Terp Boys: Shattering Ceilings

Glittering, golden sheets of translucent resin sketch shimmering Swiss cheese circles across sprawling pages of parchment paper. The glassy slabs capture and refract the light, giving the illusion of luminescence — each solidified splat of sparkling shatter radiates subtle shades of the same golden glow.

Lean in for a closer look and your sinuses are enveloped by a thick, invisible cloud of pungent fragrance that careens wildly from tart citrus zest to soft berry sweetness, from sharp juniper and mint to deep diesel funk, from familiar favorites to otherworldly delights. The aesthetics of this BHO shatter are dazzling, but the terpenes are absolutely blinding.

Which makes sense, considering the source: Terp Boys, a rising extraction star in the San Francisco Bay Area. Their name is more than just branding, it’s a promise of flavor that their masterfully extracted shatters deliver with every dab.

Will X, Terp Boys founder and primary extractor, says he works with three farmers to source the remarkable terpene profiles the brand is known for, occasionally pulling on in-house grows for small batches of certain strains.

“Obviously smell is something we look for when we source our plants — that and trichome production and clarity of the trichome,” he said, adding that his own eclectic taste in terps informs the diverse cornucopia of flavors the company keeps in stock. “I’m all over the place. I really like citrusy stuff but I also really enjoy a gassy OG.”

Terp Boys started back east, in Rhode Island, but Will’s roots are in California and he says he always wanted to move back. When he finally did, it was for the same reason countless generations of migrants came to the Golden State: opportunity for expansion.

“The scene was kind of crowded in Rhode Island — a lot of the supply lines were already spoken for,” he said. “California was a chance to create my own connections and branch out into different strains.”

When it comes to advice for anybody thinking about getting into extraction, Will said it’s a rewarding but largely tedious process.

“I started extracting because I was really into it, and I’ve loved the plant and always respected the plant and this was just a new arena that was fun to explore and stuff,” he said. “But as things have grown — it’s definitely a labor of love — but when it comes to processing stuff, there’s not much glamor. We wake up really early to process so it has become a little bit more of… ‘How many runs can we get done today?’”

But there’s absolutely nothing tedious about taking a dab of some Terp Boys shatter; from the shockingly pristine color and clarity to its flavorful namesake, the end result of Will and his team’s “labor of love” is a dabbable masterpiece.

Originally published in issue 26 of Cannabis Now. LEARN MORE