These days, dabs and other forms of cannabis concentrates are all the rage in states with medical or recreational cannabis frameworks in place. Personally, I love using concentrate oil because not only is it easier to take with you while you’re on the go, but just a little bit of oil in a vape pen can really go a long way! However, for those who live in places where cannabis is still heavily regulated, dabs can be very expensive, hard to obtain, or just plain unavailable. Although solvent extraction processes such as Butane Honey Oil (BHO) can produce high quality results on a large scale, they have the downside of being highly dangerous if you don’t know what you’re doing or work in a poorly ventilated place. Fortunately, there exists a simple way for those without access to cannabis concentrates to make their own without the use of any solvents, and the process is known as the ‘Rosin Technique’. Using only a hair straightening iron, some parchment paper, and some potent loose leaf cannabis, the Rosin Technique produces dabs which are both strong as well as rich in flavor (tasting strongly of the bud it was extracted from!).
Before starting this guide, make sure you have the following items on hand:
Hair straightening iron (the models with flat tongs work the best)
a few grams of unground loose leaf
Parchment paper
Something to store your oil in (silicone oil jars work well)
Next, you’ll need to actually start making the oil. Find a clean workstation and follow these steps to complete the Rosin Technique:
To start, take your unground nugs of cannabis and break them up into small chunks between 0.2g and 0.5g in size (you don’t have to be totally accurate with this, but make sure not to try using large nugs as you can lose some efficiency!). Be sure to try using different strains if you have access to them (certain strains will produce more oil than others). Whereas I’ve had some great experiences with using different Kushes to make oil, a sativa strain I tried produced a lot less oil.
Next, take a square of parchment paper and place one of your nugs in the middle. Fold the paper over the nug so that it becomes encased in the paper.
Set your straightening iron to medium heat and then place your parchment containing the bud in between the tongs. Press down as hard as possible for 3-5 seconds, and then remove the parchment. When you open up the paper you should be left with a light brown colored nug as well as a small quantity of oil which you can collect and use.
Repeat the above process as many times as you’d like (using fresh bud each time) and store the oil in a silicone concentrates jar.
Once you’ve made an adequate quantity of oil you can use it in a number of ways. While I’m at home, my favorite method is to use a VapeXHale Cloud Evo along with a VapeXnail, but on the go I love using either the Atmos Raw or DaVinci Ascent with oil jar (the Ascent is great for times when I want to vape both loose leaf and concentrates while I’m out and about!). After you’ve gotten the method perfected, the only real downside to it is that the process can be time consuming if you want to make higher quantities of oil. However, the process can be streamlined, and with a few people working together you can produce enough oil to last several days depending on your tolerance!
