Dabbing

Dab Review: Headband Gold Label by Om Extracts

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Here’s what Steve has to say about his recent experience with Headband Gold Label from Om Extracts —

I really have to give it up to the guys over @OMExtracts for their quality lately, and this Headband Gold Label was another brain stopper.

Visually speaking this stuff looks like bright fish eggs, and when you easily pull away exactly how much you’re looking for, you’ll enjoy the sticky crunch consistency.

As usual I went for a low temp flavor dab first, and the flavor was a little on the light side, but definitely got that Headband lemon flavor.

Second dab I went in for the kill, and it was executed. I do have to say it was a little on the harsh side, but I immediately got the “Headband” feeling around the top of my head, and had a decently long lasting experience for me.

So if you’re looking for some stylish new headwear, I think the OM Extracts Headband Gold Label will look nicely on you.

-Steve Hubbard

Thanks, Steve!  Substance is super excited about limited recreational sales of extracts starting on June 2nd.  Recreational marijuana users will be allowed to purchase 1g of CO2 or BHO extract per day. Start making your wish list today!

Substance Market Dab Reviews

Dab Review: Chem Dawg and Dutch Treat Rosin

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Sterling Gold’s Rosin is the first Flower Rosins (SHO) I’ve personally had the pleasure of trying, and they were delightful!

I’ll admit, I was one of the skeptics in the group about people using hair straighteners for science. But now with the industrial presses we are seeing around, I see the light!

The looks of these two really speak for themselves, and the smell matches the flowers amazingly! That was my first big surprise with this rosin, the smell literally smacks you across the face.

The consistency of both were very manageable. I would even say you could use your hands, but I was pulling and snapping with my dab tool.

The second surprise with these Rosins was the flavor. Simply put, it’s delicious! Reminds me of fresh “greens” from some sweet chronic back in the day. I think we all remember our first, fresh delicious “greens” rip?

Along with amazing flavor, these rips were super smooth. Easy to puff tough and not kill yourself. Even higher temp nail rips weren’t bad, so that’s a real win in my book.

Experience, well let’s just say it took me 2 weeks to finish this review ;)

-Steve Hubbard

Dabbing

Dab Review: Charlotte’s Webbing Cake from Sterling Gold Extracts

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This week I was very excited to review one of my personal favorite processors, Sterling Gold Extracts. They are the in-house extraction team of Liontree Farms in Southern Oregon, and these guys know what they are doing. When it comes to quality and consistency with their products, Sterling Gold Extracts hits the mark every time.

Charlotte’s Webbing Cake has a great 2:1 THC:CBD ratio with 44.8% THC and 23.2% CBD, beautiful color and clarity and a sweetness to the aroma. As expected with a higher CBD content, the consistency is a bit on the sap side, but on a cold morning it pulled and snapped just fine for me.

First dab I went with a nice low-temp nail for flavor. The sweetness and CBD mint combination was delightful, the taste of cake really does come to the palate. Second dab as usual, I went in for the big “Steve Size” dab to see what Charlotte had for me. With that nice 2:1 ratio, the inhale is really nice and smooth even on a higher temp nail, and the experience was just as smooth.

This concentrate really clears the mind in a soft and soothing manner. There was a perfect balance of effects to the head and body and I kept thinking how refreshed I felt with each dab. This would be great concentrate for anytime of day and for all levels of users.

I don’t normally crash weddings, but I’d crash Charlotte’s party for some cake any day.

~ Steve Hubbard

*It’s a pretty rough job sampling these dabs for research purposes, but Steve gets it done like a champ.  Try out our ever-changing selection of extracts at Substance.  We love feedback and want to hear about your experiences!*

Substance Cannabis Dispensary in South area of Bend, OR

Heck Yeah, We Do Sell Recreational Marijuana Here!

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Gone are the days of, “Pssst! Hey, do you know where we can score some pot?” It is now legal for participating Oregon Medical Marijuana Dispensaries to sell marijuana to adults who are 21 or over.

That’s right, folks, you can all (21 and over) come in to Substance and buy marijuana from us, legally. For real.  No code words or secret handshakes are necessary. You know what makes us extra awesome? We accept credit and debit cards, so you don’t even need to drive by the ATM first.

Oregon Recreational Marijuana law states that we may sell up to 7 grams – 1/4 ounce – of flower per day to someone who is at least 21 years old.  We also have seed packets available and a list of clones that are available to pre-order.

Due to the high demand of our client base, we rotate through a variety of marijuana flowers –buds – and our selection is always changing.  Flower is packaged in 1 gram, 3.5 gram, and 7 gram bags and we have a wide selection of pre-rolled joints available.  We also carry a selection of pipes, grinders, lighters, and other non-medicated items.

Oregon Medical Marijuana Program (OMMP) cardholders have their own sales island and are allowed to purchase all of our flower products as well as our tinctures, edibles, concentrates, oils, candy and beverages.  Unfortunately, those products will not be available for the recreational users until the end of 2016 due to pending legislation.  We highly recommend you obtain your medical card to have access to all of our delicious products.

Please be respectful and don’t spark it up in our parking lot.

Recreational or Adult Use, Marijuana or Cannabis: Which Term to Use?

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If you’ve ever been to a dispensary, you might have noticed some slightly different language to refer to the products and services inside than you have heard colloquially or in the popular media. In this post, we give a brief breakdown of why we use the language that we do.

Recreational vs. Adult Use

With legalization in Colorado and Washington, and now in Oregon as well, you’ve probably heard the term “recreational marijuana” to refer to cannabis use outside of medical marijuana programs. Here at Substance, we refer to cannabis usage for adults over the age of 21 who do not hold Oregon Medical Marijuana Program (OMMP) cards as “adult use”.

We use this term because we believe that responsible adults can and should be able to determine what cannabis usage means to them. The medical vs. recreational binary creates a false choice for cannabis users, reinforcing the idea that non-medical users of cannabis are making inherently risky or reckless decisions. Sensible, adult cannabis users who do not have qualifying conditions for the Oregon Medical Marijuana Program should face no more stigma than adult users of alcohol. Adult beer drinkers, by comparison, do not have to go to the ‘recreational beer store’.

Cannabis vs. Marijuana

Cannabis and marijuana essentially refer to the same thing. Technically, cannabis refers to the parent plant, which can be broken up into Cannabis sativa, Cannabis indica, and Cannabis ruderalis. Sativas and indicas are what we seek on the medical and adult use markets – ruderalis lacks the cannabinoids that provide those sought-after therapeutic benefits. Hemp is used to refer to a low-THC variety of Cannabis sativa that is often harvested for industrial use.

Marijuana is generally used to refer to higher THC (or CBD) varieties of Cannabis sativa and Cannabis indica. However, the term has not always been so commonplace. Widespread usage of the word ‘marijuana’ began following the Mexican Revolution of 1910, when the United States saw a large influx of Mexican migrants. Many of these migrants used cannabis as a medicine and a relaxant, and as anti-Mexican sentiment went on the rise, racist propaganda spread fear of the Mexican “Marijuana Menace”.

Because of the history of racism associated with the term ‘marijuana’ in the United States, and the general applicability of the term ‘cannabis’, we use the latter. Considering this history, and the stigmas still surrounding cannabis use today, we feel that using the term ‘adult cannabis use’ over ‘recreational marijuana’ helps combat the negative associations that we as a society have with the cannabis plant.

We hope this post has been informative. Thanks for reading, and we look forward to seeing even more of you join our community of adult cannabis users come October 1st!

How to Decarboxylate Cannabis

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Raw cannabis contains a lot of THCA which is not psychoactive. When you smoke weed, the THCA molecule loses its carboxylic group (COOH) in the form of water vapor and carbon dioxide and becomes THC. In short, THCA becomes THC and your cannabis becomes psychoactive. This process is called decarboxylation.

When you smoke or vaporize marijuana, you decarboxylate the cannabis by heating it. If you ingest cannabis and want the full psychoactive effect, you need to first decarb your cannabis before you cook with it.

 

Temperature

The lower the temperature, the longer it’s going to take to decarb your cannabis. Keep in mind that a lower temperature will allow you to lose less terpenes.

 

What are Terpenes?

Terpenes are the pungent oils that color your cannabis with distinctive flavors such as berry, mint, citrus and pine. There are many medicinal benefits to terpenes; some will successfully relieve your stress while others will promote focus and awareness.

 

Table – Decarboxylation Temperatures and Times
TemperatureHeating ModePlant Material TimeKief / Hash TimeCannabis Oil
310FOven10 – 18 minutes5 – 10 minutes
250FHot oil bathUntil bubbles taper off
240FOven50 – 60 minutes30 – 40 minutes
212FBoiling water bath90 minutes90 minutes

 

Decarboxylation Methods:

Tip: Grind your cannabis first! A course grind will allow your weed to evenly dry without losing potency from over grinding.

Flower

  1. Preheat your oven (see table above). Use an oven thermometer to check the temperature.
  2. Sprinkle your cannabis in a pie plate and then cover it well with silver foil by crimping the foil along the edge of the plate.
  3. Place in the oven (see table above) – less time for older drier material, more for fresher material.
  4. After required time, turn the oven off, and remove cannabis. Let it cool down slowly before you unseal the container to allow any cannabinoid/terpenes vapor to reabsorb into the cannabis.

Keif/Hash

  1. Preheat oven (see table)
  2. Sprinkle hash/keif on pie plate, cover with silver foil and crimp foil along edge of plate. Place sealed dish in oven for (see table).
  3. Remove plate and let it cool down slowly without removing cover to allow any vapors to reabsorb into cannabis.

Boiling Bag method:

  1. Place the cannabis flower/keif/hash into a boilable cooking pouch. Seal it.
  2. Place in boiling water for 90 minutes. Make sure water does not boil dry.
  3. Take bag out of water. Let it slowly cool before opening.

Cannabis Oil

  1. Place heat proof container of cannabis oil into a cooking oil bath (canola oil works well). Heat cooking oil to 121C/250F.
  2. Stir cannabis oil to break up bubbles.
  3. Remove cannabis oil from heat when bubble formation starts to slow down — or leave on heat until all bubbles stop for increased sedative effect.

Cold and Heated Cannabis Extractions

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Medical cannabis is processed for administration in various ways; fresh, dried, and cold/heated extractions (or concentrates). In this session of the Substance Cannabis Class, we will be covering the different forms of cold and heated extractions.

Cold extractions/concentrates result in various products: 

  1. Kief: Powder of the trichomes that have fallen off the plant. May be ingested raw but is usually smoked on top of flower buds or ingested in cooked edibles.
  2. Slurry: Extraction using olive oil or alcohol. Usually ingested raw.
  3. Hash: Extraction using cold water and ice. May be ingested raw, smoked or used in cooking. Variety names reflect differences in the proportion of plant material to trichomes and how the variety reacts to heat.
    • Bubble = initially bubbles when exposed to heat.
    • Full bubble = continues to bubble throughout the heating process.
    • Melt = melts or turns into gooey oil when exposed to heat.
    • Full melt = almost pure trichomes; fully melts when exposed to heat, leaving little or no residue.
  4. Wax: Extraction using a solvent, most commonly butane, propane, CO2 or O2. Removal (“purging”) of the solvent may be through cold or heat evaporation (which changes the compounds available). Waxes are usually burned or vaporized, but may be used in cooking and in topical salves. Variety names usually refer to consistency. Examples:
    • Honeycomb/Crumble = dry, crumbly texture; often has small holes like a honeycomb.
    • Budder = more viscous, consistency like butter.
    • Shatter/Glass = consistency similar to hard candy.
    • Sap = sticky texture similar to honey.
    • Taffy = firmer than sap but not brittle like shatter.

Heated extractions/concentrates convert the cannabinoid acids into their neutral forms and usually removes most of the terpenoids. Various products include: 

  1. Tea: Extraction into hot water and then drunk.
  2. Tincture: Heated cannabis that is extracted in alcohol. Usually administered directly under the tongue (sublingually).
  3. Edible: Extraction into a fat (butter, oil) and then used in cooking food.
  4. Oil: Slow heating of cannabis in olive or coconut oil. Usually used in food or topically on skin.
  5. Salve/Cream/Lotion: Low heating of cannabis oil with beeswax. Used topically on skin.

Concentrates vs Flowers

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Consumption of concentrates vs flowers is a personal preference. Concentrates such as BHO or honey oil can be very potent, much stronger than bud alone.

Concentrates refer to the product of a cannabinoid extraction processes using a solvent such as alcohol, butane or CO2. The goal of concentrates is to eliminate plant matter and extract the resin glands and essential oils from the marijuana flowers.

After mixing cannabis plant matter (trim or ground flowers) with a solvent, the solution is strained and purged to remove remaining plant matter and any solvents, leaving behind only cannabis oils and plant waxes or parafins.

The remaining concentrates are often referred to as BHO, wax, hash oil, shatter, crumble or simply, concentrates. Concentrates are much more potent than marijuana flowers, or bud, and therefore much less needs to be consumed for the equivalent effect.

The discussion about concentrates vs flowers is really one about personal taste and preference.

Flowers are smoked or vaporized. Similarly, concentrates are smoked using a dab rig (because a dab is all you need to consume) or a vape pen (which is a modified e-cigarette).