Where's the THC and junk?

[Gingerbeard]

If you chop a wet bud in half, top to bottom, you see it's anatomy. Hairs and sugar leaves on the outside, wet biomass inside. Is there THC or anything worth while in the biomass? I can see doing a deep shave of my buds, down to the mass. Everything trimmed turns into Witness (My personal brand of live resin.) and produces a larger yield per column. Since the water in fresh weed gets frozen to way low temperatures, the water stays in the column. If the biomass is mostly water, it's mostly waste.

Y'all get me? I'm thinking out loud while dabbing Witness and diamonds and construction people are jackhammering all the concrete around my apartment. Feel free to talk about anything.

[DeadlyFruit]

I’m of the opinion that the thc and other cannabinoids are not just in the trichomes. I’ve been thinking about it lately (after a weed gummie or two as these things happen) and I’ve made very strong extracts from weed that is not at all frosted. I’ve never squashed out my own resin (rosin? Can’t keep track of everything) but you would have to think that part of what comes out is not specifically from the trichomes it is liquid from the plant itself. The inner biomass may be less strong than the outer portion of the bud but I think not using it will leave a lot of thc on the table.

[Gingerbeard]

Google 'supercritical fluids.' Just the basics. DO NOT Wikipedia. You will spontaneously combust from the information.

[DeadlyFruit]

Cool topic. I could easily go down a rabbit hole on that one!

[Ckbrew]

I have heard of people taking the green parts and juicing them and drinking the juice. idk why.

[Gingerbeard]

I believe wholeheartedly in the power of the placebo.

[Ckbrew]

I can get you the best ones there are.

[Gingerbeard]

Goddall funny!

[Gingerbeard]

Since I started dabbing, I've all but stopped smoking weed except for a quality control bowl of my own, should I save any flowers for friends. Same same for scissor hash. I'm all about the beneficial aspects of MJ. I don't see anything beneficial about smoking the plant matter. Smoking is a lot more mess. Dabbing smells like flowers and citrus and diesel. Smoked weed has one smell: smoke. If I smoke weed, I smell like weed. If I dab, I only smell like a hippie.

Before you old heads yell at me for saying somethings bad about smoking weed, clear your throat and hack out that tar ball.

[Farmbuck]

Well I'm not a cool kiddo and I'm one of the few who still enjoy a good old fashion chunk of hash that smell like an incense stick. Proof you say... Then grow some Kali strains to prove me wrong. Remember vape burns can happen suddenly. Or explosions........

Call me old fashion but I like my joint. At least my rolling paper is made of organic material without the plastic shit from a E-cigarette. HAh !!

[Gingerbeard]

I'm with you on the vape pens, FB. Too much processing. No control over temperature. They make me cough like smoking an ounce of Mexican dirt weed in a sweat lodge.
The smell of burning hash is better than burning weed. Absolutely. I'll burn a ball for the smell.

[DeadlyFruit]

I vape but not a cartridge with liquids. I use one of the Vapes that you just add plant material to and you can select the temp. I find it a little weaker than doing it other ways (depending on the device) but you can water cure the leftover plant material to get rid of the toasted taste and then extract the remaining thc from it into butter or something. Since you select the temp you want to vape at you can determine which terps will vaporize (I have a chart somewhere showing the temps for different cannabinoids). I’ve been doing it a little less lately and mostly eating edibles but I still do it pretty regularly. I do like the smell of hash but not such a fan of smoke.

[Ckbrew]

So Gingerbeard , what do you use to dab? I don't care for the torch and heating the banger. I often wonder if there is a bunch of dab getting lost to excessive heat. Is there something maybe electric?

[Smoklahoma]

We use a puffco peak. Works really good. Kinda like a little electric bong.

[Ckbrew]

Interesting.

[Gingerbeard]

There are a few ways to go Ckbrew .
I'm not a fan of the electric nail. I've never owned one but friends have put theirs away after realizing how easy it is to break the crystal banger. If you leave one turned on, it breaks.
There are 'nails' and there are 'crystal bangers.' One or the other is heated and concentrate is put to the heat.
It is as easy to overheat a banger (my general term for nails and the ilk) as to underheat one. Higher temps tend to give more of a headrush. Lower temps go more to the body and taste and can smell like Willy Wonka's chocolate factory if there was a citrus orchard surrounded by flower fields and a diesel gas pump in the middle. It's freaking amazing.
I'm somewhat anal about how I do my thing. Some folks think they can hit the perfect temperature by timing how long they torch the banger and holding their hand next to it. I have myself an infrared laser thermometer. Depending on my mood, I'll take a carb cap on a 450 degree banger and exhale through my nose. The nose hairs and moustache will smell like WW's place. Other times I'll hit it at 650. Less taste. More rush. Then there are the meat heads who dab on red hot bangers. That ruins the whole idea of tasting terps or anything pleasant.
There's a little saying when it comes to low temp dabbing. 'You have to waste it to taste it.' Since the heat isn't as high, not as many of the terps and such get vaped.

[Gingerbeard]

I'm a fan of flower vaporizers DeadlyFruit. A simple $30 box vaporizer is all it takes. You learnt me something about getting rid of that peanut shell taste of vaped bud. Rinsing it in water? Really?
Made an omelette and sprinkled vaped bud on it. Too much bud, I guess. I was super hammered and kept forgetting why. Edibles have never been my thing because dosing is hit-or-miss and I can't step back from it if I need to be responsible. I've had wonderful experiences as a passenger on road trips. But there was no way in hell I would have been able to drive without stopping every mile to ask if my comrades could see the aura.

"Do you see it, man? Do you see it? Do you see the aura?"
"The aura of what?"
(Crying) "All of it, man. All of it."
"We're in the middle of the fucking desert!"
"All of it, man. All of it."

[Ckbrew]

Were you on that trip with me? Sounds familiar.

[DeadlyFruit]

LOL you two are a riot.

Yes, water will do it for the most part. Put your ABV in a mason jar and fill it up with cool water. Shake it up a bit am then drape some cheesecloth or similar over it and drain. Nothing fancy, just basically rinsing it. I use the side of a fine bubble bag and then screw the mason jar ring on over top to make it idiot proof. Repeat as necessary. It won’t be perfect but it certainly helps a lot. The official how to I read involved letting it sit in the fridge, replacing the water periodically over 3 days. I just do it over about 3 hours, changing the water maybe a half dozen times. If you need it dry just spread it out in a pan and put it in a warm oven for a while, stirring it occasionally. I sometimes use it for butter but not if you need it to look nice - it will give your butter an unappealing beige colour. I’ve been wondering what would happen if I tried a qwet with ABV. Maybe next time.

Agreed about not being able to step back from edibles. A bit too much and it is impossible to function. I weigh out my edible portions to be sure. When I have a new batch I try to sample it for the first time when I don’t have anything going on. Lately I have been getting better at judging.

[BR2K]

Cannabis guts make me queasy...

[OldManGrower]

What happened to the good old pipe? I use a repurposed briar tobacco pipe. Has a great draw, smooth smoke and looks classy unlike it's owner.

[TOKABIGONE]

Hahaha Ckbrew I know yuck. That was a long time ago,lol! Here is the interesting thing to me. The bottom chamber of the pipe does not have charred remains, it is black soft tar and I know there is still cannabinoids left as it is basically decarbed resin I believe and I did dig some out one day to top my bowl and was more potent than my gone to long totally amber bud. I could probably press it for oil or whatever you make from the resulting goo. That's why I'm wondering if I clean it with Everclear I should have tincture which I could reduce further if I want. Or am I missing something? I have not done tincture yet but have supplies and will do some this weekend with an oz of that bud. It's squishy but not real sticky after 10 weeks cure.

[Ckbrew]

Yes TOKABIGONE you are missing something. The reason that you can do an extraction with ethanol on bud is that you only dissolve the trichomes and content, not the rest- the plant material mostly cellulose, the lipids etc. Then that is filtered and reduced down. That is the separation.

The soft black tar you speak of is just as soluble as the THC from the trichomes. You can dissolve it, then reduce it, but you have not done any separation of material, you will wind up with what you started with. There may still be some viable THC in that, but I would still put that stuff in the yuck category. Start with the bud you will be much happier with the results.

[TOKABIGONE]

I agree Ckbrew i wouldn't waste the Everclear on it. I'd drink it without the tar if it came to that, lol! I use it to make Kahlua which will knock you stiff. Haven't done that for years. Alcohol is not my friend anymore.

[Gingerbeard]

Nothing at all wrong with a pipe or bong. I have one of each in my pantheon of drug paraphernalia. And a weed vaporizer. Nectar collector. Male ended dab rig. Batteries to old pens. Old bangers. Lighters that I'm sure have butane for just one more bowl, if I can shake them hard enough. But they are all more or less dust display pieces.
In college I made 'Frankenpipes.' Pieces of oak firewood from my grandmothers house were cut down into pipe size pieces. I cut irregular bowl shapes and added screws, nails, and staples. Inset bolts for bowls. Unfinished edges. Inlaid redwood and Italian stone pine. I might have been able to offset some of my supplies cost by selling them. One was pretty much a U-shape that had you trying to light the bowl next to your ear.
Maybe that's it. A pipe is a pipe unless it is not a pipe and is something creative. My grandpa smoked pipes so I can dig your repurposing the old school. Off the shelf is generic. Nameless.
You've gotten me thinking about an old wood one. My glass is so yesterday.

[Gingerbeard]

A pipe is a pipe unless it is not a pipe and is something creative.

[TOKABIGONE]

I once used a dry corn cob hollowed out with a dry reed stem. Smoked fine!

[TOKABIGONE]

Can't remember if I was sittin' on that sack of seeds or not!

[BR2K]

I am far too lazy to invest time, fashioning wood pipes or the like. I don't have any "emergency pipes" collecting dust, mine invariably go out to my crusher.

[Gingerbeard]

OldManGrower One reason to try a different kind of pipe, perhaps?

[Gingerbeard]

Don't do it TOKABIGONE . If cleaning pipe residue was a thing, people would be doing it. Have you ever heard of anyone successfully cleaning pipe residue? Have you ever heard anyone praise the taste and aroma of burning burnt stuff? Take it as it is. Buddy Ryan says he'll eat reclaim and resin. They give him the runs but he says it's worth the high. He drinks a lot of energy drinks so I can only believe a little of what he says. He might also do drugs.

You have to have your EBUD (Emergency Backup Dope) when your working stash gets depleted. I have two little containers for reclaim: old and new. I fill one as old. If needed, this gets used. If the old container gets filled up, I put it on the shelf and work on the new. If that one fills up I get rid of the old, the new becomes the old, and I fill up another. Rotating stock, you see? I absolutely loathe reclaim but know it's potency.

All that being said. I may never run out of concentrate, again (knocking on my wood.) Neighbor found the hook-ups for the pop-ups where you can get a $200 ounce of good budder or $420 for diamonds. If you figure I was paying $40 a gram from a dispensary, I'm saving a shit load of money. The people who do these are the people who sell to the 'illegal' dispensaries. One of our San Diego communities where such dispensaries were tolerated, stopped tolerating them and had them all raided and closed. The prices I mentioned are pre-raid figures. Now that those places are closed, the vendors have a shit load of overhead. Prices might go lower. Thinking about a half ounce jar of diamonds next to a half ounce jar of something terpy gives me a little tug. Right now they're only 1/8 oz jars.

I've read a trick that involves a penny if you get shatter that tastes like sulfur.