Cannabis Extracts and Concentrates - Page 2

Nowadays more and more people are being made aware of the benefits of consuming cannabis resin extracts or concentrates, they are more efficient, with higher purity and potency, they have better flavour and give relief more quickly than smoking or vaping flowers. Indeed, in California, cannabis flowers currently make up just over half of the market (55% in the 2nd quarter of 2017.), with extracts making up the remaining 45%, and according to figures from Colorado, another beacon of legalisation in the US, the concentrate market is growing at an astounding rate, with sales increasing by 125% from 2015 to 2016, compared to an 11% rise in flower sales and a 53% rise in edibles.

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Cannabis concentrate consumers are increasingly numerous thanks to the advances in equipment available on the market allowing the production of good quality homemade cannabis resin extractions. Here, fans of Rosin or BHO can find various different methods to consume their extracts.

Spread on rolling paper (Twax Joint)

One of the simplest and probably one of the oldest methods, in the 70's, consumers of honey oil made with alcohol would smoke it by smearing some onto a cigarette.

Now in 2018 consumer habits have evolved somewhat. The Twax Joint has become famous across instagram and it's frequent to see increasingly complex and highly decorative spliffs covered with various different types of cannabis oil, it seems there are no limits to the creativity and imagination of cannabis users.

When consuming this type of joint, we should take some care not let the oil drip off and fall to the ground, we will have to hold the joint in an upright position to ensure the oil flows onto the paper.

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What is reclaim?

Any lover of dabbing cannabis extracts and concentrates has seen, every now and then, some yellowish/brownish residue stuck to the internal parts of his water pipe or bubbler. This residue is basically composed of resin, which gets stuck to the glass due to the recondensation of the vapour.

This residue is often called reclaim, and while its appearance may not seem as eye-catching as the "raw" concentrate, it still contains large amounts of cannabinoids that can be used.

Be careful though, for reclaim must not be confused with the resin stuck to the pipes from the combustion of dried flowers, which does not contain much cannabinoids due to the high temperatures reached during combustion. We're exclusively talking about the resin accumulated in rigs and dropdowns when dabbing extracts.

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Comparing two techniques of hashmaking

In this article, we will be examining and comparing the two most popular approaches to making ice water hash, bubble hash or Ice-O-Lator from cannabis buds: In the first two extractions, we will be using fresh-frozen material to make the hash, while the second two extractions will be carried out using dried, cured flowers.

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The world of cannabis extractions and concentrates - either made with or without solvents - is riding high at this moment among users around the world. One of these concentrates, the well known BHO (Butane Honey Oil), has become especially popular among dabbing lovers because of two main reasons: in one hand, the extract quality ? when is done properly ? is excellent, with high cannabinoids content and no plant debris. On the other hand, this extraction technique provides outstanding yeilds as well, obtaining product with very high percentage of the cannabinoids, terpenes, flavonoids, etc? contained in cannabis trichomes.

BHO extractions and vacuum purging

However, this resin extraction method using butane presents two major disadvantages: the first one has to do, logically, with safety. Using butane gas can be very dangerous because of its highly flammable saturated hydrocarbon which causes a lot of incidents due to incorrect handling. The second major disadvantage is the solvent purge, that is, to remove the substance we have used to obtain the extract (in this case, butane) from the extract itself, which is common in all solvent extractions.

Extraction masters soon realized that the best way to get excellent results is by using closed loop extraction systems to extract the resin and vacuum pumps and ovens to remove the solvent from it. But what exactly are these devices and how do they help us to purge the BHO?

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During the last years, both extracts made with solvents and solventless concentrates have increased their popularity in an exponential way. This is due, in great measure, to the legalization process that is recently taking place in the USA, also to the creation of Cannabis Social Clubs in Spain.

In this post we present you two extraction methods for those who want to use alcohol as solvent (which will be later purged). We'll see how to use ethanol (which we be the solvent used to illustrate this article) and isopropyl alcohol. Although both techniques have a very similar procedure, there are some differences worth taking into account which will be mentioned at the appropriate moment.

It should also be said that isopropyl alcohol contains more toxic substances than pure ethanol (which actually shouldn’t contain any). Thus, we recommend to use isopropyl exclusively to clean your utensils and glass pipes and not for performing extractions.

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Rosin tech has recently risen to become a hugely popular extraction choice for those who prefer to dab solventless cannabis concentrates.

The reasons why it is enjoying such popularity are clear: it's safe, having none of the risk of explosion associated with processes using butane or alcohol to extract; it's very fast, no other extraction method can produce a dab from a bud in just minutes; and it's cheap too, there's no expensive equipment required. Anyone with some herb can make their own cannabis extractions at home with minimal investment - all that's needed is an electric hair straightener available on every high street, and some baking paper, on sale in every supermarket across the country.

If there's a drawback to making rosin from buds/flowers, it's that you need to press a relatively large amount of herb to produce a worthwhile amount of extract. Yields with flowers vary from below 10% to higher than 30% in extreme cases and depend greatly on several factors, mainly: the genetics - the strain being pressed; the grow - the overall quality and resin content of the buds; the extraction equipment - the amount of heat and pressure employed; and the condition of the herb - age and relative humidity of the material.

Many first-timers are put off making rosin by the poor yields resulting from pressing lower-quality flowers, it can be disappointing to see perfectly smokeable buds 'ruined' with almost nothing to show for it. For this reason, some have turned to a more satisfying method of producing dab-able full-melt concentrates and are pressing rosin from hash instead of from herb.

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Nowadays we can find on the market several cannabis based products under different names, and this variety of choices can lead to confusion. This confusion is mainly focused on the different forms of oil that we are going to present in this post.

Marijuana oil BHO (Butane Honey Oil)

BHO is a concentrate of the aromatic and active principles of the cannabis plant made by using liquid butane as solvent. Of course, butane is later removed - purged - by using different techniques. This form of extraction is very famous in the U.S. and Canada and is also becoming increasingly demanded in Europe, as evidenced by the success of Dab-a-Doo and other cannabis events which gather cannabis extract lovers.

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Today, the expression Live Resin is increasingly employed and is oftenly used during the discussions between cannabinoid extraction lovers. It can also be found in the way of #hashtags, in comments of BHO pictures on Instagram and other social networks...but what exactly does it mean?

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Fresh Chilled Separation, a variation on the Fresh Frozen technique

In recent years, the Fresh Frozen technique has become more and more popular among hashish makers. It is a variation on the traditional way of extracting cannabis resin with water and ice in which fresh frozen plant material is used. In our article about the Fresh Frozen technique we already introduced some of the advantages of using fresh buds or trim when making water hash, such as maintaining a terpene profile much closer to the live plant or the fact that fresh plant material doesn't contaminate the extraction as dried buds/trim do.

In this way, we get an extremely pure concentrate, both for the lack of adulterants (we'll never add any substance to improve the texture or effect of the resin) and contaminants, since the plant material is not shredded into small particles that contaminate the extract. As we already mentioned, the flavour of Fresh Frozen hashish is much closer to that of the plant than traditional hashish, since almost no degradation of Beta-Myrcene is produced. Thus, our resins have a much wider organoleptic profile.

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What is Fresh Frozen cannabis resin?

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What is BHO?

The fascinating world of cannabis concentrates is almost 200 years old. The use of tinctures and extracts made from this plant was once something exclusive for the higher classes, and even Victoria - Queen of the United Kingdom of Great Britain and Ireland during the XIX century - used these extracts to relief several medical conditions.

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How to vacuum purge BHO?

BHO extractions are becoming more and more popular today. In this Blog, we have already seen different BHO extractors and explained their functioning and advantages and disadvantages when making marijuana oil.

In this post we will focus on how to purge the solvent from this appreciated liquid gold, which offers us new experiences and opens new horizons in the world of marijuana concentrates and their recreational and medicinal uses.

Once the BHO extraction (with purified butane gas) is done, we have to purge any remaining trace of butane present in the extract. First, we will make a light purge with a bain-marie (water bath). During this process, we can observe how a large number of bubbles are formed and then burst, releasing the gas retained. In this first purge we remove an important amount of gas from our BHO, but it is not enough to get a marijuana oil 100 % clean of impurities.

In these pictures you can see the steps followed before the vacuum purge, so you can see the state of the BHO after this first and important bleeding performed with bain-marie (water bath). Always purge the gas next to a window or directly in an open area.

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Hashish, as we all know, is a by-product of the cannabis plant. It?s the concentration of resin glands that are attached to the cell walls of cannabis buds.

There are different cannabinoid extracting methods, either with dried - like Dry Sift or Water Hash - or fresh plant material - Nepali Charas, Fresh Frozen. In this way, several resin extraction methods have been created depending on the needs and preferences of growers who want to enjoy their own creations for personal use.

In this case we present you a resin extraction method using Co2 - also known as dry ice - a technique derived from the classic dry sieving method.

Preparation and needed materials to make hashish with dry ice

Before getting started, you should prepare all the needed tools for the extraction with dry ice. We don't need much stuff to make extractions with CO2, although quality materials are always necessary for best possible results.

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Making bubble hash

Before attempting to make the best possible ice water separation, we should study a bit of theory that will help us to better understand the process of removing resin glands. The Alchimiaweb team wants to make things easy for you, so you can read the theory in our post about dry sift hash.

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What is Red Bubble Glass?

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