When we think about flowers, terpenes are often overshadowed by the almighty cannabinoids – namely CBD and THC – but terpenes govern a large part of how cannabis affects our physiology and cognition. When we look at the totality of the whole-plant experience, aka the “entourage effect” or “ensemble effect” terpenes help activate and excite our endocannabinoid system (ECS) and work in concert with cannabinoids to complete the psychoactive symphony. Terpenes play a massive role in crafting the flavor and aroma profiles of some of our favorite cannabis cultivars, and indeed most of the flavors in the natural world; a lemon smells and tastes that way because of limonene which is a terpene that can make your mouth pucker up. Terpenes help make each varietal unique, and variety is the spice of life, my cannacentric friends!
We haven’t had a good discussion about terpenes in awhile, so this topic is for our whole @memberdirectory to discuss the terpenes in your stash and on your shelves. Have you found the magical combination of terpenes that works for you? We all appreciate a good plug: do you have a favorite terp distributor for your oils and vape pens? Do you have an extraction method to pull terpenes from cannabis? Are you a terpene expert and want to drop some knowledge bombs on us all? Let’s talk terps!
Terps are so crucial to the experience of canna. Without them you have Sativex or Marinol or whatever that stuff is. This is one of the main reasons I find vaping so lackluster… the terps are extracted out and then have to be re-introduced, and a lot of places sidestep this process and just use synthetics to add flavor (terps) to their vape pens, so much for ensemble effect…
Theres a company in Colo called Trichome Institute, that’s trying to designate weed based on terpene profile, and do away with words like “indica” and “sativa.” The idea is that the high created by canna is based more on terpene profile, and should be thusly called, rather than the outmoded notion of Sati or Indi, which pretty much don’t really exist on a commercial level any more (everything’s been hybridized to the max). Makes sense to me.
Listened to Dr. Rob Flannery in Boston, he said if you can smell it your loosen it. What data exists around Terpene retention and low temperature drying of Cannabis?
How timely. I went to the terp store yesterday. Yes I can drive to a store now and get Terpenes. https://foggterpenes.com/ is the place. I saw them a couple years ago at the NECANN trade show in a shark tank type of face off against other companies and they were definitely ahead of their time. Unfortunately I learned that some of them are synthetic terpenes and most don’t even come from cannabis at all. What really works good is their fogg cutter pure terpene liquidizer to make cartridges from rosin which is synthetic but he said the natural stuff would not cut it! Literally or it would leave a taste. It is $3K for a gallon of terpenes so it is big business but now companies pop up like buyterpenesonline.com so we don’t know what we are going to get. Is it easy/possible/cost effective for the little guy to pull their own terpenes from the flower? I also learned yesterday if you do you ruin the weed or only left with CBD. Interesting stuff.
I know a company that is pulling terps directly from cannabis. They are using a steam process to extract the terpenes. Unfortunately, the heat from the steam does damage the psychoactive compounds in the cannabis, rendering the biomass useless for any additional extraction save for CBD’s. I would love to know of other companies pulling cannabis terpenes.
I saw a company, Panda Terps, at MJBizCon a few years ago. I bought a couple of his 1ml jars for like $15 a pop. They were extracted from weed, and the “flavors” were strain names, like Zkittles, for example. They were really nice.
Thing is, I can’t find him. I tried emailing him, and he doesn’t have a website
about terpenes, as long as they are derived from natural sources they are the same compounds but will have different contaminates. If they are synthetic then they are racemic mixtures and may NOT have the same benefit and will contain compounds from incomplete rxns (not good).
what about flavonoids ? They too hold promise and are antioxidants and contribute flavor, taste, texture, color and metabolites.
I use steam distillation to extract terpenes and it didn’t mess up potency. I decarbed after drying and used alcohol extraction. My labs showed no difference.
Also have done this. We used the steam distillation to decarb the flower while extracting terpenes so that it wouldn’t convert to CBN. Then ran it in a CO2 extractor and through the winterization, roto, distill process and were still hitting numbers in the 80 and 90 %s in the final distillate, then of course reintroduced them in the end. If I recall, our yield in final product weight was higher than when we extracted terpenes with CO2.
You don’t decarb after you distill it? I let my flower dry then further decarb. I’ve not had high CBN but I don’t bake with it I turn into into a tincture using MCT oil.
No, in my head I wanted to make sure that I prevented the CBN conversion and never really tried it the other way, but it’s interesting to learn that can work too!
Other than that concern there was really no reason for us to have decarb’ed it since that happens during the later stages of turning it into distillate. A lot of which was used without terpenes for edibles, though a lot was used for cartridges too. Makes sense you would need to do something with it if you were going to use it for tinctures.
Most of mine have been theories since our state just recently became legal. I did one and didn’t let it dry entirely and still got 0.3% thca. I need cheaper hobbies
The $15 terps were probably natural derives terps (non-cannabis), blue river extract terps from cannabis and is one of the top extractor right now. That’s why they are more expensive but if your looking for a wide variety of terp at a good cost, check out true terpenes in AZ.
