@momofthegoons if I were to guess on that slab of yours, it looks as if the material in the middle has crystallized, either due to an inconsistent distribution of the material during purge, or even in storage. Other possibilities could also explain this appearance though. It is somewhat difficult for me to say with any certainty
A few grams of CBD distillate made by a friend. Ignore the labeling on this recycled jar. Very solid consistency, like cold taffy. Easy on the lungs, and a great way to make sure that I'm getting the CBD I need. Hiigh purity clear distillates always taste like burning plastic smells to me. I always follow a dab with some sort of flower because concentrates always work best for me when I have also ingested the full plant in some manner, especially very one dimensional distillates.
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Holy shit man, that is a good sized jar of distillate! I have certainly found that in my experience, like you say, it is best to accompany a distillate dab with a dose of something that contains the other components of the resin not found in distillate. In my case, I generally dab some full melt with my distillate. The benefit of full melt in this situation is that it contains whole resin glands from the flower, and much like when you vaporize flower, gives you the full flavor that is not present in distillates and other kinds of oil extracts.
First thank you for your timely response on the curing aspects of cannabis and its terpenes, it helped debunk the common misconceptions in full melt.
Wow. Lost at words here, I have yet to try cured hash, eager to try but hard to find.
No problem at all my friend, and thank you also for your post, I love to read this kind of discussion from my fellow asylum people - I could talk about full melt all day long! lol
Everyone was on this live resin bandwagon craze (it moved on to BHO "terp sauce"). The worst part is when I come across 6 star full melt and its rosined (usually priced higher too :/ ), I cringe at the sight of that. Highly commercialized for the wrong reasons I think, rosin is a great alternative but not for already perfectly produced resin, it's a step backwards actually in an effort to move forward with removing potential residue, you end up losing valuable terpenes in the process.
I am so glad to see you raise this. In my view, pressing 6 star full melt with heat into rosin does not make sense. My old friend
@SamuraiSam is right to be dubious of claims about rosin made from 6 star hash. In my experience, 6 star hash is always better without being pressed with heat. I would not even press 5 star hash into rosin, as I prefer the flavor from the 5 star hash any day of the week. IMO, one should only press hash into rosin only when it doesn't melt enough to dab.
I compared hash to rosin hash under a microscope and you can see it burns off terpenes based on the discoloration in the cells compared to those of unadulterated hash. I finally find out what was in the zkittles sample, they're split cells of secretory cells in trichomes (I'm sure, not just limited to those but possibly the majority of). I have so much to share with you, I'll be uploading photos soon. Again thank you, not many extraction artist are as open in sharing information as you are, much respect.
I can't wait to see these pictures, please do share! Your input is wonderful here and I'm glad to see people like you joining us here
I also wanted to see your takes on this new form of BHO concentrate known as "terp sauce"
Some producers separate crystals from terp soup and purge again for marijuana sauce.
"There are plenty of misunderstandings when it comes to marijuana sauce but one of the most common is the tendency to mislabel other extracts as sauce. Besides live resin, the most common extract to be mistaken for marijuana sauce is probably nucleated shatter. Nucleated shatter is a process that occurs when, with time, the solid and liquid aspects of shatter start to separate. This adds more distinction to the terpenes, evidenced by a more complex flavor profile. While nucleated shatter may be tasty, it’s not officially marijuana sauce. Likewise live resin is not marijuana sauce. While live resin boasts heightened flavor when compared to other extracts, marijuana sauce hits new levels of terpene saturation. In most cases, the type of live resin being mistaken for marijuana sauce is called full spectrum extracts. These high-terpene full spectrum extracts resemble crystals ranging in color from almost clear to yellow, situated in a soup of amber liquid. In the process of creating full spectrum extracts, the substance is stripped of excess ingredients that could lead to a harsher vaping experience while retaining the valuable terpenes. However, some
full spectrum extracts sacrifice terpenes in favor of more cannabinoids ( Terpenes moderate levels of potency in cannabinoids how is this helpful?)
Some producers swear by taking only fresh clippings and putting them directly into the extraction machine or freezing the fresh clippings until this can be done. Other producers disagree with this method. Instead, after typical BHO extraction processes are employed, they let the resulting product age for nucleation to take place. Then, the crystals are removed from the terp soup and this liquid is run through the extraction process again. The result can pack an intense 60% more flavor molecules than other concentrates on the market. In fact, some producers have even had to scale back because the resulting burst of terpenes was considered too strong to be pleasurable."
My bro
@SamuraiSam is the man when it comes to this topic around these parts. He's been making these products on the regular for quite some time now and I'm glad to see he's already shared bove. Essentially, these sauce/crystal separations are taking advantage of the chemistry of crystallization, where THCA crystals (of varying purity, depending on residual content of the separated 'sauce' fraction, in chemistry we call this the 'mother liquor') can be precipitated out of a crude (usually solvent based) essential oil extract leaving behind the high terp containing sauce.
I personally do not like solvent based extractions, to me most BHO extractions have always tasted similar in flavor (hardly any authenticity) and leaves a sightly off putting chemical flavor, no matter how well purged. Maybe its just me but I've noticed it doesn't carry the same underling flavors like full melt, probably due to the heat used in purging out contaminates/lipds?
I share the same opinion as you here. I cut my teeth with solvent extracts a very long time ago, and gradually abandoned them to use solventless techniques to produce my medicine. In my experience, full melt brings the truest representation of the flavor and effects of the starting flower, gives a thicker, fuller cloud than rosin or any solvent based oil. I must concede that well made solvent extracts can challenge rosin at times though, this will depend on how the rosin and solvent extracts were made. All things being equal, I'd typically take rosin over a solvent extract. That's all moot though, its nothing but full melt for me these days!
To me solvent extractions tend to focus on quantity over quality whereas full melt is quality over quantity therefore no room for comparison. I do believe BHO can be safe but it will always lack flavor compared to hash IME. What are your thoughts?
Generally, I agree completely with this claim. However, I should clarify that a BHO sauce may have stronger flavor, in terms of higher overall concentrations of terpenes as a percentage of the whole dab. However, IME, the terpene profile of well made full melt can be more diverse than a BHO sauce from the same material. The BHO sauce crystallization/purge process will impact the presence of some terps more than others, as some terps are more or less resilient to oxidation/decomposition etc in this processing (this is before we consider that not all of the composition of cannabis resin has been accounted for yet, and we should remain aware that some constituents are more readily soluble in a given solvent than others, and that also varies depending on the constituent and the solvent/s in question). I am sure my buddy
@SamuraiSam has more detailed insights to offer here however :)
One key point I should mention here is that not all methods of producing full melt will preserve the resin in the same way. If people are not keeping the resin glands whole, if they're storing them in warm environments/exposed to oxygen etc YMMV, and you may find that such full melt ends up with a less diverse terp profile than a well made BHO sauce!
You're too kind man, I hope that you have been very well btw! I was glad to see your input above, as you really are our resident sauce guy!
n my area we dont' ever see 6 star hash rosin. Theres never a star rating on the rosin because its always pressed from less-than-full-melt hash, 3, and 4 star etc. It doesn't make economic sense to squish 6 star unless you're charging significantly more for the rosin than the 6 star, since the rosin requires more equipment, materials, labor, and even at a 90% yield, requires more unicorn tears per jar than a gram of the already-amazing product from which it's made. No, you won't find any argument from me that proper full-melt is better than rosin, but I'd be more likely to call BS on it being true '6 star' hash that was rosined.
My man summed it up nicely here. I am inclined to think the same way. Furthermore, all of my recent 6 star full melt (like my last pic above) looks like rosin when you make a slab out of it anyway! You can even see through it when holding it up to the light! I can't see why somebody would risk taking something like that and applying heat and pressure to it unless that heat is from a sapphire enail and the change in pressure came from a carb cap!
I don't think the person who wrote that article understands what the term "full-spectrum extract" means. That is not an interchangeable term for high terpene sauce. I produce high terpene 'sauce' consistency extracts, sometimes with large THCA diamonds as pictured, and I don't think the person who wrote this article knows how to make those products. Hydrocarbon extracts are made in a single pass, and the author of that article is describing some sort of convoluted multi-pass methodology that doesn't sound very smart to me and that I've literally never heard of before. Some of the sauce I made tests above 20% terpenes and we aren't 'scaling back' anything. That person is more likely a blogger than a concentrate producer.
This is also an excellent point, and I've got to say, I've seen examples of this kind of inaccurate writing in a lot of blogs and general cannabis websites. IME, the majority of non-extract artists who write about extraction tend to misunderstand key aspects of the processing involved when doing these kinds of write-ups. Thankfully, we've got experienced and knowledgeable folks like you to help us clear this kind of information up
There's more than one way to skin a cat, and if you care to read about what I'm doing,
https://www.reddit.com/r/CannabisEx...rify_sauce_it_almost_looks/dmrtx38/?context=3 We certainly don't run n-tane like you'd use to blast BHO and make shatter with.. equipment is different, solvent blends are different, temperatures are different...
Yes! Crystallization and decantation used to separate sauce from THCA diamonds can be achieved with a variety of different individual solvents and co-solvent mixtures. Some will lend themselves to this task using more simple processes than other choices of solvents, however. I have no doubt that you guys have tried a variety of different approaches by now and use your current choice of solvents with good reason
FWIW not sure if you're 'new' to the discussion, but there's nothing new about the "debate" between BHO and full melt. It has been happening since 1999 when the BHO method was shared publicly, and it's the same tired old bull shit and lies that've been perpetuated since then. You can read about one of the king dicks of bubble-hash superiority who created a legion of BHO-tard calling fanboys here:
https://www.buzzfeed.com/amandachicagolewis/is-hash-oil-safe?utm_term=.gsO6JGqmL#.vvja1wnBk
Oh man, I've not checked out this discussion in a long time, thanks for sharing that link! I remember being put off by Matt Rize's zealotry when I was first reading his posts on various sites. However, never knew that this altercation took place!
It sounds like you've been exposed to some really shitty BHO if your flavor experiences have been so negative. If you are also worried about others complaining about "high ppm of solvents still being present in the sauce" they need to buy sauce produced by proper extractors. I produce extracts which always have less than 500 parts per million residual solvent, very often less than 100 parts per million, and pretty regularly, extracts which have less solvent than the threshold of detection that the GC/MS can measure.
This bears repeating as a consideration for all who are buying product rather than making it (often by the time product makes it to the shelves of retailers, the cream of the crop from those runs has already been snapped up by buddies of the dispensary owner/extract artist etc). Also we should consider that differences in processing methodology can lead to different quality of final product like Sam says, this applies beyond BHO/solvent extracts. Not all full melt or rosin is made equally either.
For example: If someone's squishing trim at high temps to get maximum rosin yields, you may prefer BHO made from the same trim! Generally, bubble or dry sift from trim will be better, but if that bubble/sift tek was not carried out in a perfectly clean environment, you'd be surprised how quickly particulate contaminants (dust etc) can get into the material and diminish the quality. Of course, with solvent extracts, the method of purge and initial extraction can vary similarly. Also with bubble hash, the way that the material is dried can drastically alter the final product! Overly-dried, whited out hash may not any longer have more flavor than a well made BHO from the same starting material!
I remember scheming through this article two years back but I wasn't able to put faces to the names until now. Funny how things puzzle in after time. Such a shame to see drama between extractors, it is a community after all. I do think Rize had good intentions at start for the safely of BHO but went from informing patients about safely concerns to bashing extractors. I can see how he lead a conscious movement in cannabis but with a bad stigma on BHO.
These intra-community conflicts over different processing methods sure do hurt the community as a whole - couldn't agree more!
I've got nothing but respect for people who are doing solvent extraction the right way, like
@SamuraiSam et al. Let's face it, with the market value of high quality flower being as it is these days, we're never going to see the same availability of full melt as we are for higher yielding methods like BHO or rosin. Each method can be carried out in a way that is reasonably safe, and when done in such a way, each method has its place. The last thing I'd wanna see is some kind of alternative universe where only expensive 6 star bubble is available. As a patient, I'd hate to think what that would do to fellow medical users when finances are often already strained due to health limitations on earning capacities.
Not at all actually. I personally just prefer hash over BHO. However, I haven't tried this particular consistency, I will take your word for it and try it out sometime!
You may find that Sam agrees with you personally in preferring well cured full melt to high quality BHO extracts (correct me if I'm wrong of course Sam!), IIRC, he personally prefers cured full melt even to the high quality live resin sauces that he is producing. The problem though, is that cured full melt is far from abundant, as you've noticed yourself
@Lissette
The reality though is (as above) long cures (which we must remember will increase risks of spoiled product if something goes wrong during that long cure!) and low yielding extraction methods like bubble/dry sift simply do not lend themselves to commercial processing like solvent methods do, for economic reasons.
Sam produces commercially and so what he makes ultimately needs to meet the demands of the market first, regardless of his own preferences. I'm making my own meds only, so I can do things that are not so viable in the current commercial setting
I truly hope that you can find some cured full melt to sample some day though,
@Lissette - you clearly are a fellow appreciator of the full melt
