Why Consume Concentrates?
July 8, 2022
Extracts are for Everyone! Whether you are unfamiliar with the little lip balm-looking pots or an experienced concentrate user, we have compiled some useful information in honor of 7/10. We wanted to let you in on how the ‘sauce’ gets made here at Standard Wellness. Chiming in and lending their expertise and experience is our very own August Kaan, Extraction Manager, and Mike Picciuto, assistant MIP Manager.
“The first thing that is scary to people is that they see that it’s a higher potency than flower. That’s the first thing that steers people away from the concentrates, but in all reality, people have a lot of control over how much you are taking.”
With flower the THC varies depending on each crop, strain, and genetics of the plant.
“Some people are intimidated by just the actual concentrate itself and what it looks like because it just looks so far from the cannabis flower that we all grew up knowing and loving. It’s not the flower you know, it looks like putty! It’s an isolated form of cannabis, but again I think that there’s also a misconception with the potency. For me personally (as an Ohio medical patient) I can consume an extract that’s 70% THC and it provides me with the benefit I’m looking for without some of the other undesirable side effects that I feel from flower. Everyone’s body chemistry is different. It’s one of those things where you just dip your toes in the water a little bit to actually figure out what works for you and what doesn’t.”
Fresh Press Mac
“You have control over how much you’re actually taking in; I think it’s actually easier to dose the amount of THC that you’re consuming.” In Ohio the THC amount in concentrates is pretty much the same across the board.
“With flower, people can overdo it a lot easier than they do with concentrates. Some flower is 15% while other flower is 30%, that’s a 100% increase in THC between two batches. With concentrates the suggested starting amount is a grain of rice. I always tell people that you don’t even have to start with that much. Try doing half of the size of a grain of rice it’s very small but it allows you to kind of get an understanding of the appropriate amount that works for you.”
“The flavor is the thing that is something I feel like most people should experience if they haven’t yet. The flavor of cannabis in flower form is great, don’t get me wrong. The experience is more directional also the flavor is superior with high-quality extracts.”
“When concentrates first came around the actual application of how you used the concentrates themselves was the biggest intimidation factor! Originally there were these large torches that would heat up a piece of glass, ceramic, or titanium. It is easy to have it be too cold and waste concentrate or too hot and burn the concentrate vaporizing it. This can be harsh, it hurts, and is not enjoyable. The technology has changed a lot! Electronic devices (Puffco being my personal favorite) takes the guesswork out of the heating. You don’t have torches; it doesn’t look like you’re doing something illicit. When using a low temperature, it gives you a lot of flavor. Not a lot of vapor production, you barely exhale any sort of vapor. The flavor is immense and it just kind of coats your mouth with this wonderful flavor. Most people don’t cough when they have it at a lower temperature, it’s just more flavor, less of a smoking experience and more similar to a vaping experience.”
“Dabbing, or consuming concentrates doesn’t have to be scary. Using a big apparatus. There are things like nectar collectors. These little things that are more discreet. You just heat up the tip of the nectar collector and then apply it straight to concentrate. Once you press the button on it you just apply the tip directly. It takes out the guesswork. It’s funny, my mom’s generation was really intimidated by concentrates at the beginning but the vape pens were kind of her entry into the concentrate world. It takes all the guesswork out of, ‘how do I use this this device’ ‘how do I use this complicated tool’ and all these things. You are just consuming concentrate. The other thing I like about them as an entry into the concentrate world, is with vape pens you have a very good way of monitoring dosing. This way you’re not doing too much, having a bad experience, and then getting turned off. I think that that can happen to where people have an initial bad experience and then write it off. I don’t want that to happen for people.”
Wedding Cake Diamonds
History Overview of Concentrates
Bubble Hash
People have been making extracts with cannabis for hundreds of thousands of years. I’m assuming that alcohol extraction is probably the first form of doing cannabis tinctures. Making concentrated forms but as far as actually consuming by either smoking or vaporizing concentrates bubble hash was the first to make the appearance on the scene. Which is funny because this trend is repeating itself and it’s once again becoming the premium extract. That’s where concentrating THC began. Using ice water and creating kind of like a sticky almost brown, play-doh like consistency. That was known as bubble hash.
Butane Hash
In the late 1990’s or early 2000’s in the unregulated market people practiced extracting oil from cannabis using butane, rudimentary PVC tubes, and coffee filters. (The current practice is to use closed loop systems and vacuum ovens). At the time to achieve BHO or Butane oil the process was called open blasting. This is where there is a tube that is filled with a plant material and then has a very small opening on one side a larger opening on the other side the larger opening would be covered with some sort of a filter traditionally like a coffee filter and then you force butane from a can, through the tube, and it would do a very rudimentary butane extraction. This is where shatter came from!
Wax, Batter, and Shatter
While shatter was the ‘it’ product for a little bit. At the same time wax or a batter also started making its way onto the scene. Rather than making a shatter they were immediately whipping the concentrate to remove solvent and to create more of like a waxy or a batter-y consistency versus a translucent shatter consistency. These were it for the extraction products for maybe the next seven or eight years. Shatter, batter, and the cured wax/wax.
Blue Domina Pure Wax
What makes Standard Wellness Concentrates Superior?
- “We are not afraid to be heavy with the terpene content! I know for a fact that we go a little bit heavier than some of the other companies out there. I used my experience back in Colorado, and did extensive research, I was really trying to figure out the optimal ratio of terpenes. There is a window! You can certainly have too much, and you can certainly have too little.”
- We don’t use Trim! “Many companies that are naked processors, like I was back in the day, are totally dependent on sourcing plant material. Many times, what they are running is bottom of the barrel trim to extract their terpenes, or flower strains that they’re purchasing may not be as desirable.
- We are Vertically integrated! “We have a greenhouse right down the hallway. We can be extremely selective about what strains we’re running. Another advantage is that we can be selective about when we’re harvesting our plants to maximize the terpene content and terpene preservation. We can treat the plant material differently from harvest and from every step of the way until it’s being processed. This preserves terpenes, and what I like to call the flavor matrix. It’s somewhat inaccurate to just use the term terpenes just because terpenes are only part of the overall labor where it comes from. There are alcohols, esters, terpenoid, flavonoid; all these compounds come together to create the wonderful flavors and aromas that we know and love.
Animal Fire OG
How it all comes together
“With a band where it’s like you can have you know just a drummer up on stage which I love! I’m a drummer, but you need the whole band in order to really experience the show. Same with food, you might have a delicious steak but unless you have salt, pepper, potatoes, asparagus its not complete.. When all those components come together, it makes a meal. The thing is that with cannabis there’s over 400 chemicals when we only talk about a handful. We are still understanding how all these compounds synergistically interact to create the whole experience! That’s something I’m big on is education.”
“We really are at the forefront out there of the movement and I’ve always been an advocate for cannabis as a medicine, and as a recreational drug I think that as long as alcohol is successful and it’s legal, I don’t see any valid argument against cannabis as a safer alternative. “The fact that we have cannabinoids receptors in our cells is telling. I don’t think that we would have those if we weren’t intended to consume cannabis.”
If you are on the fence, not sure what product to begin with, check out the extracts & concentrates available at dispensaries near you!
We have also collected some resources, because visuals are helpful too:
- How to Use a Dab Rig from Weedmaps
- How to Use the Puffco Peak, a YouTube video
- How to Dose Dabs from Leafly
- How to Take Low-Temp Dabs from Weedmaps
The information offered in this blog came from the brain of August Kaan and was supported by Mike Picciuto—part of the dream team in the MIP at Standard Wellness. Kaan an extraction artist expert, and Picciuto a scientist/mathematician. We have also included our own anecdotal and personal experiences. All to say we are not professional researchers, and the cannabis industry moves fast. This is our attempt to give patients the best and most accurate information that we currently have.
