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Dear Dabby… Finding the Best of the Best

Dear Dabby… Finding the Best of the Best
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Culture

Dear Dabby… Finding the Best of the Best

Explore how to take optimal dabs and find great cannabis deals.

How do I take the best dab hit? — Hasheem Shatterwax

Isn’t the word “best” a bit subjective? Back in the day, we used to smoke hash on top of a bowl or rolled in a joint, and that was pretty good. Anyone remember “hash under glass?” But I digress. Probably the “best” way to dab in the past was heating up two knives on a stove, pressing a chunk of hash between the two knives and inhaling the vapors. Today’s new rigs follow the same concepts as hash and hot knives, the technology is just a little different.

This is how the experts do it: Use a clean “rig” — a rig is a bong outfitted with a “nail.” A nail is a special sort of bowl designed for concentrates. Side note: I always feel weird saying rig in the context of cannabis, because words like “rig” and “works” often remind me of heroin culture and I don’t think heroin and cannabis should mix, but maybe that’s just me. Can we say “dab bong?” No? Okay.

I like a quartz nail as opposed to ceramic or titanium. Yeah, they are fragile, but they heat up fast and they probably give the cleanest hit. Using a heat source, heat the nail to at least 450° F. It used to be that folks would just heat the nail as hot as possible, but that just burns up all the terpenes and gives you a sore throat. Low temp, high flavor dabs are the new wave. In terms of temperature, 450-600° F is optimal. And don’t let the dab heads argue about the best temperature. It’s worse than listening to baristas argue about the optimal serving temperature of a latte. Did you come over to get high or to argue? Take a hit.

I like smaller hits because you can always smoke more weed, but you can’t unsmoke weed, if you know what I mean. There is no need to hold in the smoke as long as possible; it just leads to lung irritation. Take a good inhale and let it out. Enjoy the flavor of the terpenes. Close your eyes and see what flavors you can detect. Pinene? Myrcene? Blueberries? Wait a few minutes. See how you feel. Wait a few more minutes. Have another. When you have achieved optimum balance, stop. That’s probably the best way to do it if you are someplace where you can sit and enjoy a dab. If you are running around, there are some good portable vaporizers that allow you to load your own wax or shatter. They are cool, but they can be a bit messy to load if you don’t have good hand-eye coordination.

How do you shop for the best cannabis deals? — M.T. Pockets

Um, the internet? Weedmaps and Leafly are usually good bets. If you are talking about how to find good cannabis, I would suggest using your nose. Look for weed that smells good, and don’t be fooled into thinking that expensive cannabis is always the way to go. And when I say “use your nose,” I mean it. Terpenes are the chemical compounds that give different marijuana strains their unique aromas, flavors and “feels.” Different terpenes have different effects and it is my opinion that terpenes have more to do with a good buzz than THC. A high THC count doesn’t always mean high-quality bud. Most of the recent winners in the various cups I have attended all had THC counts below 20 percent, but they all had incredible flavor and great feels. I have found plenty of great cannabis on the mid-range shelf and even a few hidden gems in the “low-quality” pile.

TELL US, how do you find cannabis deals?

Originally published in Issue 31 of Cannabis Now. LEARN MORE

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