vape pen Archives | The Grand Junction Greenery

Two New Ways to Dab

Posted on January 26, 2019 - 9:00 am

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I like whiskey, but I like sipping it; it’s probably been a decade since my last shot. And maybe that’s why it took me so long to get into dabs—the idea of smoking a quarter-gram of live resin all at once seemed superfluous, just like chugging scotch. But taking dabs is a budtender prerequisite because we need to know what we’re talking about when customers ask, so I started with a wax pen (just like most older smokers). But after a while, I found myself wanting just a little bit more with each hit because wax pens are mild and convenient, but they don’t deliver that robust hit for which hash smokers are looking. I thought about buying a dab rig, but that would be taking things too far the other way; I needed to find that goldilocks middle ground. So, I did a little research, and I found (and tried) two new ways to dab that every smoker should know about because both methods are awesome. And as our staff blog-writer, it’d be amiss to not share my discoveries with you, so that’s exactly what I’m doing this week—if you’re looking for a whole new way to dab, try one of these methods:

1.) Reverse Dabbing, or Cold-Start Dabbing. Frankly, this method is slowly but surely becoming the preferred method for all dab-heads, not just those of us who don’t want huge hits, because a reverse dab preserves the concentrate’s flavor. Let me explain. Usually, when you take a dab, you heat the nail or banger with your torch before applying the dab. But with reverse dabbing (which works only with a banger), you put the dab into the banger while it’s cold (ergo, “reverse”). Then you hold the torch flame about an inch away from the bottom of your banger and slowly heat it until the dab starts to bubble before inhaling. It’s important to make sure your banger is clean before starting this process for the best results, but because of the gradual build to vaporization, you don’t miss out on any of the flavor, nor do you overheat the banger and cough your head off with a hit that’s too big. See what I mean? This is like sipping whiskey instead of shooting it.

2.) New School Hash Bowls. We tell our customers over and over that new-school dabs cannot be smoked in a pipe because the dab will liquify when you try to light it with your lighter and then pool in the bottom of your pipe, but with a little skill, this isn’t true. And for the record, the term “hash bowl” has been around forever (it’s when you mix old-school hash with flower and then smoke it in a pipe), but a new-school hash bowl brings together the best of both worlds, and if you do it right, this is one of my favorite ways to smoke dabs.

Step one: grind some flower and fill your pipe halfway. Step two: put a small dab right in the middle of your pipe. Step three: put more flower on top of the dab until your pipe is full, and then press it down gently. Now here comes the important part: light the bowl and inhale until a cherry forms, and then stop using your lighter. The heat from the cherry will melt the dab, the liquid will infuse the remaining flower in your pipe, and then it’ll stay lit until your bowl is empty (it takes a little practice to do it just right). For real, if you haven’t tried this method, you need to—a new-school hash bowl gives you the complexity of a flower high and the potency of a new-school dab, which is simply awesome.

There. Now you know everything I do about these two new dabbing methods. But the best part about either of these ways to dab is that they let you stick your feet in the pool before jumping in. Most people who haven’t dabbed before shy away from the idea because going from smoking flower to taking dabs is like going from zero to sixty instantly, but both reverse dabbing and new-school hash bowls let you gradually build to that insane high you can get from a dab instead of diving in with a full-blown dab hit. And the best part is that we sell everything you need for either of these methods right here in our Durango dispensary. So, if you’re over twenty-one with a valid I.D. and you’d like to try one of these new ways to dab, come see us at 208 Parker Avenue and we’ll get you set up, because We’re Your Best Buds!

Vape Pens and Vape Cartridges

Posted on October 13, 2018 - 9:00 am

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The very first blog I wrote for The Greenery was about vape pens—that was seventy-five blogs ago, and I told you how old I felt on my first day working here, because in my day, all you could do was smoke pot, but now, you can vaporize distilled CO2 cannabis oil with a ceramic atomizer… If Luke Skywalker enjoys cannabis, this is probably how he does it. And even though I wrote that first blog only a year and a half ago, things have changed drastically, and it’s obvious that you care because 1,200 of you read that first post (I’m famous!). So, this week, I wanted to revisit cannabis vape pens and oils to let you know what’s new.

For one, we now sell Bluetooth-capable vape pens. Seriously. If you buy a PAX Era battery (we sell them for $33 out the door), you can download an app for your smartphone and do all sorts of cool things: you can lock the battery from your phone and then leave it on your coffee table without worrying about roommates smoking your oil, you can adjust the heat remotely from your phone, and you can even play a few vape-themed games on your phone, if you’re into that sort of thing. But you don’t need the app to use the PAX Era pen (I don’t have the app, and I use my PAX all the time), so don’t worry if technology isn’t your thing.

Now, as to the cartridges or “pods” the Pax uses, I’ll simply say that they’re awesome. We carry all the exotics, like pods filled with Live Resin or Budder or Distillate, and you need to try these things. The Live Resin pods are full of terps and they taste and feel just like traditional marijuana, the Budder pods pack a punch, and the distillate pods are filled with naturally-occurring terpenes for a wonderful taste and a clean high: right now, we have blueberry, orange creamsicle, and lime sherbet—giving these exotic vape products a candy-like flavor.

And then there’s Evolab; these people are straight-up scientists. They’re the only company out there who has managed to create a “cannabis-derived cutting agent,” or CDCA. You see, all oils need to be thinned with something to make them smokable, because most oils and distillates are nearly solid after processing, so something needs to be added to make them viscus. PAX pods use PG or MCT, some companies use terpenes, but Evolab can claim that 100% of the oil in their carts comes from the cannabis plant thanks to their CDCA. We sell 500mg distillate cartridges that’ll fit on any universal 510-threaded battery, and that’s a good thing because the Chroma carts are as clean and pure as they come. The Alchemy Balance carts deliver high percentages of both THC and CBD, and the Evolab disposable vape pens we sell contain 250mg pure CO2 oil.

Third, we carry the full gamut of pure CO2 oils from Sweet (which stands for “southwest expert extraction technology,” because this oil is produced right here in Durango). We sell their cartridges and disposable vape pens, but for those of you who like to dab oil or fill your own cartridges, we also sell one-gram syringes filled with Sweet’s potent oil; the value and convenience is unbeatable. And speaking of value, we also sell 500mg carts from V3 Oil, and you need to come check these things out because you wouldn’t believe the price if I put it in this blog.

And lastly, we need to talk about O.pen. We still sell this company’s standard and Reserve cartridges (the ones I talked about in that first blog), but now, we’re selling their terpene-rich distillate as well—this product is ludicrously good. The distillate is CO2 derived, but the problem with most distillates is that they don’t contain any terpenes, so the high is potent but it isn’t complex. So, O.pen started including up to 13% strain-specific terpenes in their Craft Distillate, which was already one of the best products on the market. Now, when you smoke the Craft carts we’re selling (which will soon be available in a one-gram version!), you get the familiar type of high and taste you’d get from flower.

There! Those are the all the new and exciting things you need to know about the world of vaporizable cannabis oils. So please, if you’re twenty-one or older with a valid I.D. that proves it, come see Your Best Buds at 208 Parker Avenue if you’re interested in vaping marijuana, because there’s no such thing as a Durango dispensary with a higher-quality selection than The Greenery!

710 in Durango

Posted on July 7, 2018 - 9:00 am

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7/10 is a lesser-known stoner’s holiday than 4/20, much in the same way St. Patrick’s Day takes a backseat to Octoberfest for people who prefer to celebrate beer. Hell, I won’t name names, but there were at least two budtenders with whom I spoke before writing this who had no idea that 7/10 was a holiday at all. However, you can’t really blame them:

The origin story behind April twentieth’s inauguration as a marijuana holiday is well-known (read about it HERE), but thus far, nobody is taking credit for 7/10 even though everyone agrees on why it’s a holiday (7/10 upside-down spells “OIL,” and hash oil is awesome). But maybe nobody came up with it first. I remember my father-in-law telling a joke thirty years ago about a blonde going into a gas station and asking for a “710 cap” because she was reading it upside-down, and that dumb-ass joke is older than the BHO that gave birth to the stoner version of 7/10.

But when you think about it, none of that really matters. The first documented use of the term “710” as it applies to cannabis oil was back in 2010 (and yes, it was in the Urban Dictionary), the term has been used ever since to talk about hash oil discreetly, and now, many oil smokers light up at 7:10 (hopefully PM) and on 7/10. Boom. Origin story covered.

So, this year, we tossed around the idea of doing a campy 7/10 promotion here at The Greenery, but we decided against it because we could do better (of course, if you come in on 7/10, you’ll receive 15% off edibles, but only because 7/10 is on a Tuesday, and all Tuesdays are like that). This year, we wanted to do something permanent, so we decided to celebrate 7/10 by adding a new oil cartridge to our shelves for all you oil lovers: the 500mg V3 CO2 Oil Cartridge.

And these things are awesome.

The hardware is glass and metal and ceramic, the CO2 oil is pure and potent, and the price is ridiculous. We’re selling these carts for half of what a few other versions cost, because that’s how you do 7/10.

Right?

And we’ve gone further. Most of us here at The Greenery are fans of flower because our grow is one of the best in the state, and we celebrate 4/20 the way Prince recommended back in 1999. But that doesn’t mean we haven’t been listening to the oil-smoking half of the community, and your requests for a deeper lineup of well-priced dabs have been heard.

We’ve lowered the price of our Shatter, Wax, Live Resin, Rosin, and HCFSE by 20% (seriously, you’re welcome), we’ve added multiple Evo Labs products to our shelves right alongside the V3 cart, and this 7/10, we’ll be selling Pax Pods filled with budder, live resin, and distillate that you probably won’t find elsewhere.

You see, The Greenery is an anomaly.

We’re this cozy, locally-owned Durango dispensary nestled deep within Bodo Park, but we have a big-city 7/10 selection (I shit you not, a man drove here from Denver just to buy his limit of HCFSE from Madrone because we were the only ones with shelves deep enough to have what he needed). So, if you’re in the camp that celebrates 7/10 and you’re twenty-one or older with a valid I.D., come see Your Best Buds at 208 Parker Ave, and we’ll get you set for this Tuesday. Happy 7/10, Durango!

Photos courtesy of our friends at Madrone & V3 Oil!

CBD in Durango

Posted on June 30, 2018 - 9:00 am

CBD stands for “Cannabidiol.” I wanted to say that right off the bat because most people think “CBD” is an acronym that stands for something (like “cannabis, because duh”), but it’s not—it’s simply an abbreviation, just like “THC,” which stands for “tetrahydrocannabinol.”

But what CBD does is more important than what it means: Cannabidiol is a non-psychoactive cannabinoid (meaning it doesn’t get you high) that may help people with anxiety, inflammation, or pain management. This is the stuff that puts the “medicine” in “medicinal marijuana,” and it’s becoming quite popular. In fact, the FDA just approved the first-ever marijuana-derived CBD pharmaceutical to treat epilepsy (read the article HERE), Walmart is selling CBD products derived from hemp, and one of our local pet shops is even selling CBD-infused dog treats, which should tell you something about this compound’s popularity and efficacy. However, since you’re reading this, you probably aren’t a dog, so I’ll focus on what CBD can do for humans instead of for pets.

In short, CBD is awesome. I’ve had a few people come in to ask, “does CBD cure cancer?” because they’ve heard rumors. I wish this were true (we’d be a lot busier if it were), but unfortunately, CBD hasn’t been studied enough to prove what it can or cannot do. So, for now, I can only tell you what CBD “may” do:

• If you’re an anxious person who clams up when life comes flying your way, CBD may take the edge off. In fact, we have a slew of customers who buy CBD products to combat their PTSD, and they swear by the calming effects of this popular cannabinoid.

• Personally, I feel like I’ve taken a handful of ibuprofen after a dose of CBD. This stuff beats the pain down for me, and it does so without the side effects that make pills so infamous.

• Other than that, CBD is renowned for its possible anti-inflammation abilities. Swelling, redness, discomfort: CBD is something to experiment with if you suffer from any of these maladies.

Alright… that covers what CBD might do for you, so now we need to talk about how to use CBD, and it’d be easiest to list a few of our bestselling CBD products and let you decide which one might be best:

1.) Incredible Power: There are quite a few CBD-dominant strains of flower out there, but most people come in asking for Charlotte’s Web because it’s the most famous. However, I’d argue that Incredible Power is better because it contains around 12% THC and 15% CBD, as where Charlotte’s Web is lower in both categories. This flower is a slightly indica-leaning hybrid, so it’s doubly relaxing, and it’s definitely a shop-favorite.

2.) Chroma CBD Distillate by Evolab. If smoking flower is a bit too harsh, I’d suggest this cartridge for a vape option. Frankly, Evolab makes the best vape oils known to man. These cartridges fit on any universal 510-threaded battery, and the 500mg of oil contained in each one comes in at 56% CBD and about 17% THC. If you’re looking for the highest concentration of CBD in a high-quality vape product, there’s nothing better than the Chroma CBD cartridge.

3.) CBD Therapy Pucks by Highly Edible: If you’re not a smoker, there are plenty of edible CBD options out there, and this product is a perfect place to start. These gummy pucks come in peach or golden strawberry, and each serving contains 20mg CBD and 2mg THC, so this product will provide the relief of CBD without the high of THC.

4.) Ripple Relief: If you’re not a smoker and you don’t like the calories that come from edibles, there’s still an option for you. Ripple is an odorless, tasteless, instantly-dissolvable powder that can be added to any drink (or spaghetti sauce, for that matter) to turn it into a CBD-infused edible. Each serving contains 10mg CBD and 0.5mg THC so this won’t get you high either, but the best part is that drinks usually take effect sooner than other edibles, so Ripple can deliver relief much sooner than other products.

5.) Mary Jane’s Salve: If you don’t want to smoke or eat anything, but you still want to try CBD, this topical is our bestselling option for you. Topical salves are favorites among people who suffer from arthritis, muscle pain, or severe dry skin. And if you’ve never tried cannabis-infused salves, we have a 2oz trial size that’s perfect for first-timers; it contains 60mg THC (but it still won’t get you high) and 20mg CBD per jar.

Of course, we have about seventeen-billion other CBD-infused options available for sale in our Durango dispensary (including quite a few that have a perfect 1:1 balance between CBD and THC) and this list barely scratches the surface, so if you’d like more options, check out our menu HERE.

And yes, as one last note, you can in fact purchase CBD products online, but they’re derived from hemp rather than cannabis, so they don’t contain any THC (which is why you can buy these products online). This might sound like a good thing to those of you who are looking for CBD’s relief without THC’s buzz, but it isn’t because of one thing: the “entourage effect.”

It’d take a blog of its own to tell you all about the entourage effect, but in short, they (scientists) have found that CBD is most effective when combined with other cannabinoids such as THC because the compounds work together synergistically to provide a better effect. So, even if you’ve tried the hemp-version of CBD that provides CBD all by itself, you might have better luck with a product that provides both CBD and THC, even if the THC percentage is minimal like it is in the five products I listed above.

So please, if you’re over twenty-one with a valid form of identification (a driver’s license is peachy) and you’re looking for a little CBD relief, come see Your Best Buds at 208 Parker Avenue in Durango, Colorado, and we’ll tell you and show you everything you need to know about CBD!

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.

PAX Era in Durango

Posted on March 31, 2018 - 9:00 am

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!).

A Breakdown of Cannabis Concentrates

Posted on December 2, 2017 - 9:00 am

This week’s post is just gunna be a quick-and-dirty alphabetical listing of all the cannabis concentrates out there on the market, because one of the top-ten questions I hear as a budtender is “what’s the difference?” So, I wanted to write something short and simple you could use as a reference, if you needed to. As to the list itself, it’s important to remember that some concentrates can be dabbed, because they’re “full-burn” or “full-melt,” but some cannot (these work best as “bowl-toppers,” or concentrates you sprinkle on top of pot to kick things up a notch); I’ll make sure to tell you which ones are which. And here we go…

1.) Badder or Budder. This is exactly why things are so confusing when it comes to marijuana concentrates—the terms “badder” or “budder” deal with the consistency of a concentrate, not the concentrate itself. Cannabis oil can be whipped and heated into a consistency reminiscent of cake “batter” or room temperature “butter,” and that’s where the names come from (stoners replaced the t’s with d’s because that’s what you do when you’ve got bud on the brain).

2.) Bubble Hash. There’s no difference between “bubble hash” and “ice-water hash,” so the two terms are interchangeable. We make this concentrate at The Greenery Hash Factory by submerging marijuana in ice water and agitating it. The cold water freezes the trichomes on the surface of the plant matter, and the agitation breaks them free—once this is complete, we drain the slurry and run it through a series of filters. Then we collect, compact, and freeze the hash, before weighing it out and selling it to you for $40 a gram. This concentrate isn’t full-burn, so the best way to enjoy it is to sprinkle it on top of a bowl, or to mix some in with your flower when you roll a joint.

3.) Caviar. Caviar isn’t dabbable (did I just make up a word?) either, but it’s some of the best stuff on earth: a trifecta of potency, as we call it. This is another product we make in-house, and we do so by taking premium marijuana flower, painting it with oil, and then battering it in kief. You simply put it in your pipe and smoke it, and then forget about things for a while… all things. For a long while.

4.) Crumble. This is another one of those consistency-only concentrates: crumble is nothing more than wax with a different, honeycomb-like consistency.

5.) Crystalline. Quite plainly, this is the world’s strongest cannabis concentrate. Crystalline is a purified resin (which I’ll tell you about in number nine) consisting of 99.99% pure THC. Frankly, it’s like marijuana crack (but without the addiction and associated murder rate).

6.) Distillate. This concentrate is made by refining cannabis oil, but for it to be considered a true distillate, a still needs to be used (yes, just like the ones they use in the Ozarks to make moonshine). However, solvents can also be used in some instances. Distilling the oil purifies the concentrate, and makes it more potent. It can be dabbed or vaporized, but this concentrate is also used in many of the edibles on the market.

7.) Isolate. This concentrate is made by using chemicals to “isolate” the THC or CBD from marijuana plant matter. It can be smoked in a number of ways, but since isolates are most commonly white, powdery substances that dissolve instantly in water, this concentrate shows up in infused beverages more often than not.

8.) Kief, or Kief Brick. Kief is sometimes referred to as “dry-sift” because that’s the way it’s made. We make this one as well, and we do so by tumbling marijuana in a filter drum. Then we collect the kief (trichomes) and compress it into a brick which we sell for $30 a gram. This concentrate isn’t full-burn, but since all the marijuana terpenes live in the trichomes, kief is by far the most flavorful concentrate.

9.) Live Resin. This concentrate is made by flash-freezing an entire, living marijuana plant, and then by using a chilled solvent (butane) in the extraction process. I’m not going to get too deep into purge times or extraction techniques because your eyes would glaze over, but basically, frozen pot is stuffed into a huge metal tube through which cold butane is pumped. They open it up and scrape up the live resin, which once dried, looks like little crystals mixed with honey. Sometimes, you’ll hear people talk about marijuana “sugar,” but that’s just a form of live resin that has the consistency of granulated sugar. All live resin is full-burn.

10.) Moroccan Hash. This concentrate is made by decarboxylating (heating) kief, and kneading it with a little water. The final product is a darkened ball of awesomeness that’s enjoyed best on top of a bowl (you can’t dab it because it’s not full-burn). This one is my personal favorite, so much so that I wrote an entire piece about it you can read here.

11.) Oil. You’ll see many types of oil on the market, and they’re separated via the differing chemicals used during the extraction process; CO2 and Butane extracted oils are the most common. And you’ll hear a bunch of other names for marijuana oil like “CO2 oil,” “BHO,” which stands for “butane hash oil,” “hash oil,” “dragon tears,” which is just a proprietary name, or “dragon balls,” which is just a unit of measure (given that a dragon ball is a ten-thousand-dollar glass ball filled with 3,000 grams of high-THC oil, I doubt that you’ll get it mixed up with the other concentrates). Oil can be dabbed just like all the other full-burn extracts, but it can get pretty messy, so most people prefer to use a marijuana vape pen when smoking cannabis oil.

12.) Resin. This is the black stuff that accumulates inside your pipe that you scrape out and smoke with shame when you’re too broke to buy pot. We’ve all been there.

13.) Rosin. This stuff is way better than the last one, and it’s one of the only full-burn concentrates on the market that’s made without solvents. We make this one in our factory by compressing cannabis flower between two heated metal plates. The heat and pressure work in concert to squeeze out all the cannabinoid-rich “rosin,” which looks like light-brown tar. This one is dabbable (I’ve decided officially that “dabbable” is a word), and we always have rosin on our menu.

14.) Sap. This one is just oil with a thicker consistency—this stuff has the viscosity of tree sap, and that’s where the name comes from. Totally dabbable.

15.) Shatter. This concentrate is made in a tube or a vacuum purge oven just like live resin, but the temperatures are different. Butane is used when extracting this concentrate, and the final product is an amber, translucent sheet that looks like hard candy. And it’s easy to break, which is where the term “shatter” comes from. Also, totally dabbable.

16.) Wax. Wax looks and feels like wax, and it’s extracted just like shatter. Different temperatures in the purge stage produce differing consistencies, and wax is just shatter that was produced at a temperature leading to a fluffier, wax-like product. Technically, both “wax” and “shatter” are consistency-based names, and both concentrates are actually subsumed under the “BHO,” or “butane hash oil” category. But yes, you can dab wax all day long.

That’s it! I guess the list didn’t end up as “short and simple” as I planned, but worse things have happened. And as always, if you have any questions or concerns, please feel free to give us a call at (970) 403-3710, or come in and see us at 208 Parker Avenue, right here in Durango, Colorado. We’re Your Best Buds, and we’ll tell you all you need to know about the differences between cannabis concentrates; all you need to do is ask.

moroccan hash, hash, durango, concentrates, The Greenery, dispensaries, dispensary — Moroccan Hash by The Greenery Hash Factory

Kief, kief brick, hash, marijuana hash, The Greenery, dispensary, Durango — Kief Brick by The Greenery Hash Factory

bubble hash, ice water hash, hash, Greenery Hash Factory, The Greenery, Durango, Colorado — Bubble Hash at The Greenery Hash Factory

Dabbing Marijuana

Posted on November 11, 2017 - 9:00 am

rosin, marijuana concentrate, concentrates, extracts, marijuana extractions

This newest generation seems to think they came up with “dabbing,” but maybe that’s just the way it’s always been—maybe the youth has always sapped credit from the people who came before thanks to short memories. After all, “Flatliners” is in the theaters again, with a new cast of pretty millennials acting out a carbon-copy plot from the eighties movie I remember, and Disney just announced that they’re remaking “Flight of the Navigator,” which is simply sacrilegious, if you ask me. Actually, “The Magnificent Seven” just came out for the third time, if you’re keeping track, and something was stolen from my father’s generation that they stole from the generation before. Everything old is being made anew, and it’s no different when it comes to smoking pot.

I’ll take a step back and explain: “dabbing” is the newest term for smoking full-burn marijuana concentrates. And I know this subject can get a little convoluted, so I’m going to walk through it step by step just in case you’re a complete newbie. A “full-burn” concentrate is something like rosin, shatter, wax, or live-resin. I’m not going to get into the specific differences between these four concentrates because that’s a subject deserving a separate blog, but basically, these concentrates are made by extracting the cannabinoids (the stuff that gets you high) from all the green plant matter you think of when you picture marijuana. When you smoke a full-burn concentrate, all of it evaporates and nothing is left behind, ergo, “full-burn.”

But you can’t smoke a full-burn concentrate conventionally because it’ll just melt—if you try to smoke something like wax with a pipe and lighter, it’ll just turn into liquid and pool in the bottom of your pipe, which is nothing more than a messy waste of money. So, you need to “dab” it. And this is where we get back on track: my generation called dabbing “knife hits.” We’d take two butter knives and get them red-hot over the stove, and then we’d press them together with some hash in between. The hot knives would vaporize the hash and we’d breathe in the smoke. And yes, we even knew how to make full-burn hash with an iron and wax paper, so you whippersnappers didn’t come up with that, either.

Anyway, a decade or so after knife-hits faded in popularity, the Atlanta hip-hop scene started to mature. A new dance came out in 2012 called “dabbing,” wherein you’d duck your forehead into the crook of your arm while sticking your other arm straight out to the side; Cam Newton made the move famous because he did it every time he scored a touchdown for the Carolina Panthers. But the “dab” didn’t come from sports or hip-hop, because the gesture is meant to look like what someone does after taking a huge concentrate hit: you turn your head into your elbow and cough like the world is ending, and you hold the other arm out as if to say, “dear god, keep that stuff away from me” (or at least, that’s where most people on the internet think it comes from). “Dabbing” was associated with smoking marijuana long before the dance came out (regardless of what the dance’s inventor, “Skippa Da Flippa,” might have to say about it), and the move is just another dance in a long line of dances meant to emulate everyday motions, like the “running man,” the “lawnmower,” or the timeless “bump-and-grind.” And it’s not even the first marijuana-related motion dance to pop up because people have been “passing it to the left” ever since that reggae song came out in the eighties.

However, when it comes to dabbing marijuana, I must admit that this newest generation has taken something we invented and made it much, much better. Now, instead of knives and a cooktop, we use a dab rig. Basically, these rigs have a “nail” that you heat up with a small blowtorch (these nails can be made from glass, ceramics, or metals like titanium). And then you “dab” a little of your concentrate onto the nail (which sits where the bowl of a pipe or bong used to be) and inhale the smoke. It’s easy and clean and ridiculously potent. Since all of the plant matter has been taken out of the equation, a few of the concentrates currently on the market come close to 99% per THC content, and that’s insane. The high is mind-bendingly intense and it hits you quick and pure, like only a concentrate can. At the Greenery, we have basic dab rigs that start around fifteen bucks and a complete line of full-burn concentrates. If you come in, we’ll show you how to put the two together.

But quite a few people are put-off by the idea of using a blowtorch to smoke pot—to them, it feels a little superfluous and strange, a little over-the-top. And because of this, I’ve noticed that most dabbers over thirty prefer a handheld vaporizer like the Cloud V that we sell in our store for around sixty bucks. Frankly, I’m one of these “people over thirty,” and I doubt that I’d dab if I had to use a blowtorch. I prefer discretion: the Cloud V is battery-operated and it fits in your pocket. It has a little ceramic bowl and a heating element; all you do is load it and push a button and inhale. It couldn’t be simpler.

But just like with everything else pot-related, it’s what you put in your pipe that matters, not the pipe itself. You’ll hear me talk about this quite a bit from now on, but recently, our company expanded to include The Greenery Hash Factory, and we’ve started making our own concentrates. And just like the flower that comes out of our grow, our concentrates are the best on the market. But we’re doing it the old fashion way—without the use of caustic solvents that’re inimical to flavor—so only one of our concentrates is full-burn: our Rosin.

We make our Rosin with nothing more than heat and extreme pressure: premium flower is squeezed with a heated pneumatic press (it’s an amped-up version of the iron and wax paper I told you about previously) and the thick, gooey goodness called Rosin seeps out of the flower. We sell it for $60 a gram before tax, and it’s worth every penny. The batch I have loaded in my Cloud V right now comes from Chemmy Jones flower, and it comes in at 75.9% THC, which is incredible because we didn’t use the chemicals commonly associated with high-THC concentrates. But it is what it is, and at close to seventy-six percent THC, just a little dab will do ya’ when you’re smoking our Rosin (and yes, I know I just stole an advertising slogan from my parents’ generation, but whatever).

Our Rosin really is worth trying if you’ve never “dabbed” as the millennials are calling it these days, because the flavor, convenience, and potency surpass old-school hash by a country mile, regardless of who thought of it first. So please, come in and let us show you what you’ve just read about—let us introduce you to something new, something better than what you’re used to. We’re Your Best Buds, and when it comes to dabbing, that’s what we do.

Marijuana Vape Pens

Posted on May 13, 2017 - 6:31 pm

Open Vape Marijuana, The Greenery, Durango

I’m old, or at least it feels that way when I walk into a marijuana dispensary. When I was a kid, pot was a plant you lit on fire, and that’s about it. We’d hear stories about exotic sounding hash or kief, but we could never get our hands on it, and “pot brownies” were a rare luxury. But now, I’m a budtender at The Greenery here in Durango, and things have changed dramatically.

It seems as if there’s no limit to the variety of ways one can consume marijuana—we sell every imaginable sort of edible, from caramel-coated lollypop to THC infused root beer, and we have on our shelves a veritable panoply of concentrates ranging from simple hash to carbon-dioxide-extracted live resin. And as a newcomer entering into this industry with not much more than the memories I brought from my misspent youth, it was all a little overwhelming the first time I stepped behind the counter; I can’t imagine what it might feel like to a first-time customer.

However, The Greenery is different from the other local dispensaries for one simple reason: our knowledgeable, friendly staff. As a new employee, I’ve been testing the depths of their collective knowledge with my incessant questions, and on a daily basis, our budtenders have been thoroughly impressive. These young men and women have been able to answer all my questions in a way that doesn’t leave me guessing, and I’ve seen them extend the same professional courtesy to every new customer who walks through our door. But just in case you haven’t yet visited our dispensary, I’d like to share one of my favorite new discoveries with you: the O.pen disposable vape pen.

As I alluded to earlier, until recently, I’ve only smoked flower or enjoyed the occasional edible; I’ve never ventured into the world of concentrates because I was a little ignorant. So, for my first experiment, I asked Clay (one of The Greenery’s friendly budtenders) about the easiest way a newbie such as myself could try hash oil. In case you’re just as ignorant as I was, “hash oil” is a concentrate made by extracting with carbon dioxide all the wonderful cannabinoids that live in marijuana plant matter (hash oil is most commonly enjoyed through a vaporizer similar to an e-cigarette).

Clay told me all of this and I’m sure my eyes glazed over a bit because he slowed down and started showing me all the options, the simplest of which was the O.pen disposable vape pen I mentioned earlier. Basically, the disposable vape pens we sell at The Greenery come preloaded with one-hundred milligrams of hash oil. Each one is about the size of a cigarette, and all you do is take the vape pen out of its child-resistant packaging and take a puff. It’s that simple. Each eight-second puff contains about two milligrams of THC, and each disposable pen contains roughly fifty puffs worth of concentrate; once it’s empty, you simply throw away the vape pen and move on with life. These pens are discrete and convenient and affordable; we sell three varieties (indica, sativa, and hybrid) for $25 each before tax.

Frankly, after I bought and tried my first vape pen, I felt like a fool for waiting so long. These things really are as convenient and discrete as they’re advertised to be, and the effect was perfect. My wife said the vapor smelled nothing like marijuana, but the high was one of the cleanest and quickest I’ve ever experienced. The only drawback I noticed was the fact that if I turned the pen upside-down, some of the oil leaked out of the mouthpiece, but Clay warned me about the possibility and I left The Greenery fully educated vis-à-vis the new product I was about to try. It was a perfect experience, one that was both easy and comfortable, and I’d recommend it to anyone interested in branching out.

And that’s all I have for this post. Please, if you’re like me—a creature of habit who’s stuck to the same way of smoking for years—come down to The Greenery, even if it’s just to ask questions. We’d love to show you all the new things that’re coming on the market monthly, because we’re your best buds.

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Tag: vape pen