Curious about Concentrate?

High there! You’ve found yourself here for a reason: you’re curious about concentrate.
Well, you’ve most certainly come to the right place. Let’s hash this out.

Concentrate (noun) also known as hash(ish), resin, extract, etc., is the product resulting from the separation and processing of oleoresins attained from the flowers of a cannabis plant.
So…what does that mean?

We’re going to take it back a couple years.

The Origin of Concentrate: How did we get here?

The origin of concentrate has roots in South Central Asia: Northern India, Nepal, Tibet, and Eastern Pakistan. Initially, extract was produced via folks harvesting cannabis and then rubbing their trichome-caked hands together until a ball of decarboxylated, smokeable and ingestible hashish (or charas, which is made with live flowers as opposed to dried and cured flowers with traditional hashish) formed.

Note - hash was not smoked until the introduction of tobacco from the New World in the 16th century. Previous to this introduction of tobacco, hashish was strictly eaten, similar to edibles we eat today. It was able to be eaten because it was decarboxylated via heat, pressure, and friction during the extraction process. Therefore, folks were ingesting the more potent form of THC (11-hydroxy-THC) with no dosing!

Hash was consumed in Persia and by the Nizari Muslim Order of Assassins (the etymology of assassin is a corruption of the Arabic word hashishin, or hash-eater in English), eventually making its way to Turkey and Egypt via the Caucasus and the Mediterranean Sea respectively. Hash eventually reached Europe by the 18th century where it had a size-able cultural impact. Along the road, many and diverse groups of people took to the use of hashish and developed new techniques, including innovative preparations of cannabis-infused edibles, and jargon. People called it Dawamesc, Bhang, Majoun, and Kief.

One specific major cultural impact of the introduction of hashish to Europe in the 18th century was its use among French literary icons during the mid-to-late-19th century.

The Parisian literary club named Club des Hashischins, with members including Victor Hugo (Les Misérables), Alexandre Dumas (The Count of Monte Crisco), Charles Baudelaire (The Flowers of Evil), and Honoré de Balzac (La Comédie humaine) among others, experimented with drugs, namely hashish, to gauge these drugs’ effectiveness in pursuing creative literary endeavors.

Many other creatives, physicians, and groups of creatives and physicians in other Europeans countries used hashish in a similar manner around the same time, not to mention its widespread use in Napoleon’s Army after arriving in Egypt earlier in the 19th century.

Let’s Dive into the Process…

Current Concentrate Extraction Processes
Extraction processes have drastically evolved since the trichome-caked hand days. Now we use various methods to extract concentrate that aren’t so messy, usually… These are the most common:

Live vs. Cured
Live: Concentrate extracted immediately after harvest from flash-frozen, fresh cannabis flower to retain a less diverse, monoterpene-forward (myrcene, limonene, pinene) terpene profile. This results in a product that often has a brighter flavor and saves the cultivator time (usually between 2 and 4 weeks) as they don’t have to cure the product before extraction.

Cured: Concentrate extracted from dried and cured cannabis to attain a complex and diverse terpene (AKA sesquiterpenes, i.e., beta-Caryophyllene and alpha-Humulene) and flavor profile that keeps true to the flower people are used to smoking.

Chemical Solvent Extraction vs. Non-Chemical Solvent Extraction:
Chemical Solvent Extraction: Concentrate extracted using a chemical solvent such as butane, ethanol, CO2, etc. This method does not seek to isolate the coveted trichome heads, which are the most cannabinoid and terpene-rich parts of the cannabis plant. Instead, this process strips both glandular stalks and non-glandular trichomes as well.

The allowance of residual solvents in an extract are extremely low in Illinois. Depending on the solvent in Illinois, the allowance point is between 5 ppm (parts per million) (Ethylene Oxide) and 1000 ppm (ethanol, the only residual solvent allowed to hit that level). The Illinois residual solvent level is lower than standards set by nearly every other state in which cannabis has been legalized; therefore, there is no need to worry about chemical solvents being present at noteworthy levels in one’s concentrate when purchased in this state.

Non-Chemical Solvent Extraction: Concentrate extracted without using a chemical solvent. This can be achieved by isolating the sought-after glandular trichome heads using an ice and/or water process or a dry sift method. Concentrates are, sometimes, then further processed using heat and pressure.

General Concentrate Terminology:

Various concentrate extraction processes = various concentrate forms. There are a slew of terms such as badder, budder, sauce, etc. that are used to describe the texture, consistency and aesthetic of the concentrate. Let’s dive in.

Badder/Batter/Budder: These terms generally encompass concentrates with near-identical textures and consistencies. Budder can be extracted by any of the processes above. Budder is differentiated by the post-extraction and pre-purging (utilizing heat and pressure to rid the concentrate of residual solvents) process of whipping a base extract over a hotplate to homogenize the terpenes and cannabinoids found in the concentrate. This offers the user a more consistent vaping experience from dab-to-dab. The result looks like cake batter or whipped butter.

Sugar (Wax)/Jelly/Resin: This variant of cannabis concentrate has a consistency like wet sugar and can be made with either live or cured flower. Like shatter, sugar is often the result of chemical solvent extraction. Sugar is not agitated like budder and is purged like both budder and shatter, at varying times, temperatures, and pressures.

Shatter/Pull N Snap: Named for its brittle, glass-like consistency, though Pull N Snap is a bit less susceptible to shattering and instead pulls a bit like a mozzarella stick. While these forms are made in the same way as budder, they are not not agitated pre-purge like sugar. This, usually, translucent extract can be live or cured, and is almost always processed via chemical solvent extraction. There is often a much lower terpene presence than most other forms of concentrate.

Diamonds and/or Sauce: This concentrate has a syrupy and sticky consistency and notable crystallization. It is usually known for its comparatively high terpene and low cannabinoid content focus in the sauce and much higher cannabinoid and lower terpene content in the crystalized “diamonds”. Diamonds and/or sauce is attained by letting a chemical solvent remain in the extract mixture from anywhere between a few days and a few weeks, allowing the cannabinoids to crystallize into a solid, while the terpene-rich sauce achieves a liquid consistency. This concentrate is either sold as a combination of diamonds slathered in sauce, just the sauce, or just the diamonds (“sand” or “powder” are crushed diamonds).

Rosin: This form of concentrate can be made in a variety of ways (flower rosin, hash rosin, etc.), but the distinguishing factor of rosin is that it is the result of a non-chemical solvent extraction. Unlike chemical solvent extraction, there is never an introduction of chemicals to extract the concentrate. Rosin usually has a consistency anywhere from a viscous syrup to crumble-y and budder-like. This product can be either cured or live.

Crumble (Wax): Crumble is usually a chemical solvent extract that can be either live or cured, though usually the latter. It is agitated similarly to budder to homogenize the terpenes and cannabinoids throughout the concentrate for a consistent dabbing experience. However, crumble is often purged at lower temperatures for a longer time to rid the concentrate of moisture, resulting in a crumble-like consistency.

Consuming Concentrate

Traditional Rig: Like a bong used for dried and cured cannabis flower, the conventional rig is usually a glass pipe that uses water as a filtration method to decrease the temperature of the soon-to-be-inhaled smoke. They are fitted with a “banger” which is heated up with a blowtorch (like the ones used for crème brûlée) to achieve a desired temperature to vaporize cannabis concentrate. Vapor will travel through the water in the rig to be inhaled.

Note: Without a temperature gauge like the Terpometer, it is difficult to optimally vape.

E-Rig: An e-rig is like a traditional rig, in that vaporized cannabis concentrate is inhaled usually via a water filtration process. The big difference is that an e-rig is battery-powered instead of using a blowtorch to heat a banger. This method allows for a more controlled temperature. The Puffco is our favorite e-rig!

Portable Dab Pen: Like an e-rig, these devices use battery power (instead of a flame) to vape cannabis concentrate. Unlike an e-rig, these devices almost never use water to filter the smoke, opting for portability as the main benefit of this tech. A variety of devices use slightly different methods.

The Yocan Evolve and Puffco Plus heat the concentrate in an internal chamber to the point of vaporization.

The Boundless Terp Pen uses a heated coil at the tip of the pen device. When heated, the pen can be dipped straight into a container of concentrate.

Possible Future of Illinois’ Concentrate Market

Water Hash: This method of rosin production starts with breaking down flower into smaller sizes (breaking down colas but not grinding) andadding them to near-freezing ice water while gently stirring. After scooping some of the resultant product, a mixture of pre-refined hash rosin and water, onto a table in a cold room, it is then agitated to separate the trichome heads from the stalks, with a goal of being gentle enough to keep the fragile membranes of the trichomes heads intact. Finally, the product is pushed through fine mesh screens to further separate the trichome heads.

Persy Rosin: Persy stands for a personal stash of quality concentrate that is usually reserved for the hash makers themselves. The quality of the rosin is determined by the fineness of the mesh screen used to isolate the trichome heads.

The fineness is measured in microns (u). The higher the micron count, the higher the quality of hash/rosin (70-150 microns is usually persy, anything lower will include trichome stalks and anything higher will burst trichome head membranes) because the finer mesh screens don’t allow trichome stalks and other small plant material to make it through to the product. So, persy rosin is a concentrate made strictly from the good stuff: cannabinoid- and terpene-rich trichome heads.

Persy Sauce: The same as persy rosin, except the concentrate is pushed through the mesh screen at lower temperatures which takes longer and is more finicky than making persy rosin. It is cold cured (kept in a refrigerated and pressurized container) for 2-7 days. This method allows for the terpenes to separate into a liquid and the THCa to crystallize into diamonds, resulting in a product like diamonds and sauce, but solventless and using very fine high micron mesh screens.

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