Evaluating Extracts
Exploring the vast landscape of cannabis concentrates
As the industry continues to soar into 2021, cannabis consumers are becoming slightly overwhelmed by the mass presence of cannabis concentrates. Long gone are the days of simply obtaining wax and dabs. In today's market, cannabis concentrate has become almost unrecognizable. Let's take a look at some of the different forms of cannabis extracts.
Budder
Wax comes in a variety of shapes and sizes. One of the most recognizable forms of cannabis concentrates is known as budder. This is a form of THC concentrate that often has a cake frosting-like appearance. Budder can also appear more or less viscous depending on the extraction process. Budder has a unique color profile. It can appear gold or even beige. This type of cannabis concentrate is often only partially sticky and also can appear very similar to crumble.
Shatter
Shatter is a firm, reflective cannabis concentrate that has physical properties similar to that of broken glass or hard candy. This is where it gets its moniker of being 'shatter.' Cannabis concentrates with this type of consistency are often the byproduct of hydrocarbon extraction, such as Butane Hash Oil (or BHO.) Shatter forms when the raw extract is placed onto a thin, flat slab while remaining unphased during the extraction process. Shatter products are often held in high regard for being a manageable concentrate. However, shatter is known to become loose gooey when exposed to undesirable temperatures like excessive heat. Ideally, if stored in cooler temperatures, the 'pull-and-snap' consistency will possess the shatter properties cannabis consumers have come to know and love.
Live Rosin
The term live rosin refers to a particular extraction process that employs a combination of heat along with pressure to instantly force the sap, or resin out of the buds. With cannabis, this method is amazingly versatile in that it can either be used with buds or to clean up hash and kief into a hash oil. The yield is often translucent, viscous, and can resemble that of the cannabis concentrate shatter. If performed correctly, live rosin can be implicative of the flavor, yield, and intense potency of other cannabis concentrates that utilize solvents.
Live Resin
Live resin is a form of Cannabis Concentrates that are prepared utilizing a technique that uses recently gathered cannabis and freezes it to extremely cool temperatures before and during the extraction process. Considering Cannabis Concentrates. Moreover, live resin was created by utilizing a specialized BHO (also known as Butane Hash Oil) extractor with the ability to maintain the necessary sub-zero temperatures to create resin-centric cannabis concentrates. By utilizing frozen cannabis, the trichomes would become more susceptible to being extracted into a concentrate.
Distillates
Distillates are a viscous, opaque oil that has had waxes or unacceptable compounds from the cannabis plant. Distillates are with the course of the sociopolitical advancement of cannabis and cannabis research. Distillates have become quite desirable due to its high level of potency and versatility. Distillates can be used to vape, dab, or even as an additional ingredient in edibles, topical creams, and other products that have been infused with cannabis. These types of concentrates are produced with the help of a large-scale clarifying process that separates cannabinoids from the plant matter. a fundamental process where cannabinoids such as THC and CBD are separated from the physical plant material. Oil extraction typically involves either a physical method of detachment or separation with the help of chemicals. Physical detachment methods (i.e. 'sieving') tend to produce concentrates containing more plant contaminates than chemical-centric extraction processes such as BHO, or Butane Hash Oil, or the ultra-delicate fluid CO2 extraction. Whether the cannabinoids are split via physical or chemical methods, the oil extract yielded often contains crude material that must be separated before distillate use of individual cannabinoids such as THC and CBD.