Beyond Buds: Marijuana Extracts—Hash, Vaping, Dabbing, Edibles & Medicines
by Ed Rosenthal with David Downs
Copyright © 2014 Ed Rosenthal
Published by Quick American
A Division of Quick Trading Co.
Piedmont, CA, USA
eISBN: 978-1-936807-24-6
Second Printing
Editor and Project Director: Elizabeth Fitzer
Contributors: David Downs, William Dolphin
Cover Design: Jennifer Touli Voss
Photo Editors: Jennifer Touli Voss, Darcy Thompson
Cover Photography
Top: Mel Frank
Bottom left: Ed Rosenthal
Bottom right: Saucey Santos
Library of Congress Control Number: 2014909265
The material offered in this book is presented as information that should be available to the public. The Publisher does not advocate breaking the law. We urge readers to support secure passage of fair marijuana legislation.
All rights reserved. No part of this book may be used or reproduced in any manner whatsoever without the specific written permission of the Publisher, except in the case of brief quotations embodied in critical articles or reviews.
Dedicated to the Shulgins—
Pioneers in mind exploration
ACKNOWLEDGMENTS
We would like to thank the following individuals for their contributions, help, and support: Addison DeMoura and Steep Hill Halent Lab; Rick Pfrommer and Harborside Health Center; Bubbleman; Elemental Wellness; @fobextractions; Will F.; Dave Hodges of A2C2; HopeNet’s Steve and Cathy; James and Holly of West Valley Tinctures; Mila Jansen; Jesse of A-Bear Concentrates; JonPaul and Scott from Bhang Chocolate; Jane Klein; Kenny M.; Marisa Lagos; Mark G.; Mel Frank; Jon Mendoza; Nikka T of Essential Extracts; John Oram, PhD, Cofounder/Senior Scientist of CW Analytical Laboratories; POP Naturals; Ramona Rubin of docGreen’s; Rumpelstiltskin Extracts (i.e., RumpWax); Keith Woody; Josh Wurzer, President of SC Laboratories; Jennifer Carson; Shelli Newhart, PhD; Nadim Sabella; and Jason Schulz.
Franklin’s Tower
Some come to laugh their past away
Some come to make it just one more day
Whichever way your pleasure tends
If you plant ice you’re gonna harvest wind
Roll away the dew
Roll away the dew
Roll away the dew
Roll away the dew!!!!
—Robert Hunter
Courtesy of the Grateful Dead
Contents
Introduction
The History of This Book
Chapter 1.
Breaking Bud—Selecting and Collecting Material
Selecting and Collecting Material
Storing the Green
Tips and Tricks—The Alchemy Of Marijuana Processing
Chapter 2.
Kief/Dry Sift—Manual, Machine, Dry Ice
How Kief Screening Works
Preparing for Screening
Machine Screening
Dry Ice Kief
A Pressing Issue: Kief and Hash
Chapter 3.
Water Hash—How It All Works
Water Hash Basics
Ready-Made Bags
Homemade Bags
The Methods: Bucket, Coffee Filter, Jar Shaker
Pressing and Storage
Chapter 4.
Advanced Hash—Beyond the Basics
What Is Hashish?
The Machine Method
Preparing Kief or Water Hash for Hash Making
Collecting by Hand: Rubbing for Hash
Pressing and Storing Hashish
Decarboxylation Explained
Chapter 5.
Vaporizers—Handheld, Desktop, Portable, Vape Pens
How Vaporizers Work
Preparing Herb for Vaporizing
The Vaporizers
Chapter 6.
Dabbing—The Gear
Chapter 7.
Butane Extracts—Making BHO Budder, Shatter, Wax
How Blasting Works
Dangers and Environmental Ethics
Butane Extracts: Closed-Loop and Open-Ended Methods
Chapter 8.
CO2 Extracts—Making Concentrates
Overview
A CO2 Extraction Method
Chapter 9.
Tinctures—Alcohol and Glycerin
Choosing the Alcohol
Straining
Ask Ed’s Fast-Track Tincture
Bottling and Storage
Reducing Tinctures to Oil
Distilling
Glycerin Tinctures
The Effects and Effectiveness of Tincture
Kief Tincture
Chapter 10.
Capsules—Making and Using Canna Caps
How to Make Canna Caps
Using Kief
Dosage
Chapter 11.
Edibles—Preparation, Recipes, Usage
Assimilation and Dosage
Using Hash, Kief, or Hash Oil in Food
Juicing
Canna Oil Preparation and Recipes
Canna Butter, Milk, Tea, and Flour
Adding Directly to Food
Storage
Chapter 12.
Topical Uses of Marijuana
Marijuana Root Applications
Poultices
Salves and Oils
Topical Tinctures
Rick Simpson Oil
Appendix 1. Cannabinoids and Terpenes
Appendix 2. Equivalents and Conversions
Appendix 3. Glossary
Appendix 4. References
Chem 91 Shatter.
Photo: Nadim Sabella Photography
Introduction
This book is about the world of marijuana beyond the bud.
The smoked bud can be helpful medically or a pleasant event. But it is only one way to experience the wonders that cannabis offers. This book is a guide to the many ways to prepare and use cannabis, beyond buds.
The quest for concentrates and their growing popularity is a return in part to pre-prohibition tradition, when cannabis was mostly ingested rather than smoked. Smoking is largely an artifact of prohibition. Before marijuana became illegal it was available in tinctures, pills, salves, and drinks, and one of its concentrates, hashish, was eaten. Without processed marijuana, users moved to inhalation only when other means of ingestion were unavailable. Now that prohibition is ending, aficionados and patients are returning to traditional methods of use and finding new ways of ingesting it.
For gardeners and farmers concentrates offer a solution to a conundrum they face. Parts of the plant contain THC but are not suitable for smoking. It makes sense to salvage these cannabinoids from the leaf and trim and tiny nugs, which comprise one-quarter to one-eighth the weight of the yield. To use, it just has to be collected. The collection and processing of this material is the subject of this book.
This is a great book if you are interested in alternatives to smoking bud, whether for medical or recreational use. It is a guide to both making and using these new marijuana products. It will provide you with some of the easiest and safest ways to make concentrates such as oils, waxes, budders, and shatter, as well as edibles, tinctures, and external preparations.
THE HISTORY OF THIS BOOK
Leaf products used to be called “trash” and were given away to cannabis-poor friends for baking or smoking. The moniker was not the result of low potency. Mexican marijuana often contains similar THC levels. The problem is the taste and harshness of the smoke, which is rough and acrid, with a high level of burning vegetation that hides aroma and taste. No one has a method of converting leaf into sweet bud; instead, the techniques described
in this book separate cannabinoid-bearing glands from the rest of the vegetation. Glands are the only potent part of the plant, so after they are removed, the vegetation can be discarded.
The idea for my first book on using marijuana leaf/trim/small nugs, Ask Ed: Marijuana Gold—Trash to Stash, sifted through my mind for many years.
In 1979 the “Tilt Pipe,” a sophisticated globe-type vaporizer, a precursor to the “Volcano,” was released. With this device, you could use the low-quality pot generally available at the time and just inhale the essence. It made quite a difference. Unfortunately, the venture was doomed to failure because the War on Drugs was ramping up. Paraphernalia was outlawed, and since the Tilt had no other use than vaporizing pot, and because it had no “redemptive value” such as for use with tobacco, it became illegal.
In 1987 the late John Gallardi released his “Master Sifter.” This device used vibration to knock the glands from grass. It was the first commercial unit available for the purpose. He also made a rolling tray/sifter with a stainless steel mesh surface and a sliding glass gland collector. I still use one of these as a rolling tray.
About the same time John was working on his trays, Nevil Schumacher of the Seed Bank showed me a piece of “water hash” he had made with Rob Clarke. It was an amazingly hard ball. Nevil chipped a piece off of the brittle material. When he lit it in a pipe, it melted and bubbled. He told me they had made the amazingly potent ball from leaf and trim using a water process.
Then, in the nineties, Mila Jansen, located in Holland, invented the Pollinator, and the bags for making water hash. These two devices and their imitators changed the way quantities of leaf and trim could be processed. The other development was the ongoing legalization of medical marijuana and devices for its use in states all over the country.
In 2002 I finally got around to writing Ask Ed: Marijuana Gold—Trash to Stash. This book helped to change peoples’ attitude toward leaf/trim/small nugs and paved the way for the revolution that is still taking place regarding concentrates in the industry today.
Beyond Buds updates the techniques described in Trash to Stash, and details techniques for the new concentrates that have become popular.
Tahoe OG Kush.
Photo: Steep Hill Halent
Chapter 1.
Breaking Bud—
Selecting and Collecting Material
Leaves and trim, by-products of bud production, present an interesting paradox. At 5% to 20% THC, the bud is the plant’s crown jewel, the gardener’s reward for attentive caretaking. But cannabis produces THC on the leaves as well as the buds.
Small, bulbous, droplet-shaped, THC-containing resin glands coat the leaves and bracts, creating a natural protective barrier against insects, disease, herbivores, and the sun’s UV rays. These glands contain one-quarter to one-eighth of the THC found in the buds. Fan leaves have a THC content of only 1% to 3%, so they are a poor smoking material. Trim, with a modest 2% to 6% THC content, commands only a little more respect than the leaves.
Original Grand Daddy Purple.
Photo: Steep Hill Halent
Buds typically weigh three to four times that of the leaf/trim/nugs with tremendous variation depending on variety and gardening technique. Still, the trim and fan leaves contain 10% to 20% of the plant’s total THC production. In the past gardeners were often content to toss this material or give it to grass-poor friends rather than trying to extract the THC.
Today processing the leaf and trim for use as kief, hash, tincture, or other concentrates, or using it to make butter or other edibles, is part of the weed economy. Collecting leaves and trim doesn’t add complexity to the harvest. Leaves are already being trimmed and bagged; trim from manicuring must already be managed. Being prepared to dry and store this material in advance makes the collection almost as simple as bagging it for the trash can. Once the leaf is saved for use, it only needs to be stored properly before transforming the material.
New inventions and techniques make it easy to process this secondary material. Beyond Buds offers traditional methods and recent innovations for processing leaf and trim into worthwhile stash. A little information combined with the right tools maximizes the harvest and creates new ways to use it.
THE HIERARCHY OF BY-PRODUCT
Starting material is categorized according to its THC content:
1.Bud bits and pieces, or cosmetically challenged “popcorn bud”
2.Bag shake—the residue at the bottom of the bag
3.Primary trim—the small leaves near the bud sites
4.Mature fan leaves—the large sun leaves
5.Immature buds—these vary in THC content depending on stage of maturity
6.Immature trim/immature leaf—also variable depending on stage of development
7.Vegetative leaf—leaf from a plant that has not entered the flowering phase of growth; has the lowest THC content
Decreasing labor and expense during harvest is easy with the durable, high-speed Twister T4 auto trimmer. It’s light weight and portable so you can take it into your garden, as well as easy to clean up.
Photo: Keirton Inc.
SELECTING AND COLLECTING MATERIAL
When tossing it out, trash is everything that isn’t bud. Saving material to transform it requires a more discerning eye. Stems and woody parts of the plant are not useable since they contain few cannabinoids.
The quality of the remaining material is based on the percentage of THC it contains. Tetrahydrocannibinol (THC), the main psychoactive component of marijuana, as well as other cannabinoids, such as CBD and CBG, that give each variety a characteristic medical effect or high, are produced on the leaves surrounding the flowers, and stored in glands that protrude from the leaf surface.
GRADES OF LEAF
The flower areas of the female plant and the small leaves surrounding them contain the most THC—from twice to five times as much as the trim leaves. The fan leaves contain one-half to one-third the amount of cannabinoids as the trim leaves. Even so, the cannabinoids contained in these leaves are refinable.
Male plants also contain cannabinoids. They are strongest at the budding but pre-flowering stage. The small leaves near the flowers are the most potent, followed by the younger and then older fan leaves.
Use a magnifying glass or photographer’s loupe for a close-up look at the material. The fan leaf glands are often small and hug the surface of the leaf, while the glands near the flowers are stalked and look like mushrooms with bulbous caps. The latter contain considerably more cannabinoids than the smaller glands.
Leaf with visible glands is worth keeping. Leaf from immature plants usually has very few glands and will not yield much. In a recycling effort, you may opt to trash material with the sparsest glands, such as the large fan leaves, while saving the smaller leaves, trim, and bud bits for use.
GLANDS AND QUALITY
The THC, CBD, and other cannabinoids are contained in the glands, but not all glands are created equal. Glands vary for several reasons, notably growing technique and genetics.
•The glands of some varieties are bigger than others. Larger glands hold more resin.
•Strains vary in density of glands.
•Some varieties have large numbers of smaller glands that carpet the plant.
•Some varieties grow more leaf than others. This results in more gland-bearing leaf and trim to transform.
•Resin quality varies by strain and cultivation methods. The quality of the resin affects the quality of the product. If the starting material—that is, the resin in the glands—is not very potent, concentrating it results in mediocre concentrate. Lower-potency material results in lower-quality product than high-quality material.
Sophisticated growers often keep the leaf separated by variety, just as they do with their buds. The quality of high associated with inhaling different varieties carries over to other methods of ingestion.
It is best to separate the trash into two rough categories of higher and lower quality. Separat
e large fan leaves from the higher potency trim. Also sort the popcorn bud, which has the most glands and will yield the most.
The material most suitable for each method is noted throughout the book. For instance, vaporizers can utilize high-grade bud bits or popcorn bud, but not leaf. However, leaf is suitable for making tinctures.
STORING THE GREEN
After the leaf is collected, dry it until crisp. It is important for the material to dry thoroughly because the molecule THCA is inactive as it occurs in the plant. It has a carbonate molecule (COOH) attached. When the plant dries out, the THC and other cannabinoids release the molecule. Chemically, THC acid becomes the psychoactive molecule THC.
You have a choice of methods for drying. Some people lay the material out flat on newspaper or screens on shelves and wait for it to dry, then bag it in plastic storage bags. If dealing with large quantities, or in particularly humid areas, run a fan and a dehumidifier in the drying area, for faster processing and to assure crispness, indicating low moisture. An electric food dehydrator set on low heat can speed or complete the drying process, but as the temperature rises more volatile terpenes evaporate.
Cannabinoids are destroyed in the presence of light and heat, especially around oxygen. The best possible way to preserve cannabis is to store it in the dark at a cool to cold temperature in an oxygen-free environment such as nitrogen or CO2. It will keep for long periods when it is stored in sealed, opaque containers in a refrigerator.
Sealed, refrigerated, dried marijuana can be kept for several years with little deterioration.
In areas with high humidity, moisture will permeate any unsealed packaging and get into the material after it has dried. Should the moisture get too high the material is subject to attack by bacteria and mold. Rot is indicated by an ammonia odor. Mold develops as gray or white growth on the leaves. In either case, the material is ruined.
TIPS AND TRICKS—THE ALCHEMY OF MARIJUANA PROCESSING