By: Gus Tovar
While not all patients have made the move towards daily concentrate use, it is a fact that we are seeing a very large movement towards concentrate use in our culture. Just about everyone who is a medical marijuana user has tried inhaling a dab at least once in their lives. The main purpose of vaporizing concentrates is to inhale a high amount of medicine with minimal effort. The amount of medicine in a gram joint of top shelf flower can be easily packed into a couple of concentrate rips. While I truly do enjoy the ritual and process of smoking flower, it is evident that there are many situations in which it is simply not convenient to take the time to enjoy a perfectly rolled blunt or joint.
As I mentioned before, the amount of medicine a dab is capable of packing is enough to get the user to where they need to be, in one or two quick rips. We have seen the “professional” community take a big step towards concentrates are they allow for a much more discreet medicating method than flowers. Instead of having to actually combust material which might leave a residual smell, one is able to quickly evaporate a dab without any fear of residual smells being left behind. Many portable oil rigs have hit the market such as the Hercules Oil Cartridge from W9 Tech, and the Saionara atomizer from Humboldt Vape Tech. Both are products which truly provide an on the go rig experience. Making it almost too easy to medicate on the go (especially between boring meetings), without any fear of raising alarm.
Some people simply do not enjoy or need concentrates due to their personal low marijuana tolerance. Concentrates are truly a godsend for people such as myself who possess a high tolerance towards the medicine. However, there have been many arguments made against the idea of inhaling a product which was processed with the help of solvents. There is always a fear that lower quality or poorly made concentrates coming from unprofessional operations might contain a residual amount of solvent, which will eventually bring harmful effects to the user. Luckily we are seeing a huge explosion of Rosin technologies popping up all over legal states in our nation.
Rosin, is essentially a solventless concentrate, which is acquired by using only pressure and temperature variation. The flowers or hash is squeezed between two temperature controlled plates, to squeeze the oil directly out from the source material. Rosin has brought to the table a concentrate which we can be 100% sure is not going to contain any sort of solvent, as no solvent is ever introduced in any part of the extraction process.
Unfortunately, pricing on most rosin is seen to be high and above that of normal solvent based concentrates such as BHO (Butane Hash Oil). While you may find many local shops selling what can be considered medical grade BHO ranging from $20-$100 a gram depending on source material, rosin usually is seen from around $80-$220 a gram. Some very rare “boutique” strain nug run hash rosins, have been ran in extremely small batch and priced to match. While the terpene profiles on these extracts are simply out of this world, it is evident the general users might not be too interested in these specialty concentrates.
Being that Rosin is made through a press system, without the need of any dangerous solvents, rosin presses are starting to become more and more common in the households of medical marijuana users. While it can be very expensive to constantly purchase rosin at shop prices, it is very cost effective to be pressing your own rosin. Rosin presses can be built for as cheap as a couple hundred dollars or purchased as pre-built systems from prices ranging in the $300-$10,000 range (once you start looking at industrial amounts to be processed). Most personal use prebuilt setups will run you no more than $500 and offer a lifelong service of squeezing concentrates out of your source material.
While an investment of a few hundred dollars might seem a bit steep at first, it truly becomes very cost effective once we start to consider the fact that most properly built rosin press setups, will be yielding the user around 25%-35% return. This means that a gram of flower will return to you .25-.35 grams of rosin concentrate. With this logic we can conclude that a gram of rosin can be extracted from around an eighth of flower. Now, if you are familiar with shops in San Diego you know that you can get your hands on an eight of top shelf nugs for anywhere between $20-$80 on the high end, when looking at rarer genetics. This means you can be squeezing your own grams of rosin, depending on your choice of flower, for quite a bit less than if you were paying someone else to squeeze the rosin for you. The savings add up quite fast, especially if you are going through multiple grams of rosin a week.
As you can see a Rosin press is not exactly for everyone, but I do feel that any everyday concentrate user should truly look into a “do it yourself” rosin press project. There are many guides online which will give you the diagram needed to put together a tool which will put your concentrate extractions into your hands. You will not only be saving money on concentrates, but also knowing exactly what the source product of your concentrate is. I am not saying extract artists are not being 100% honest, but I have seen countless trim runs be labeled as a nug run extraction. When they are clearly not using as good of a source material as they are claiming.
It is very important to take your time to do your research on the many extracts out there before taking the plunge into the extract world. Extracts can offer great convenience in both lifestyle and monetary factors. But they can also be a problem if one is not fully aware of the source of your medicine. So be smart, and before you know it you will be ingesting only the cleanest, healthiest extracts on the market.
