What to Look for in a Good Concentrate

What Should You Look for in Good Concentrate?

 If you have ever smoked weed and concentrates, you are well aware of the fact that concentrates are significantly stronger than weed. Concentrates are exactly what their name implies: concentrated forms of cannabis. Like marijuana, concentrates come in differing types and qualities. There are good concentrates and there are bad concentrates—but how do you tell them apart and why does it matter?

Why does quality matter?

Why is it important to use quality concentrates? Well for starters we can come up with two great reasons: your high and your health. The better the concentrate the better it will be on your lungs and the more potent your high will be. Crappy concentrates lead to the dreaded coughing, gagging and burning throat hits that are anything but enjoyable and relaxing. Plus, it won’t get you as high. Like top shelf weed, quality concentrates are much purer and will give you a smoother hit and high. 

Poorly made concentrates run the risk of leaving impurities and solvents behind—meaning you have the pleasure of smoking them. Unfortunately, inhaling too much of certain impurities and solvents can lead to death, which is why we strongly caution against making your own at home unless you are a professional. 

Determining Quality

Look

Sometimes poorly made concentrates can come out darker in color than optimum quality ones—however color alone is not a good indicator that the concentrate is bad. High quality cannabis strains that have dark trichomes for instance, will produce a darkly colored concentrate that is good quality. In fact, there are several reasons concentrates could be dark in color including:

• Older material was being used
• Mature and better developed trichomes are darker
• A thorough extracting process can create a darker product. 
• Too much heat was used during the purging process
• The extract was left out to dry a little long

Taste

Another way to determine the quality of your concentrates is by a good old-fashioned taste test. If your concentrates taste bad, then it is bad quality. Oftentimes the different flavors that concentrates produce can help to pin point how they were actually made, and if you are a concentrate Cannasseur— you are likely able to tell if a concentrate is good or bad by simply tasting it.  

https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=dC5-Mugz4kc

Smell

We also recommend following your nose. Shatter typically does not have a strong smell, but waxes, sugars, & live resin should all have high terpene contents and should have a good smell. So, if your concentrate smells bad, or if your shatter has a strong smell—you can be sure it isn’t quality stuff. 

And finally, our fourth and final tip on how to discern good concentrates from bad ones is by experience. The old adage “practice makes perfect” definitely applies to this situation because the ultimate quality control test is the high itself. In fact, this is the most telling sign because if you smoke it and can’t get high, you know it isn’t a quality strain. People typically find strains they like and stick with them if they are good. 

Final Dab

Instead, focusing on the consistency and stability of concentrates to determine if it they are good or bad quality. Concentrates are similar to one another, however, they all are different in terms of appearance, cannabinoid profiles and melting points. Overall, the only real ways to determine how good or bad your concentrates are before you buy them is to ask the budtenders who grew it, or by word of mouth. 

We hope you found this helpful, and for some pretty informative videos about the different types of good and bad concentrates, check out any of the videos posted through out this article!