Concentrating On Concentrates

With the advent of legalization now catching fire, innovation in the industry is also catching fire and one of the most noticeable areas is in “Concentrates”. Where there used to just be things like hash and kief, there are now “dabs” with names like “wax”, “shatter”, and “crumble”. They are all a little different, but the end result is the same. It’s concentrated THC . . . ’nuff said.

One day back in college, I was super nervous about calling a girl who had given me her number at the pub the night before. Beer in one hand and pipe in the other, I was attempting to calm my nerves. A knock at the door revealed my neighbor who was also my dealer.

He heard my story and said “oh dude, you need to try hash”. I really didn’t know what it was at the time, but at that point I figured it couldn’t hurt, so I tried it. Long story short, I got the date.

THC itself is actually a fairly clear-headed drug. It’s all the other things that work in “entourage” with THC that make it more of the “stony” drug that most people associate with marijuana. That doesn’t mean that if you smoke a shit load of concentrated THC that you are going to be clear headed, it just means you won’t generally be found in a pile of your own drool begging for cupcakes and ho ho’s.

Full disclosure, I have never done a dab in my life. Except for kief and hash, I mainly stay away from concentrates. To me, cannabis concentrates are kind of the “Everclear” of the cannabis world. Some people love the higher octane boozes, but most of us like them to be distilled down a bit and made into scotches, tequila, or infused with grapes for wine, or blending with yummy hops and making beer.

So I’m going to give you a quick breakdown of what I learned about concentrates recently, and then leave you some links to the videos I used in the process so that you can do more research on your own. Let’s start with the types:

Kief

Kief is basically the tricomes of the marijuana plant that have been sifted off the product. It’s highly concentrated and is often used as an addition to other products, as opposed to being consumed alone. Many people put kief into joints, on top of bong bowls, and one company in Seattle makes a pre-roll using hash oil soaked flower rolled in kief (called caviar) that yields a mind bending pre roll that you probably don’t want to smoke in one sitting.

Hash

Hash is about as old school as you get. Hash is historical. Hash is awesome. I’m a big fan. It comes in either a dark brown or blond color. There are SO many different kinds of hash, but again, the end result is essentially the same. Hash is usually hand compressed kief (as opposed to machine) and it generally comes in a “softish hard” consistency. Kind of like a stale tootsie roll. For me, hash is a very alert way to consume cannabis. It helps me focus, keeps me upbeat, and can actually help make mundane tasks a lot more fun. So it comes out when it’s time to clean my apartment is what I’m saying.

Dabs

Dabs come in many different forms called “crumble”, “wax”, “sugar” etc, but the names mainly have to do with the consistency of the product. Again, the end result is the same. It’s a concentrate. Are we sensing a pattern here? Dabs are often obtained through a process called BHO that uses butane to extract the THC. Dabs are quite popular with the younger generation of consumer. Old f—ks like me generally stay away from dabs because it’s kind of like taking shots of Everclear. Been there, done that. Don’t want another t-shirt. For those who are looking for a “solventless” form of dabs, you should look to “rosin”, which just uses heat and pressure. It’s a bit more pricey, but is typically of a higher quality.

CO2 Hash Oil

Some consider it a cleaner, safer way to consume cannabis, but the science is still incomplete. Using CO2 to extract is theoretically healthier, but the one downside is it requires pressure that can be explosive if not regulated correctly. I love CO2 hash oil because they use it in vapor pens and vapor pens are a godsend to people who love to have a portable, very discrete way of consuming. The concentrate is turned into vapor instead of smoke, so it’s theoretically less carcinogenic than smoking. In principal that is true, but again, the science is still in process.

Links:

There were a couple of really great videos that I used to assemble this blog. You should check them out. One if here, from Leafly. The other is here, from Mass Roots.

The Resinator

At Cannacon recently, I stumbled on The Original Resinator and heard about their patent pending process of trimming marijuana using CO2. The interview is posted below and if you’re in the business or thinking about getting into it, it’s worth checking out the interview AND their website. They have some really great videos on their site that answer a lot of your questions.

Enjoy the video and if you would rather read than watch, the transcription of the interview is posted below as well. Thanks again for checking out my sight, my babies. Please hit “FOLLOW” and share this with your friends! Knowledge is power and I want to educate the sh-t out of you.

Power To The Flower.

Scojo The Herb Advisor

Scojo:	Greetings and salutations, everybody. Scojo, the herb advisor, here at Seattle CannaCon 2018. CannaCon, it’s like Comic-Con, but Sheldon Cooper’s like, really fucked up. Anyway, I am here with TJ, and this is fascinating. Now, I gotta admit, I kinda tried to stay ignorant on this product ’cause I wanna hear this with fresh ears. TJ, tell me a little bit about what you got going on.
TJ Arnovick:	Well, like you, we’re excited to be out here, in the Emerald City of Seattle, letting people know what it is that we do. We’re the future of botanical extraction. And what’s unique about our product, is you can make kief, you can make bubble hash, and we’re trimming with CO2. That’s a process that we invented, we actually have a patent pending on the recipe. When we’re trimming the CO2, we trim a pound a minute. And what’s so exciting about our product is any post-harvest, any pre-extraction processor, they’re gonna wanna be familiar with what we’re doing, from farm to facility.
	We’re typically, across the board, gonna save about 85% of the time that somebody’s spending on a number of things, including their labor costs, and the time that they’re spending, the product will pay for itself, virtually the first time that you use it. No matter what you’re doing … the rosin extraction, or if you’re working with a distillate, doing a short-path distillation, or any kind of a closed loop system, like a BHO, or a super critical system, you’re gonna wanna introduce kief into your process. ‘Cause what you’re doing is, you’re using a concentrate. So by eliminating a variety of the undesirable plant compounds like chlorophylls, lipids, [inaudible 00:01:15], things that are undesirable. We’re able to go ahead and give you a pure concentrate, kinda skipping the [inaudible 00:01:20] process, which makes all the other processes more efficient.
Scojo:	I did this, I think it was a Seattle group that had one of these pre-rolls, it was flower soaked in oil with kief, and then into a pre-roll. And I remember smoking it, and then I remember waking up in a pile of my own drool. It was one of the best drooling sessions I think I’ve ever had. So we’re starting off 2018, we’re heading into the year-
TJ Arnovick:	They call that quality over quantity, that’s what that is.
Scojo:	Exactly. I’m not getting any younger, I gotta get the good stuff. Looking into the next year, what’re most excited about?
TJ Arnovick:	Well, it’s really exciting watching the cannabis industry grow, the growing, or budding industry, if you will. It’s amazing to watch it, I’ve been calling it coming out of the cannabis closet. And there’s so many people in the industry that … it’s changed so much year after year, even two years ago, there’s companies that you’re finding here now that you would not have seen. It’s amazing to watch the community come together, and work together to achieve our goal. ‘Cause we lived in an oppressive mind state around the cannabis community for so many years, for us to be able to come out and talk about it in a environment like this, I mean, we’re in downtown Seattle, in the most beautiful … the convention center, this atmosphere that we’re at from state to state, has just been so welcoming. So we’re loving the people of Seattle right now, and we’re having a great time.
Scojo:	Now, if somebody wanted to find out more about you, you got a website? Social media?
TJ Arnovick:	Yeah, absolutely, we have all of the above. You can go down to http://www.theoriginalresinator.com, or you can find us on Instagram and also our Facebook. And we have a variety of videos through our YouTube channel, and we have an extensive series of videos and tutorials in fact, try to get our consumers familiar with the process, kinda remove any of the mystiques, and the mystery around extraction. And also introducing a new process like trimming with CO2, something that’s never been done.
Scojo:	Speaking of embracing or not embracing, we’re gonna send out a little video to Mr. Jeff Sessions. Do you have a message for him at all?
TJ Arnovick:	Oh Jeff, you know Jeff, it’s a shame sometimes, it seems the ideas that are in place, they don’t need to change, they need to be replaced. ‘Cause after all, this is a healing plant, and that’s all we’re trying to do, is being advocates for something that we believe in, and we wanna get that message out. And as it’s growing, and people are embracing the cannabis community, we’ll see how that works out federally.
Scojo:	The cannabis community is attempting to embrace you, is I think what we’re saying. We’re trying our best. From CannaCon 2018, I’m Scojo, the herb advisor, you can see my stuff on theherbadvisor.com. That’s TJ, and power to the flower, everybody. Thanks for tuning in.