Part Three… Vape with me!
Welcome to Part 3 of CannaSavvy’s guide to different smoking devices. If you missed Part 1 and Part 2, We browsed over many different devices that you use to smoke your flower and concentrates. From simple pipes, to elaborate dab rigs, you don’t want to miss out on this info!
In this issue, we will focus on different kinds of vaporizers for smoking flower and concentrates, 510 thread carts used for smoking THC distillates, and vaporizer batteries that come in different designs!
Let’s get Savvy.
What is Vaping?
Vaping is the process of heating up cannabis at a high enough temperature that will convert the active cannabinoids and terpenes into vapour. Most vaporizing devices are made to heat cannabis products just below the point of combustion. They heat cannabis flower, distillates or concentrates to a certain point which releases the cannabinoids and terpenes without igniting the plant material. Since the cannabis flower or concentrate is heated at a lower temperature and no smoke is involved, When smoking cannabis, you can burn off many of the terpenes and minor cannabinoids present in flower. Using a vaporizer can activate more of those compounds before the reach the point of combustion.
Vaping vs Smoking:
When smoking cannabis, you combust/burn your flower inside of your pipe or bong. You get the desired effects from the cannabinoids, and flavours from the terpenes, but you are also combusting and inhaling very hot pieces of debris that irritate the sensitive tissue in your lungs. As you should know, smoke is harmful to lung health. When burning cannabis, toxins and carcinogens are released from the combustion of the materials. Smoke from cannabis combustion has been shown to contain many of the same toxins, irritants and carcinogens as tobacco smoke.
Vaporizers on the other hand, do not burn anything. Instead, they heat up THC-products until they’re hot enough to create a vapour. Your cannabis doesn’t get to the temperature which it starts to combust. Smoking vaporizers produces a light cloud of vapour instead of a thick cloud of smoke like from burning cannabis. When comparing these two ways inhaling your THC, vaporizers can feel much smoother on the lungs .
Different Ways to Vape
Vaporizers use batteries and small metal coils or ovens to heat a dry herbs, concentrates, or THC distillate until it evaporates and is then inhaled. If you are interested in trying out vaping for yourself, there are a few different options available for you to experiment with. As the cannabis industry continues to grow, companies have innovated new ways to vaporize THC and CBD. In this article, we will discuss three standard methods you can try out to vape cannabis products. So get comfortable as we dive into Dry Herb Vapes, Concentrate Pens, and 510 Thread Cartridges.
Types of Vaporizers :
Dry Herb Vaporizers for Flower
Dry herb vaporizers have a chamber or ovens where dried cannabis flower is placed inside. The cannabis is heated to the correct temperature so that it doesn’t burn. This reduces any tar or carcinogens that you may inhale compared to using a bong or pipe which combusts the cannabis. Many dry herb vaporizers include temperature settings that you can change to help the user control the amount of flavour and vapour that is inhaled.
Table Top Vaporizers
Tabletop vaporizers are stationary temperature control units that require a solid surface like. table to sit on. Tabletop vaporizers come in different varieties, but all include four main features. A temperature dial to regulate the temperature, a healing element that heats the flower or concentrates, a heating chamber where you put the flower or concentrates, and a mouthpiece attachment.
Some tabletop vaporizers (like the Volcano) use a bag to collect the vapour which is then detached and then inhaled after the vaporizer fills it up vapour. Others vaporizers use a long tube that is attached to the heating chamber which allows the vapour to move directly from the heating chamber to the user. Most tabletop vaporizers of this style are used to vaporize cannabis flower.
Portable Vaporizers
Portable vaporizers are smaller, discreet vaporizers that work similar to tabletop vaporizers except that they are hand held devices. Portable vaporizers are made up of a chamber (often called an oven) to hold the cannabis flower, a heating element, and a battery. Most hand held vaporizers have variable temperature controls that are operated with the click of a button or turn of a dial. This activates the battery, which heats the element and vaporizes the flower inside the chamber, and through the mouthpiece for inhalation. Portable vaporizers allow for easy and discreet use as the device is compact and the cannabis vapour creates a less potent aroma and visual smoke.
Featured on the right is the The Yocan HIT Dry Herb Vaporizer. Its a portable dry herb vaporizer designed and engineered for optimum dry herb vaporization.
The Yocan Hit features a convection oven that’s designed and engineered to vaporize your favourite strains. By using convection heating and a ceramic-based oven to heat the herbs inside the chamber, it allows the herbs to be vaporized without reaching the point of combustion, thus promoting clean and smooth vaporization of your herbs.
Dry herb strains and other botanical plant matter contain flavonoids and terpenes that provide the cannabis flower its unique aroma and distinct tastes. When using a vaporizer, you’ll be able to taste the terpenes and the natural flavours native to your selected strain. This is why the Yocan HIT Vaporizer is the ideal portable vaporizer for connoisseurs who look to experience the best their dry herb strains have to offer.
The Yocan Hit includes:
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1 x Yocan HIT Vaporizer
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1 x Cleaning Brush
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1 x USB-C Charging Cable
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1 x User Manual)
This image shows the mouth piece of the Yocan Hit. A great feature included in the mouthpiece is a stir rod. To help ensure your cannabis is heated evenly and thoroughly, you can twist the mouthpiece to stir the materials in your oven. This is helpful because you can evenly vaporize your cannabis without having to open it up and risk spilling it out.
AVB
After you vaporize your cannabis, you will produce AVB (Already Vaped Bud). AVB is the discoloured leftovers of the plant that will still be inside your oven after you vaporize your cannabis. AVB still contains valuable cannabinoids that can be accessed in a variety of ways.
If you plan on using your dry vape regularly, you can collect your ABV and repurpose it. Even though AVB contains less THC than fresh bud, it can still be used for making edibles.
The vaporizer will actually prime the cannabis through a process known as decarboxylation and make it ready to use for making canna butter. Instead of dumping your AVB in the ash tray, it may be a good idea to keep a separate jar for collecting.
Vaporizers for Concentrates
Just like how there are portable vaporizers that are used for flower cannabis, there are hand held vaporizers that are used to smoke concentrates out of. One example of a dab pen to the right is a Yocan Evolve Plus XL Vaporizer.
A dab pen is used to consume dabs. A dab is a term used to reference many of the different type of cannabis concentrates like shatter, diamonds, wax, budder, crumble, rosin, terp sauce, etc.
Concentrates can come in the form of a hard solid like shatter, or a semi solid or liquid state like wax or terp sauce. They are extracted through many different solvent and solvent less based methods that extract the plants cannabinoids. Concentrates are a much more potent than cannabis flower and delivers a stronger effect because it has high concentrations of active compounds.
Dab pens usually have three main components: the mouthpiece, the battery, and the atomizer.
Concentrates are purchased separately and added to the atomizer, where it is heated with a coil and vaporized.
This Yocan vaporizer features a magnetic connection that allows the atomizer tube to connect to the base with ease. It also features a unique quad coil technology which uses 4 quartz rod coil that allows for bigger clouds and pure tasting vapour. Other standard features include a coil cap that prevents messy leaks, an adjustable airflow valve, and a 1400maH battery with micro-USB charging.
The Yocan Evolve Plus XL Vaporizer includes:
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1 x Yocan Evolve Plus XL Vaporizer
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1 x Atomizer
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1 x Small Tool
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1 x Battery (1400mAH)
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1 x Micro USB Cable
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1 x Lanyard
One useful feature that this dab pen has is its detachable built-in silicone jar. The jar is located at the bottom of the battery is a very convenient way to keep vaping materials when not being consumed.
The Yocan Evolve Plus XL features an adjustable airflow design which allows you to make subtle changes to flavour and vapour density and viscosity.
By adjusting the airflow and reducing the amount of air intake, you can get a tight draw which results in increased flavor but thinner vapors. Increasing the airflow, on the other hand, amplifies the vapor visibility but somewhat decreases the flavor of your clouds while giving loose draws.
Hybrid Vaporizers for Dry herb and Concentrates
Some high quality vaporizers have the ability to smoke both dry flower and concentrates. These devices are great for vaporizing various forms of concentrates including badder, budder, and shatter. If you want a portable vaporizer for both dry flower and concentrates on the go, the Crafty + (plus) is a Vaporizer that can help.
The Crafty + Vaporizer by Storz & Bickel is one of the heaviest hitting yet portable devices thanks to its optimal mix of convection and conduction heating. Employing diffused air jets that permeate your materials with convective heat while conductive heat passes through the walls of the stainless-steel loading chamber it delivers both potent flavor and clouds!
The CRAFTY+ Vaporizer uses a patented combination of convection and conduction heating – a technology proven to excel in heating up herb evenly and efficiently. In addition, the powerful heating system allows for exceptional air flow and allows you to breathe in effortlessly. With the optimized heater, the CRAFTY+ Vaporizer reaches the desired temperature in approximately 60 seconds.
The Crafty + Includes:
1 pc. CRAFTY+ Vaporizer
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1 pc. USB Cable
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3 pcs. Base Seal Ring, small
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3 pcs. Normal Screen, small
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3 pcs. Coarse Screen, small
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1 pc. Dosing Capsule
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1 pc. Cleaning Brush
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1 pc. Instruction for Use (concise)
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1 pc. Safety Instructions
The stainless steel screens are used to place your concentrates on, They are soaked into the steel and heated evenly giving you a flavourful hit at your desired temperature. The additional screens are the ovens that you fill with dry flower. They can be filled and closed in with a lid.
A friendly reminder: Don’t over stuff your oven with flower. If there is too much flower inside it can be too dense to evenly vaporize all of the flower inside.
The Crafty + can rapidly heat up to a maximum temperature of 410 degrees Fahrenheit. Crafty Vape achieves it’s max temp in less than 60-70 seconds and has a battery life of about 60 minutes.
When choosing a temperature on your vaporizer, a good guide to follow is Low temperatures for more flavour, High temperatures for more vapour production. Experiment with the setting so find what setting you prefer. To get better flavour use a lower temperature around 350 degrees F. This will not produce huge clouds of vapour unless you crank up the heat. A temperature of 380 degrees F and higher will produce a bigger cloud of smoke, but reduce the uniqueness of your strains flavour. If you set your vaporizer to the highest setting you could result in a toasty almost burnt flavour that can be an acquired taste for some.
Vape Pens ( 510 Thread Cartridges )
510 Tread Cartridges and Batteries
A Vape pen is term used for a type of vaporizer designed specifically to vaporize cannabis distillates and oils. They are called pens because of the cylindrical design of the vaporizer looks like pen.
A reusable vape pen consists of a rechargeable battery and a screw on 510 thread cartridge. With reusable vape pens, you use the same battery with multiple cartridges but throw away the empty cartridge once you’ve vaporized all the oil inside.
The anatomy of a vape pen consists of a mouthpiece, chamber/tank, and a heating element, which is activated by a compatible battery. The chamber of a vape cartridge is filled with oils or distillate, which contains concentrated amounts of THC.
The 510 thread cartridge itself contains a food grade safe mouthpiece, a glass chamber made to fit .5 or 1 g of oil, a ceramic heating coil, intake holes, and 5 10mm threads at the bottom.
What’s do you vape in a 510 thread cartridge?
There are a few different types of concentrates that can be found for sale in a 510 thread cartridge. The tree types you will commonly see are: Distillate Carts, Full Spectrum Carts, and Live Resin Carts.
Distillate carts use a distilled oil which has most of the cannabis’s plants qualities removed except for the extracted thc left over. This can be vaped plain or botanical terpenes (from other plants) can be added for flavour. Some producers claim to add “native plant” terpenes back in.
Full spectrum carts use extraction techniques that pull most of the cannabinoids and terpenes from the flower being all natural.
Live resin uses the same process as full spectrum except the cannabis is flash frozen at harvest preserving more terpenes lost in drying. The freezing also makes a more selective extraction that pulls less or no chlorophyll that can be found in some normal full or broad spectrum extracts.
Distillates:
A cannabis distillate is a highly refined oil containing pure cannabinoids and almost nothing else. The upside to using distillates in vaporizer cartridges is that the oil can be produced from a range of starting materials. Virtually any hash oil variety from CO2 to BHO and everything in between can be purified into a distillate. The downside to using distillates in vaporizer cartridges is that because there are no residual terpenes left behind, there is nothing to cut the viscosity of the material. In order for distillate to be used for cartridges, a thinning agent of some kind is often required. It is advised to only purchase vape cartridges on the legal market because non lab tested cartridges found on the black market often include unhealthy cutting agents inside that are not safe for inhalation.
Full Spectrum Cartridges:
Full-spectrum extracts are concentrates that aim to capture as much of the full cannabinoid and terpene profile of the raw cannabis plant as possible. Full-spectrum cannabis extracts go through more gentle extraction processes, resulting in a concentrate that has the maximum amount of naturally occurring components of the cannabis plant, in addition to cannabinoids. This means that it will contain every bit of the terpenes, flavonoids, and essential oils that are native to that strain specific plant.
When extracted from a cannabis plant, full-spectrum products contain all the included cannabinoids like CBD, THC, CBDA, CBN, and CBC. A full spectrum product offers you a more holistic approach to experiencing vape cartridges compared to distillates with added botanical terpenes. When you see a cart labeled as Full spectrum, you know that the extract process preserves the raw plant’s full terpene and cannabinoid contents. This allows each of the plants components to work together synergistically, maximizing all the effects in your body.
Live Resin Cartridges:
Live resin is a form of cannabis concentrate manufactured by taking freshly harvested cannabis and flash freezing it. Extractors flash freeze the cannabis plant at very low temperatures before and during the process of extraction.
Live resin concentrates are known for their high terpene levels, resulting in products with distinctively strong aromas. The flash freezing extraction technique leaves the terpenes behind so that they are able to interact with the cannabinoids to overall provide a much richer experience. This process ensures the plant maintains its valuable terpene profile. Moreover, it retains its original fragrance and flavor, resulting in a more qualitative product.
Difference between Full spectrum and Live Resin
Live resin is a full spectrum product. But not all full-spectrum products are live resin. The difference between live resin and another full spectrum concentrate is that live resin is made from a cannabis plant that was frozen instead of going through the drying and curing process. The typical drying and curing procedure can damage the flavourful factory molecules found within the trichomes. With live resin, extractors flash freeze the plant immediately after the harvest. Then, it is kept at freezing temperatures throughout the extraction procedure.
Different Batteries
Vape batteries come in a variety of styles featuring buttons or no buttons, a cylindrical shape or rectangular one, a limited or long battery life, and the ability to recharge, which means there’s a battery to fit just about any personal preference. One of the most common weed pen batteries is the 510 thread, which is compatible with both .5g and 1g carts on the OCS market.
Disposable Vapes !
Disposable or all-in-one vape pens contain all the same elements of a battery with a 510 thread cartridge attached. The only difference is that the 510 thread cartridge remains connected to the battery and you dispose of the entire unit after the cart is empty. Some like this quick convenient purchase and puff style of vapes. Rather then having to worry about losing a battery you can get it all in one.