What Are CBD Concentrates?
CBD concentrates are like the jet fuel of the CBD world. They’re made by removing everything except the active ingredients in the hemp plant. You only need a small dose of CBD concentrates to get a strong impact.
There are a few different types of CBD concentrates available — differentiated by the compounds that remain in the final extract:
CBD pastes are made from the entire hemp resin profile. They contain cannabinoids, terpenes, sugars, fatty acids, sterols, esters, and some minerals.
A CBD paste has a thick, fluid consistency — similar to syrup. They can be smoked, vaped, or eaten raw.
The best CBD pastes are made from high-quality, organic hemp and contain a diverse spectrum of active terpenes and cannabinoids.
A CBD shatter is similar to a paste but has some of the fatty components removed. This makes shatters remain solid at room temperature. They’re called shatter because they tend to crack and break into shards like a shattered pane of glass.
When shatters are heated in a vape or dab rig, they melt and vaporize.
A CBD wax is a concentrate that contains all the essential oils (terpenes), cannabinoids, and various plant sterols and waxes. The fatty compounds have been removed along with a lot of the sugar content.
These CBD concentrates have a “buttery” texture. They’re solid at room temperature but quickly melt when you touch it.
CBD waxes can be smoked, vaped, or dabbed.
A rosin is a solid extract of a resin or pitch. Other names for rosin are colophony, Greek pitch, or concrete.
A CBD rosin is rich in various cannabinoids, terpenes, waxes, sterols, and other components of hemp plants’ resinous trichomes.
You can use rosins by scraping off bits of the hard extract and adding it to a vape or dab rig. You can also eat rosins directly, but it’s much more common to smoke or vape it.
A live resin extract is made by extracting the active ingredients from hemp plants while still fresh.
Normally, hemp is first dried and cured before it goes through the extraction process. With a live resin extract, the active ingredients are removed within a few hours after harvesting. This is the best way to preserve the terpene fraction, which quickly starts to decay after the plants are harvested.
Live resin extracts are expensive but provide potency levels that are hard to match by any other form of concentrate. They have significantly higher terpene concentrations than any other form of CBD extract.
To use live resin extracts, you use it with a vape, smoke it, or eat it raw.
CBD crystals are the purest form of CBD extract. They consist of 99.9% pure CBD and nothing else.
One of the methods used to isolate CBD involves a step called “recrystallization.” During this stage, CBD molecules bond together into a crystalline lattice. This gives crystals a white, powdery appearance similar to sugar or salt.
This form of CBD can be smoked or vaped. It also serves as the base ingredient for CBD isolate products by adding it to capsules, gummies, or a carrier oil to make CBD isolate oils.