixture of plant matter, water, and ice is filtered through them until a thick substance containing the resin is concentrated at the bottom. This is then dried out and the resulting product is bubble hash. Like other hashish, it can be smoked in a pipe, crumbled over a bowl, or mixed in grout.

Rosin hash

Rosin has seen a steep surge in popularity in the underground scene, largely due to how easy it is to do it. All you need are a few nugs of weed, parchment paper, and a hair straightener. The heat and pressure of the straightener push the resin from the buds onto the parchment paper, and you’ve got some rich THC oils on your head for heady swabs oil rig.

It’s also popular in weed stores, and the commercial manufacturers use industrial heat presses to make it. It’s usually sticky and brittle, a bit like splinters.

wax

As the name suggests, this concentrate is naturally waxy. It can be very sticky and is often a creamy yellowish color. It can be used in a vaporizer or one dab rig and varies in consistency from thick treacle to a more crumbly wax. This fluctuation in consistency is due to the amount of moisture and heat in the extraction process.

Smash

Splinters are a common form of concentrate found in almost all pharmacies.

It’s sometimes shaped into cool shapes and has a translucent glass-like consistency from which it derives its name. It is one of the purest forms of marijuana concentrate and is clear or amber in color. It is often made using butane as an extraction solvent. There can be a harsh high, and its composition makes it ideal for dabbing with rigs or for use in vaporizers.

Pull and snap

Pull and Snap is very similar to Shatter, but has a taffy-like consistency. As the name suggests, it is malleable and can be stretched, but snaps when a quick motion is applied to it.

Budder

Budder is a variety of wax concentrates that have become relatively popular. It’s usually extracted with CO2 or butane so certainly not something you want to do at home. Budder is made by blasting the solvent through marijuana, which extracts the THC. This is then “purged” with heat and air pressure to remove the solvent. It’s a similar process used to create and break up sprinkle wax。

A waxy paste substance can be created by stirring and beating the extracted cannabinoids as they begin to crystallize.

Crumble

Crumble wax is made in a similar way to cracking and budding. A common way to make wax into sprinkles is to soak it at a lower temperature for long periods of time. This will retain more terpenes and also make for a better tasting concentrate.

Its crumbly shape makes it a little trickier to work with, although you can scrape off granules and use them Evaporator.

Living resin

Live resin concentrates are made by flash freezing the fresh plant. This skips the drying and hardening phase, resulting in a richer flavor as the terpenes are retained.

Although you can make living resin using CO2 extraction, almost all of the varieties you can find at pharmacies are made using butane extraction.

It is becoming increasingly popular due to its strong taste which also attracts a higher price.

distillate

Distillates are made through a process called molecular distillation. Distilling hashish requires taking winterized concentrates – butane or CO2 hashish oil that is refined with alcohol or ethanol and then refrigerated at extreme temperatures – and then distilled to further concentrate the THC.

The process is repeated to remove impurities such as solvent residues or lipids in the concentrate. The result: a clear, odorless concentrate that is practically solvent-free. During the distillation process, BHO or CO2 oil with a THC effectiveness of 70 to 85 percent can be refined to over 95 percent.

Terp sauce

Terpenes are lost during the THC distillation process as the THC is separated from virtually every other compound, leaving behind an odorless, tasteless concentrate. However, terpenes can also be extracted from flowers and hash, and this is where terp sauce comes in.