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Pot Potpourri

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Pot Potpourri

I can’t tell you how much I love Jeopardy, nor can I express how saddened I am given Alex Trebek’s stage-four cancer. It’s a tragedy, but I’ve found that I’ve been watching his show much more than usual because I want to soak it all up before the era ends. And lately, my favorite category is “Potpourri,” but it has nothing to do with the fact that “pot” is in the word; I love the fact that you never know what you’re going to get. I’m sure the show’s writers use the category as a catchall when they’re lazy because it’s always a bunch of unrelated questions, but I still like the unpredictability. So, this week, I’m going to copy the format and write about three unrelated topics because I’ve been wanting to write about each one for a while, but none of the topics is important enough to merit its own blog. That, and I apologize if you started reading this thinking that I was going to tell you how to make potpourri out of pot; I’m not because it’d be a waste to do so.

Don’t Lick Your Joint

The first topic I’d like to talk about is a PSA of sorts: please stop licking joints if they start to run. There’s nothing worse than smoking a joint with someone who thinks they’re a pro because without fail, if the joint starts to burn unevenly, said “pro” will lick their finger and then put a little spit on the joint just below the run. This is disgusting. Yes, the moisture will make the running part of the joint burn more slowly so the run stops, but then you’ll be smoking spit, which is wholly unnecessary. Instead, use your lighter to burn the part of the joint that’s not burning instead of using spit to stop something else from burning; it works much better. See what I mean? That topic only took a paragraph to cover, so it doesn’t deserve its own blog, but it’s an important one because I’d love it if people stopped spitting on my joints, so it had to be discussed; that’s the beauty of potpourri blogs.

How to Clean Your Pipe

The next topic we need to discuss is “how to clean pipes” because customers ask me about the best way to clean paraphernalia at least twice a day. As you know, commercialism is alive and well in the marijuana industry, and entrepreneurs have come up with just about everything imaginable to sell, including something called “ResRemover.” This product is a pouch filled with dry chemicals: all you do is add water, and then drop in your pipe to leave in the solution overnight. The chemical solution eats away all the resin, and then when you wake up in the morning, you’re greeted with a clean pipe. This method is easy, but just like licking joints, it’s gross. I have no idea which chemicals are in that bag but I’m sure you end up smoking them, and once you’re done, you’re left with a plastic bag full of a chemical solution mixed with pot resin that ends up in a landfill. Please don’t do that.

Instead, get a reusable container (just like you’d use for leftovers) and fill it with rubbing alcohol and a couple tablespoons of salt. Stir the solution thoroughly, drop in your pipe, and then let it sit overnight. The salt and alcohol create a chemical reaction that dissolves the resin and cleans your pipe just like the other stuff, but you know exactly what you’re using because you made the solution, and you’re not left with a disposable bag afterwards. The planet thanks you. However, if alcohol and salt still sound too caustic for you, you can always put your pipe in a pot of boiling water, which will also clean out the resin, but this method makes your house stink, and most people end up dropping their pipes because they’re too hot when they come out of the boiling water. Breaking a freshly-cleaned pipe defeats the purpose, so I’d try the alcohol and salt method if I were you.

Holding Your Hit

Finally, the last topic we need to discuss is holding in your hit. I’ll get right to it: don’t do this. Yes, holding in the smoke after a hit will allow more THC to absorb in your lungs before exhaling, but it’s pointless. The only reason people used to do this “back in the day” was that pot was illegal and difficult to find as a result, so people wanted to get the most out of every hit. But nowadays, you can simply drive to the store to score some weed and Google Maps will even help you find our Durango dispensary. So, instead of trying to hold smoke in your lungs until you pass out (which probably isn’t good for you) so you can get as high as possible, simply inhale and then exhale. You might need to take a couple more hits to achieve the perfect high, but it won’t be as harsh an experience, and pot is everywhere in the modern world, so it’s not like you’ll run out and then need to wait for some sketchy dude in a parking lot like yesteryear.

There, wasn’t that fun? I’m sure we’ll have a few more catchall blogs like this popping up in the future, so stay tuned, or better yet, come talk to us. You can always give us a call at (970) 403-3710 if you have questions about this or that, or you can some see us in person at our dispensary on 208 Parker Avenue so we can chat in person. Because if you like to discuss random marijuana topics, I promise We’re Your Best Buds!

How long is marijuana good for?

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How long is marijuana good for?

Just like many of our past blogs, this one was inspired by the questions that come from you, our clientele, because those are the questions that matter. And more than one of you have asked how long marijuana can be stored, so it’s time to answer that question as well, but it’s not as easy as you might think because the way marijuana is stored determines how long it’ll last. So, we’ll get into that, but we’ll also talk about edibles and hashes and vape oil, because it’s all different, and it’s all important; let’s get started.

Storing your flower

Marijuana is a plant, plain and simple, and people seem to forget this fact because most plants don’t get you high. If you treat marijuana like a plant, and think of it that way, you’ll be able to figure most of this out on your own. For instance, would you put lettuce in the freezer to keep it fresh? No? Well, you shouldn’t do so with cannabis either. For one, freezing plant mater makes any amount of moisture within expand, and that causes the plant cells to burst, which is no good. And secondly, even if you use the refrigerator instead of the freezer, the fluctuating temperatures and moisture levels in your fridge will screw things up as well, so don’t do it. Ever. Instead, store your flower in a cool, dry, dark place.

As to the “cool” part, most plant-destroying molds love warm temperatures, so unless you like smoking fungus, I’d recommend keeping your pot someplace in the sixty-degree range. As to the “dry” part, it’s self-explanatory: wet places are moldy places, so it wouldn’t make much sense to go through the effort of finding a cool place to avoid mold just to encounter the same problem thanks to moisture. So, store your flower in an air-tight container. Glass is always best because plastic can make your pot taste funky, and it creates a static charge that can attract trichome heads. If the trichome heads get stuck in a plastic container, it’ll make your pot less potent, and nobody wants that. Now, if you’re a pot pro and you’re looking for the perfect amount of relative humidity, I’ve found that the zone between 58% and 64% RH is perfect. To achieve this, you can either buy a hydrometer to measure the humidity within your glass jar (which is superfluous), or you can simply buy a two-way humidity control pack. All these control packs are designed to produce a specific RH level within a small space, so all you need to do is find a pack that’s within the 58%-64% RH range, and then drop it into the glass jar with your flower. If it gets too humid, the pack will absorb moisture, and if it gets too dry, it’ll humidify your jar; that’s why they’re called “two-way” packs. We sell these packs in our Durango dispensary, or you can buy them online HERE.

Alright… if you’ve been paying attention, we’ve discovered that your pot needs to be stored someplace cool and dry, preferably in a glass jar. That just leaves us with the “dark” part, and since most glass jars are transparent, you’ll need to put said jar in a dark place, because believe it or not, light (UV rays specifically) is the biggest thing that leads to cannabinoid degradation. In cannabis, it’s the THC that gets you high, as I’m sure you already know, but UV rays can and will degrade THC into CBN, which will make you super sleepy if you smoke it, and that’s thoroughly disappointing when you’re trying to get high. And yes, everything I’m saying is backed by science—there’s even a peer-reviewed study that you can read HERE proving that light is the enemy of cannabinoids.

How long will it last?

However, all this being said, the answer to the question “how long is my cannabis good for?” hasn’t been answered, and that’s because there’s not really a good answer. Theoretically, if you store your pot per my instructions, it could be good for quite some time; maybe even more than a year or so. But time itself also degrades cannabinoids, so your guess is as good as mine (unless you’re a chemist, in which case your guess is better). Worst case scenario, if you smoke old, well-preserved flower, it could be harsh and it might not get you that high, but your head won’t explode, so a least there’s that.

What about oils?

Let’s move on to vape oils. The state of Colorado requires a listed expiration date for most non-flower cannabis products, but this isn’t the case for vape oils because they have an awesome shelf-life. If you follow for vape oils the same storage guidelines for flower, you’ll be off to a good start, but there’s something else you need to worry about: oxygen. For instance, if you have an old distillate cartridge laying around the house, take a close look a it. You’ll most likely see a dark brown layer of oil sitting on top of the lighter yellow distillate. That dark-brown oil has simply oxidized because it was at the top where the oxygen within your cartridge touches the distillate; the cannabinoids within have degraded just like they do in plant material. If you let it get too far, the THC will turn into sleepy CBN, and you’ll be disappointed. So, if you plan on storing vape oil long-term, do so in an anerobic environment such as a vacuum sealed bag, and then keep the bag in a cool, dry, dark place. Problem solved.

Now, unlike vape oils or flower, Colorado requires that all edibles be marked with a regulated expiration or “best by” date (or sometimes, it’ll say “use of freeze by”). Please pay attention to these dates—just like you would when shopping for milk, check the date on any container you’re about to buy. Our dispensary in Durango is one of the most compliant in the state, and it’s noncompliant to sell an expired edible so you’ll never find one here, but I’m not delusional enough to think that you’ll only shop at The Greenery for the rest of your life, so when you’re in a lesser shop, check the expiration dates so you don’t get unlucky.

All that being said, fresh pot is always better than well-stored old pot, so if you’d like to avoid the hassle completely, simply buy only what you need for short periods of time as opposed to buying in bulk. That’s how I roll, and it’s always served me well. And since we grow our cannabis in small crops, and since we order our edibles and vape cartridges in small batches, literally everything in our dispensary is fresh and new. And that’s how we roll, because We’re Your Best Buds!