OIL Country

Everyone knows about 420, but there’s a second, lesser holiday for the stoniest of stoners: 710. Taking place on July 10, the day is a celebration for concentrated cannabis, as 710 upside-down spells “oil.” The most common concentrate is the liquid that fills vape pens, a distilled form of the plant, but serious hash heads have lots of other toys in their box. Here is a brief rundown of some of the most common forms of concentrated cannabis. 

Distillate

There’s more than one way to fill a vape pen, but the most common way is with distillate. Distillate can be made using both hydrocarbon and carbon dioxide extraction methods, but usually strips the resulting product of terpenes from the original cannabis flower and are usually re-added or replaced by non-cannabis terpenes. In addition to filling vape pens, distillate can be used as a topical, added to cannabis flower to increase its punch or mixed into foods and beverages. 

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Berlin Green

Shatter
Often amber in color, shatter is named for its brittle quality that can allow it to be broken or shattered. A little sticky and very pure, shatter can also be extracted in a way that results in a more elastic quality, which is why some forms of this concentrate are called “pull ‘n’ snap.”

Hash
Hash, also known as hashish, is created by using temperature and pressure to extract and press the cannabis trichomes into a denser form. It can be made multiple ways, including dry sifting with a screen into kief and then compressing it or using ice water or dry ice. Some forms of hash are made by using solvents like butane, ethanol or hexane.

Wax
Wax is also a hash oil extracted with butane that is whipped during extraction into different consistencies. “Budder,” for example, is sticky and more spreadable while “crumble” is thicker and flakier and “sugar” has the consistency of wet or semi-dissolved sugar.

Diamonds and sauce
THC-A is THC acid, the precursor to THC, and diamonds are a term for the crystals formed from it that is found in “sauce,” or a runny terpene concentrate. The heat and pressure used prompt natural cannabinoid separation. The sauce can be further separated out, leaving the THC-A as a dry crystal substance.

Rosin and resin
Rosin also uses a combination of heat and pressure to squeeze sap from resin from flower, kief or hash and transform it into an oil. Live resin is made by taking cannabis flower and freezing it before and after extraction. The freezing can allow most of the plant’s terpenes to be preserved in the final product, whereas many other methods destroy the delicate compounds.

Kief
Kief is the separated trichomes, or resin glands, of the cannabis plant. Appearing as a dry powder, it is most often produced by mechanical separation using fine mesh screens. Kief is often added to bowls or joints to enhance their potency, as most kief is at least 50 percent THC, the psychoactive compound in the plant.