concentrates Archives | Page 5 of 7 | The Grand Junction Greenery

Posted on April 28, 2018 - 9:00 am

colorado dark hash, colorado hash, marijuana, durango, durango dispensary, hash, hashish, colorado, durango hash, durango marijuana

Why is it that only the Middle East is famous for hash? It’s not fair…

Yes, I know that “hashish” is an Arabic word, and I know they came up with it first, but I’m still a little jealous. And I don’t care if it sounds like I’m throwing a fit because I’m allowed to—I’m the Sales Manager for a bona fide Hash Factory right here in Durango, Colorado, and I spend my days selling “Moroccan” hash and “Lebanese” hash to dispensaries across the state (we’re in forty-three of them as of right now). Don’t get me wrong, exotic hashes are wonderful and time-tested, but they’re still foreign; they’re still modeled after the hashes that come from “over there.”

So, what about Colorado? Given that hash is legal here, while it’s still illegal in places like Lebanon and Morocco and Afghanistan, shouldn’t we have our very-own type of hash that’ll put us on the hashish map? Shouldn’t Colorado become famous for a hash that’s named after us? We think so, and guess what? Like I said, I work for a hash factory, a place where we get to make whatever the hell we want, and we decided to come up with something just for the home-team.

But it took us a while to figure it out. All the old-school stuff has been done before: kief has been aged and baked and pressed for thousands of years, and all those methods have been claimed by other cultures for generations. And all that new-school stuff like BHO comes from California, if we’re being honest, so we can’t claim it and call it “Colorado Hash” even though we’ve perfected it. So, we spent quite a bit of time in front of the proverbial blackboard, and we decided to meet in the middle of the two paradigms; we decided to make a mashup of old and new school hashes and call it out own: Colorado Dark Hash.

For the record, Joel Cameron, the man who owns The Greenery Hash Factory, came up with the idea, but I get to be the first to give him credit for it in writing (years from now, I like to imagine that some future stoner just like me will google “Colorado Dark Hash” and read what I’m writing now while he’s chasing down the origin story for the world’s best hashish, and the thought makes me smile). But it took Joel weeks of research and development to figure it out, not to mention a ludicrous amount of financial investment, so I’m not going to tell you exactly how it’s done because I know for a fact that people will try to replicate this concentrate once they figure out how freakishly awesome it is. But here’s the gist:

We bake old-school kief to decarboxylate it (I swear the process is more complex than it sounds), and then we mix it with pure CO2 oil to bump the potency up into the new-school range. See what I mean? It’s a marriage between the old and new, much like the historic state that gave birth to legalized cannabis. And when the first batch cooled into the midnight black hash that we created, it felt like we’d made something special, something novel, and lightning arched across the sky while Joel screamed, “it’s alive!” (that last part isn’t true, but a little poetic embellishment is expected when you’re writing an origin story).

Anyway, the concentrate that lay cooling in front of us was pungent and potent and just as black as the diamonds that mark dangerous ski-slopes. It was the first batch of real Colorado Hash, and it was born just a few days before 4/20, which has to count for something. But the best part is how it smoked. You can’t smoke CO2 oil in a pipe because it has to be dabbed, but you can put this oil-fueled Colorado Dark Hash right in your pipe and light it up to get the potency usually found only in dabs, and you don’t even need a blowtorch. And with this new-school potency comes the old-school flavor: musky earth-tones that come in concert with deep relaxation and a full-spectrum high.

It isn’t hyperbole: The Greenery Hash Factory has come up with a new hash that’s better than anything else out there because it takes the best of both worlds and melds them together into something unique, something truly Colorado. And our egos are stoked because we made it first, we smoked it first, and we’re going to sell it first. The first batch of Colorado Dark Hash is now on our Durango dispensary menu, and we’re selling it for $40 a gram before tax, which is well worth it, and I’m not just saying that because I work here. So, come see Your Best Buds at 208 Parker Avenue and ask to see some of Colorado’s hash, because this is something we’ve made just for you.

Rick Simpson Oil in Durango

Posted on April 14, 2018 - 9:00 am

Long story short, there isn’t any.

Not really, anyway, because for an oil to be a “Rick Simpson Oil,” it needs to me made by Rick Simpson. That’s just how it works. And honestly, I thought the guy was dead, but as it turns out, he’s living happily in Croatia because the Canadian Mounties raided his home, and he decided to leave Canada forever. But I should back up…

In the late nineties, Rick was standing on a ladder in a small room coating asbestos-insulated pipes with some sort of industrial adhesive, and he fell and hit his head (pretty much exactly like Doc did just before he dreamed up the Flux Capacitor). When Rick woke up, he was in a hospital, and when he left, the doctors gave him all sorts of pills that didn’t do much. So he asked for medicinal marijuana, and when they wouldn’t give him any, he went home and started messing around with cannabis extraction techniques in his backyard.

He mixed a bunch of marijuana with some alcohol in a bucket, stirred it with a stick, poured the alcohol onto a tray, let it evaporate, and then voila; he’d made his first batch of Rick Simpson Oil. But a few months down the road, he was diagnosed with terminal skin cancer. So he made some more oil, rubbed it on his skin (and took regular doses orally), and according to legend, the cannabis cured his cancer.

Of course, I don’t know that for a fact—there aren’t any peer-reviewed medical journals that I could find to espouse any sort of tangible evidence that Rick’s cancer was cured, nor could I find any proof that he had it in the first place, so please don’t think that the guy who writes the Greenery’s blog is telling you that all you need to cure cancer is weed, alcohol, a bucket, and a stick. If it really were that simple, cancer wouldn’t be as scary as it is.

Anyway, Rick began making tons of RSO and sending it to people who were looking for wholistic alternatives (that’s when he pissed off the Mounties). He started proselytizing like some sort of pot prophet, angered too many politicians, and then moved to Croatia where he makes a living selling his RSO cookbook online for $35.75 plus shipping and handling.

There. We’re all caught up, and now I can tell you about the oil itself: just about everything we make nowadays in Colorado is better. I know there’s something enticing about buying a book and cooking up the cure to cancer in your kitchen, and I don’t have any evidence proving it doesn’t work, so I support anyone’s right to try. But now we have scientists making our cannabis oil, real ones with doctorates who didn’t fall off a ladder and start their first batch in the backyard. We have consortiums of investors who pool their money and hire hordes of geniuses to work in world-class labs that look like they belong someplace only Marty McFly could go. And these products are spectacular.

In our Durango dispensary, we sell one gram of pure CO2-extracted cannabis oil in a glass syringe from Sweet for $50 before tax—it delivers a perfect balance between THC and CBD with lab-tested percentages that simply couldn’t be produced in Rick’s day because cannabis was illegal (you know, without scientists and whatnot like we have thirty years later here in legal Colorado). Our dispensary also carries edible full-spectrum cannabis oil capsules from Sweet for $24 including tax. Each capsule contains 10mg THC and 2.5mg CBD of unwinterized cannabis oil along with coconut oil. Many of our customers are battling cancer and they swear by this stuff. They’ll rub it on or eat it or smoke it and they tell me they love it. I don’t know if it cures anything yet—time will tell, and many are hopeful—but if you think about it, that doesn’t really matter because it makes suffering people feel better, and that’s important.

And we sell salves (Mary Jane’s Medicinals) that combine everything Rick Simpson was trying to get into a pleasant-smelling topical. Salves such as these are some of the bestsellers on the market, and we sell the one-ounce container for $15 before tax if you’d like to try it for yourself. This is the stuff the little old ladies come in for daily. They’re usually bright and happy to see me, and I’ll always run over to help them find their driver’s license, usually with a coy smile when I ask to see their I.D. And they keep coming back because the better-half of the Greatest Generation seems to love cannabis salve.

Frankly, the Sweet CO2 Oil and the Salves I just told you about are the closest things on the market to RSO (except for “Phoenix Tears,” which is just another form of oil), but some people would have you believe otherwise. There are plenty of companies out there selling “Rick Simpson Oil” and Rick Simpson himself spends a good deal of his time sending messages to these companies from Croatia telling them to stop using his name, but they never do because marijuana products are federally illegal, ergo copyright laws don’t yet extend to this industry of ours. So, manufacturers keep slapping Rick’s name on things because it helps them sell so well, and people keep falling for it thanks to the name recognition.

I spend most of my time sitting right here in front of this computer and it’s by one of our telephones, so I’m usually the one who answers when someone calls our dispensary, The Greenery, and at least one person calls in every week asking for Rick Simpson Oil. I’ll always give them an abridged version of the ten paragraphs you just read, and when they come in, I’ll show them the two products I just told you about and send them on their way with confidence. But if you still have questions about infused topicals that might actually be better than Rick Simpson Oil (but without the name everyone knows), just come see Your Best Buds at 208 Parker Avenue in Durango (or call us at 970-403-3710), and we’ll show you all the new stuff on the market so you don’t have to make it in your backyard with a bucket.

Lebanese Hash in Durango

Posted on April 7, 2018 - 9:00 am

The Greenery, Hash, Hash Factory, Lebanese Hash, Hash, Durango, Durango Dispensary, Durango Dispensaries

Some of the world’s best hashish comes from the Bekaa Valley in Lebanon, where cannabis farmers have been dry-aging and pressing kief into bricks since long before hashish made it to America.

However, there’s a problem: hash is illegal in Lebanon, and the Lebanese government routinely bulldozes entire fields that were once sown and harvested by hash-making tribes. And even if this didn’t happen, it’s illegal to import hash into this country from overseas, so authentic Lebanese Hash is one of the scarcest concentrates on the market, and the tradition is slowly fading.

But not in Durango.

At The Greenery Hash Factory, we’ve picked up what the Lebanese farmers are being forced to put down, and now we’re making the best Lebanese Hash this side of the Mediterranean. We start with high-quality, dry-sieved kief just like the source material that comes from the Lebanese marijuana plant, which is one of the rarest strains in the world. We age the kief in a humidity-controlled environment to mimic the aging process in the original version, wherein kief was set aside in cool cellars until the pressing season came along in the winter months. And then we press the kief into large bricks via a proprietary process that darkens the kief and seals in the flavor.

The result is wonderful: it’s a mellow smoke with a fresh and complex taste; this hash is made from all the potent trichomes that house marijuana’s flavor. And Lebanese hash is different from our other products because it isn’t cooked. The simple pressing process melts the trichomes to bind the brick together, but only a minimal amount of heat is generated, so our Lebanese isn’t completely decarboxylated like other hashes such as our Moroccan, and most of the THC remains dormant in its acid form (THCa), just waiting for a flame to release its potency.

But the best part is that you can actually enjoy this hash—you don’t need a passport and a ticket to Lebanon, nor do you need a time machine that’ll take you back to the years when Lebanese Hash was easy to find. You just need to go to the best Durango dispensary, The Greenery, and ask us about our Lebanese Hash. We’re at 208 Parker Avenue, which is a lot easier to find than the Bekaa Valley, and we can’t wait for you to experience the storied tradition that comes along with every gram of our Lebanese Hash, because We’re Your Best Buds!

PAX Era in Durango

Posted on March 31, 2018 - 9:00 am

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The road is a strange place. It’s liminal, neither here nor there, and time morphs when I travel. So, I turn to the radio, and it always disappoints.

You’d think good songs would make it through the ether in the wide-open places, but it’s mostly static. I’ll click the seek button and watch the green digits cycle in a loop, and when nothing comes in, I feel lost. Stretches without reception feel desolate, alien, hostile, and I’ll speed up a little until something comes through. And when my radio finally finds something in the void, the station is usually old and stale: mariachi music, a sermon of some sort, or classical symphonies. I’ll land on the latter and leave it, doing my best to pretend like I appreciate Mozart, and then I’ll drive through the backwoods of Colorado waiting for something better, clicking the seek button whenever the violins get annoying, listening for something familiar the way I look for landmarks.

Granted, satellite radio is an option, but that’s just more of the same stuff I listen to while I’m at home, and it’s best to leave behind the familiar while traveling. Sure, some music is impossible to escape—that “here I go again” song by Whitesnake always comes on at least once during every trip, making me think about fog machines and women with big hair sitting on expensive cars—but without fail, I’ll hear something new, or learn something new thanks to NPR, and that’s the best part: novelty.

Know what I mean? I travel to hear and see new things, and I think it’s the same for all of us. However, that’s not to say there aren’t a few familiar things that come with me on every trip: my cowboy boots, my vintage North Face backpack, and marijuana. Fun, right? But marijuana isn’t exactly travel-friendly, if you know what I mean—the stuff stinks, so I usually bring edibles and my vaporizer, which is also something novel.

It still blows me away that we have marijuana vaporizers nowadays, because the word “vaporizer” sounds super futuristic, like “ray-gun” or “teleporter.” But they’re here now and they’re awesome. I’m in Boulder right now, doing my best to spread the word about The Greenery Hash Factory’s ridiculously good solventless concentrates, and I brought my PAX Era with me, which I love so much that it’s about to become just as necessary as my lucky backpack. And we just started selling PAX Pods and PAX Era batteries at our Durango dispensary, The Greenery, so this week, I figured I should tell you about them.

The vape pens most people are used to have a threaded cartridge that screws onto the battery, but the PAX Era is different in that you just plug the cartridge into the top, no righty-tighty necessary. And most vaporizers use a single ceramic element or a wick to heat the oil, but the PAX system uses two wicks which means you can make the hits twice as strong as usual (if you’re in to that sort of thing). But the best part about the PAX system is the smart battery.

Yes, “they” have officially made a Bluetooth smart-battery for smoking marijuana. There’s even an app you can download for your phone that’ll connect to these batteries, and it’ll allow you to adjust your vape-pen’s temperature remotely, track the number of hits you get per pod, and lock your battery with the push of a button. Isn’t that crazy? That means you can take a hit from your vape pen, lock it with your smartphone, and then leave your PAX Era out on the coffee table. Your kids or your roommates (or anyone else who can’t see the line between “mine” and “yours”) won’t be able to pick it up and smoke when you’re not looking. It’s insane how far we’ve come technologically speaking in this industry in such a short period of time.

But I’ll admit, the PAX Era is a little tricky to figure out in the beginning, so here’re the answers to the two most common questions I get in our shop about how to use the PAX system:

Q: How do I know if my battery is charged?

A: Most batteries come with a partial charge, but to check it, all you need to do is shake your PAX battery. The petals on the front will light up: one lighted petal means your battery is almost dead, and four means it’s charged completely. If you see only one lighted petal when you shake the battery, plug it in with the provided USB charger and let it sit for about an hour.

Q: I’m getting weak hits, so how do I change my pen’s temperature?

A: Most people use the smartphone app, but it isn’t necessary. Just follow these steps:

1.) Insert the PAX Pod into the top of your battery and then give your pen a shake; the petals will light up.

2.) As soon as the petals light up, quickly remove the pod. The petals will start cycling through the temperature settings.

3.) As soon as the petals display the temperature setting you want, quickly put the pod back into the battery to lock in the temperature setting (the setting colors are listed in the pamphlet that comes with every battery).

And frankly, that’s all you need to know. As soon as you master the battery check and temperature change, the PAX Era vape pen is one of the most reliable, user-friendly systems available—there isn’t even a button to press when you’re using your vape pen because these things are automatically activated when you start to inhale. I couldn’t be more impressed.

At The Greenery, our Durango dispensary, we’re selling the PAX Era batteries for $30 before tax (which is a damn good deal), and we’re selling the double-wick pods for $55 before tax. Each pod contains 500mg of concentrate (Sativa oil, Indica oil, or distillate). And if you’d like to learn more about the PAX Era or see a demonstration as to how they work, simply come see Your Best Buds at 208 Parker Avenue, and we’ll show you something new for the next time you go down the only road you’ve ever known (Whitesnake!).

March’s Best Bud of the Month

Posted on March 17, 2018 - 9:00 am

Sloane Burdick
Manufacturing Lead (Supreme Commander of Hash)

About your Best Bud:

Sloane is the funny one. Or maybe Sloane is the artsy one, or the wild one, the fun one. Or maybe Sloane is the cool one, the one who’s real, albeit a little unfettered. Or maybe Sloane can’t really be classified as “this” or “that” one, like most people walking the streets. Know what I mean?

Picture all your friends standing in a field. Now pick out “the dumb one.” How long did that take you? A millisecond? It was easy for you because people like to pigeonhole other people. That’s what we do; we’re natural-born categorizers.

But Sloane doesn’t really fit into any of those pigeonholes. She takes up four or five of them with her complexity, with the depth of her personality, and to interview her was a delight:

Q. When did you start working for The Greenery?
Sloane. “November of 2015.”

Q. What’s your favorite way to enjoy marijuana?
Sloane. “I love Strawberry Cough in the bong. I love the glass and the cold water, and the way it makes the smoke cleaner.”

Q. What’s your favorite outdoor activity?
Sloane. “Taking pictures when I’m in my car or when I’m hiking. Or riding my cruiser ‘Pinkie Tuscadero.’ You know, like the character from Happy Days. It’s got hot-pink wheels and grips.”

Q. Tell us about your pet.
Sloane. “I have an evil kitty named Betty Beans, aka ‘B.B. McFuzz Pants,’ because who doesn’t give their animals multiple names?”

Q. Which station do you stream while you’re working at The Greenery?
Sloane. “We use YouTube for music. And really, I should be honest: mostly, I listen to Sturgill Simpson. It’s a problem.”

Q. What do you like most about working at The Greenery?
Sloane. “I love normalizing the world of cannabis. I’m a single mom in my forties, and I make hash for a living. I’m making this life normal, just as it should be.”

These interviews always get awkward right at the end. It’s important to include a story about the interviewee, something anecdotal that’ll help you get to know a team member here at The Greenery. But it’s a difficult question to answer when you’re on the spot:

Q. Would you share with us a story that’ll forever immortalize you on the internet? Something interesting that’ll pretty much define you as a human being? Something that’ll be read by all your coworkers and friends and the government, because you know they’re watching, right?
Sloane. “Um… there are lots of stories,” her laugh sounded like experience, “but one time, the school bus stopped to pick me up when I was almost forty. I told the guy I was on my way to work, but he thought I was a teen. He drove away, and I could see all the kids through their windows. They were laughing and watching me as their heads turned while the bus drove away.”

Most of us know for a fact that the school-bus story doesn’t define Sloane (there’re much better ones, like the one with the Scottish people or the one that ends with a lot of laughs, like most of them do), but the fact she chose this particular story says a lot. It’s a slice, a little snippet of Sloane’s hilarity that says something about her rather than about what happened to her, and that’s just cool.

***

To the people who don’t work in this Durango dispensary, Sloane is the woman who makes Moroccan Hash for The Greenery Hash Factory, along with a whole slue of other exotic concentrates. But to us, she’s part of this company, part of it’s soul, and even though Sloane doesn’t fit into a pigeonhole, she fits in here. And that’s why Sloane Burdick is your Durango dispensary Best Bud of the Month for March; congratulations Sloane!

Make sure to check out Sloane’s artwork HERE!

Crystalline in Durango

Posted on March 10, 2018 - 9:00 am

It was only a matter of time before the nerds got into this industry. I say that affectionately, of course, because smart people always make things better, but we’ve crossed a barrier of sorts. Just a few years ago, any of us could’ve made all the marijuana concentrates on the market in our basements if we wanted to, so long as we had WiFi, but that’s not the case with crystalline.

I’m just gunna plow through all the technical stuff to get it out of the way: to make crystalline, a source concentrate such as high-potency live resin is mixed with hexane and acetic acid. Once everything has emulsified, the solution is filtered, and then put through a rotary evaporator (just like the one Luke Skywalker used on his home planet). The centrifugal force separates the delta-nine THCa from the other compounds, and then a chemical bath is used to purify the THCa further, which brings the potency close to the 99.9% mark.

See? Can you do that in your basement, even now after I’ve given you the instructions? I can’t. And that’s what happens when the nerds get involved. We get things like vape pens and THC inhalers and 99% pure THCa. This concentrate comes in crystals, some as big and clear as the diamonds on rich-people wedding rings, but there’s a drawback: there’s no flavor. Crystalline diamonds give you a mind-bending high, but you don’t get the complexity that comes from a full-spectrum extract, like a solventless hash.

So, the nerds stepped it up and started mixing itty-bitty THCa diamonds with full-spectrum terpene sauce to make FSE Crystalline THCa, which is what we just started selling at The Greenery, a Durango dispensary.

You should try it.

The high is like a shatter high, but higher, stratospheric. And the flavor is better than all the other BHO products, thanks to the sauce. It’s clean like a craft oil but potent like a distillate, and I’m pretty sure the nerds have outdone themselves, because there’s nothing better than FSE crystalline on the new-school side of cannabis concentrates. We sell out of this stuff quickly, so keep checking our menu for availability, and then come see Your Best Buds at our Durango dispensary on Parker Avenue if you’re looking for something new.

The Closest Durango Dispensary to Farmington

Posted on March 3, 2018 - 9:00 am

I lived in Farmington for seven years and I know about all the wonderful things you guys have hidden down there. I know about all the hole-in-the-wall meat markets that sell authentic Mexican ingredients. I know about all the spectacular trails that crisscross the desert like sandy latticework throughout Chokecherry Canyon. I know about your sweltering summer days and your mild winter nights and your hard-working blue-collar culture, but unfortunately, I also know that for you, recreational marijuana is illegal.

Here in Durango, Colorado, we can smoke pot all we want because we’re just a little bit closer to the freedom we sing about before football games. And someday, New Mexico will be there too. You’ll have dispensaries and sensible laws, and if we wanted to, Durango and Farmington could pass blunts back and forth across the border. But you’re not there yet, so for now, you need to visit Colorado to purchase marijuana legally.

The Durango Greenery is the closest dispensary to Farmington, or any of northwest New Mexico for that matter, and we appreciate our customers from the south. Your business matters. We’ll give you the same loyalty card we give locals and we’ll treat you as if you were our next-door neighbor, because if you think about it, the hour-long drive that separates us doesn’t mean much—we’re just human beings who share a river and a fondness for marijuana.

So, come see us. We’re located at 208 Parker Avenue in Durango, Colorado, just north of the border, and if you need directions, simply call us at (970) 403-3710. We’ll tell you to head north on Highway 550 and once you cross the Animas River, take a right onto E Turner Dr. passing by the movie theater, then take a right to wrap under 550 and onto the Frontage Rd. Make a left on Turner at Morehart Murphy Chevrolet. Next, take a left on Parker Ave, and then drive to the cul-de-sac at the end. There’s no way you’ll be able to miss our signs and flagging, and we have plenty of discrete parking. We’re open nightly until nine-thirty (except on Sundays when we close at seven), and we’ll be waiting right here for our friends from the south, because We’re Your Best Buds too.

*Please remember that under current law, it is illegal to leave Colorado with any marijuana products.* So stay awhile!

Rosin in Durango

Posted on February 24, 2018 - 9:00 am

There are two types of people in this world: people who love Bon Jovi, and people who pretend like they don’t. I’ve done research, and this fact is all-the-way true. And when you think about it, humans are split down the middle when it comes to just about everything—some people like going out, some people like staying in; some people prefer skis, some people prefer boards; some people like mustard, and some people have really bad taste. Know what I mean? And it’s no different when it comes to marijuana concentrates: people either smoke solventless concentrates like Rosin, or people smoke solvent-extracted concentrates, like wax or shatter.

According to Webster’s New World College Dictionary, the definition for “solvent” is “a thing that dissolves another thing” (I don’t own a dictionary). But when it comes to concentrate extraction in the cannabis industry, a solvent is usually a gas (like CO2 or butane) that’s pumped through a pressurized chamber to chemically strip the cannabinoids from flower. I know that sounds newfangled, but solvent-extracted concentrates have been around forever. If you soak marijuana in an alcohol bath, it’ll strip all the stuff that gets you high from the flower, and then if you let the alcohol evaporate, it’ll leave behind a wonderful gooey mess that you can smoke. This extract is a solvent-extracted concentrate because alcohol is a “thing that dissolves another thing.” Get it? I overheard my parents talking about this thirty years ago, and the practice is still going strong today, because alcohol-extracted THC is used to make plenty of the marijuana edibles on the market, like the Mountain High Suckers we sell in our shop.

But when it comes to one side or the other, I prefer solventless concentrates because they’ve been around much longer. These are the ones that are made the way they’ve always been made, and I’m talking about eons. I’m talking about the Berbers in Morocco who’ve been making hash for generations; I’m talking about the Lebanese tribes that’ve been pressing kief into blonde bricks throughout recorded history. I know it’ll sound pompous, but I like hashes with a story, and at The Greenery, that’s our specialty.

If you’re under thirty, don’t freak out—at The Greenery, we sell all the modern concentrates like wax and distillate, and I’m pretty sure we’re the only dispensary in town selling crystalline (which I’ll tell you about next week), so we have you hipsters covered. But I’m telling you, solventless concentrates are sublime. They have a flavor that evokes all sorts of tranquil thoughts (the kind that pair well with deep couches and maudlin music), and they’re nearly as potent as their solvent-extracted cousins. We have some Chemmy Jones Moroccan Hash in our arsenal right now that packs a 70% THC punch, and we’ve pressed some Rosin that broke the 90% barrier. I put some of the latter in my Cloud Mini and smoked it right before writing this, in case you can’t tell, and it made me realize that I’ve never told you about our Rosin, which is a travesty. So, here you go:

Rosin is made with nothing more than heat and pressure. Usually, flower is pressed pneumatically between two heated metal plates. The heat gets the cannabis oil flowing, and the pressure squeezes it out onto some parchment. Once the goo cools, it’s called “rosin” because it looks like the rosin violinists rub on their horsehair violin strings. If you were paying attention, you just learned two things. Sorry. Off track.

But at The Greenery Hash Factory, we do things a little differently. Instead of pressing flower, we press kief, which is all the dry-sieved trichomes that live on the flower’s surface. This stuff is potent and flavorful, and I’m pretty sure it’s the stuff Tinkerbelle kept in her bag. When we press kief to make our Dry-Sift Rosin, the goo that comes out looks decadent. It’s dark. When you smoke it, the taste is floral and deep, like the soil we use to grow our flower. It’s best in small doses, like the one that brought me here, and it’s flawless for the times when you need a little inspiration. Rosin is perfect for dabbing in Durango because it’s inline with our natural, earth-loving culture, and if you haven’t tried it, you should come see us. We’ll help you go down in a blaze of glory (we just came full-circle) with some of the most potent Rosin in town, because We’re Your Best Buds!

Marijuana Inhaler

Posted on January 27, 2018 - 9:00 am

Did you know that they make marijuana-infused nasal spray? Actually, sometimes I wonder who “they” are. You know, like are “they” a clandestine group of super-geniuses sitting somewhere subterranean, inventing things the way you and I write grocery lists? I don’t know, but “they” come up with all sorts of cool stuff, like pot nasal spray. For the record, cannabinoid nasal spray is a medicinal product—it’s used to administer cannabis to people who’re suffering through a seizure, and it stops the twitching like magic, proving once more that marijuana is medicine—and we don’t sell it at The Greenery, but we do sell something else that “they” came up with:

The Aero Inhaler by Quest Aerosols

For real, this thing works exactly like an asthma rescue inhaler (and don’t act like you haven’t tried one because we all have, probably at summer camp), but it gets you high. Can’t you just picture one of those super-geniuses sitting in his cave, probably petting a fluffy cat, smiling smugly because he invented an inhaler that gets you high? Anyway, I got to try one of these inhalers over the weekend, and it dawned on me that I’d never written a bona fide product review for our blog, and I figured that right now would be a perfect time to start. And no, I’m not going to say only nice things about this product simply because we sell it at The Greenery; I promise to list all the pros and cons impartially because you deserve as much. Here we go:

Pros:

The Aero Inhaler is the most discrete inhalable marijuana product on the market. That title once belonged to vape pens, but they emit a vapor, and the Aero Inhaler does not. Nearly nothing comes out when you exhale, and the marijuana odor you’d expect is next to nonexistent.
Can you believe that “they” packed one-thousand milligrams of concentrate into those little bottles? Each puff delivers ten milligrams, and the range for the inhalers I’ve seen hovers between sixty and eighty percent. Potency isn’t an issue with this product, and you get plenty of it in each package.
Inhalers that get you high are cool.
These things are completely self-contained and portable. You don’t need a lighter or a battery that might be charged, and you don’t need to worry about squishing that brownie in your pocket. The Aero Inhaler is waterproof, reliable, and relatively idiot-proof, which leads into the cons…

Cons:

You shouldn’t leave one of these things in your Jeep overnight when the temperature drops below zero because you’ll feel like a dumbass in the morning when you notice that a little bit of the concentrate leaked out, getting all over the warning on the bottle that clearly says, “store at room temperature.” I do dumb things sometimes.
I didn’t know what to expect the first time I used this product (but you don’t need to worry about that because you’re reading this). You need to point the mouthpiece directly at the back of your throat as you inhale, because if you miss and spray your tongue, it’ll taste like you gargled a pot smoothie (which for some people, would make this a pro instead of a con).
This is another first-time thing, but I didn’t know exactly how high I was gunna get. Marijuana roulette is never a fun game to play, but again, you don’t need to worry about that because you’re still reading. As a caveat, everyone will experience this product differently, but I’d say that one puff from the Aero Inhaler is equivalent in effect to one puff from a pure CO2 vape pen, or a couple stout hits from the bong, if pens aren’t your thing.

And that’s it! I suppose I should come up with some sort of rating system, like “I give the Aero Inhaler four-out-of-five Best Buds,” but I’ll spare you the banality. This product works, it’s a relatively inexpensive way to get one-thousand milligrams of concentrate, and it’s worthy of our shelves at The Greenery (trust me, everything we sell is thoroughly vetted, which is just as fun as it sounds). Anyway, I promise to keep giving you little reviews like this one so you can stay up-to-date, and at The Greenery, we promise to stay on the cutting edge of this industry by always bringing what “they” come up with next to Durango. You know, because “We’re Your Best Buds!”

Mixing Marijuana

Posted on December 30, 2017 - 9:00 am

When it came to buying pot yesteryear, you got what you got. The man would give you a bag full of unnamed weed, and you’d smoke it, not really knowing what was coming down the pipe—that bag didn’t come with a potency profile or a strain name, but that didn’t matter because nothing else was available. Those were dark days.

Seriously, can you imagine what it’d be like if all recreational drugs were sold like that? For instance, if you were in the mood for an indulgent red wine to pair with a ribeye, but booze was only sold out of a van behind Walmart, you might end up with some lukewarm Miller instead of a nice bottle of merlot… there’d be riots in the streets. And by way of analogy, the same rings true when it comes to marijuana, because different types of pot are better for different types of things: some strains work well for relaxation, which is perfect for the dark of night but not-so-perfect when you’re looking for a touch of inspiration, and some strains pick you up and get the thoughts flowing, which is perfect for daytime creativity, but ill-fitting for the moments when you simply want to pass out. Yes, most of these differences stem from the difference between Indica and Sativa, but it’s not always so straight-forward. And in that vein, if you come into our dispensary and tell one of our budtenders exactly what type of high you’re going for, they can point you in the right direction (seriously, our budtenders are like pot sommeliers).

However, here’s a secret: marijuana strain selection can be taken a step further if you dabble in mixing marijuana. As an example, I love the potency of Chemmy Jones, but the taste is a little over the top (as is the manic high that comes after only a few hits). So, whenever I end up with a little Chemmy, I grind it up and mix it with a fruitier strain like Blueberry. And yes, Chemmy is a Sativa and Blueberry is an Indica, so when you mix the two strains together, they meet in the middle and sing “Kumbaya” in your head (or at least that’s what it feels like because the high is so perfect). Anyway, my point in all this is that since we no longer have to buy pot out of a van—now that it’s possible to come into The Greenery and smell the weed before you buy it from a pot expert—mixing marijuana to find the perfect flavor and high is a possibility. These are bright days.

But wait, there’s more (did I just sound like a used car salesman?). Now that we’ve opened The Greenery Hash Factory, you’re no longer limited to just mixing pot with pot: thanks to the bowl topper, the combinations are nearly limitless. As a quick aside, a “bowl topper” is any sort of concentrated marijuana product you sprinkle on top of the pot in your pipe to kick thigs up a bit. I apologize for relying so heavily on the cliché “pot and alcohol” type of comparison, but adding a bowl topper to your marijuana is like adding a shot of whisky to your beer, but without the shameful hangover. Anyway, back on track…

At The Greenery, we make and sell three different types of bowl-topping hashes that I would strongly recommend trying. We have Kief Brick, which is the most flavorful bowl topper because it’s compressed trichomes, we have Bubble Hash, which is the easiest to use because its powdery consistency is perfect for sprinkling, and we have Moroccan Hash, which is by far the coolest because it invokes all sorts of nostalgia stemming from the old-school way of concentrating marijuana. I won’t get any deeper into the differences between these hashes because I wrote about this subject in a different blog (which you can read HERE), and this week, I just wanted expand your high-horizons by letting you know that it’s perfectly okay to smoke two different strains of marijuana at once. Exciting, right? And just to get you going in the right direction, here’re three bowl-topped combinations that’re exceptional:

Bio Chem Flower topped with Purple Diesel Bubble Hash: this combo gives you the multiplied energy of two sativa-dominant products, and the rush is insane. If you’re looking for an intense head-high, you won’t find anything better. This flower comes from our own living-soil grow, and the hash comes from our factory, so I can tell you honestly that these products have been cultivated with precision.
Gorilla Glue #4 flower topped with Indica Blend Moroccan Hash. This combo is the polar opposite of number one: you’re gunna get a deep body high that’ll lock you in your couch and bring a good end to any bad day.
Deathstar Flower topped with Sativa Blend Kief Brick. This combination is all about meeting in the middle for the most complex high possible. Deathstar flower is as close as they come to a true Indica, so the body high is all-encompassing, but the Sativa kief brings with it giddiness and bright flavor.

As I’m typing this, all three of the combinations I just listed are available in our dispensary, but things sell out quickly, and our specific stains rotate almost daily so we can keep things fresh and interesting for you. So, if one of these combos isn’t available, just come in and talk with one of our knowledgeable budtenders. He or she will let you know what mixes best with what, and we’ll send you on your way with something new to try, because We’re your Best Buds, and your high matters to us.