Search Results: terpenes (21)

Possible windfalls from legalizing hemp and CBD may get all the headlines, but terpenes could have just as much commercial potential. Terpenes are responsible for the smells and flavors that help us distinguish different strains of pot; like elevator songs and character actors, you recognize them without knowing what they are.

Terpenes are found in many plants, which is why cannabis can taste like citrus fruit, lavender and so on. They’ve shown potential for aiding in pain relief and other medical ailments, and you can consume them much like cannabinoids, via vaping or ingestion. But the public still doesn’t know much about identifying terpenes, and scientists are nowhere near understanding their full potential. To learn more about them, we chatted with Dr.Tristan Watkins, chief science officer for Lucid Mood, a cannabis vaping company that manipulates terpenes for desired effects.

Want to design your own high? Pay attention to the newest area of cannabis research: terpenes. These essential oils give each cannabis strain the unique smell, flavor and taste that you’ve come to love (or hate). Terpenes also offer special medicinal and therapeutic benefits that help with everything from insomnia to infections to depression. Here are the top ten things you need to know about terpenes:

 

Sharon Letts
Anyone who has ever used a vaporizer has tasted the sweet green of good bud

Cannabis, Terpenes, and the Limbic System
By Sharon Letts
The first green I smoked was probably rag weed – 70s shake rolled into a pinner, and handed to me in the bathroom of a 76 gas station in Redondo Beach. It was probably around 7:30 in the morning and I was 16 and on my way to high school.
I don’t make this stuff up.
More than 30 years have passed, but if someone hands me some cheap weed, with one whiff I can see my three friends jammed into that small space. I can smell the motor oil, see the smudges on the walls, and nearly hear the traffic outside.
I can also remember how uplifted I felt, opening that bathroom door and feeling the crisp, cool air on my face. The world was crisp and new through canna-eyes and it felt right. I didn’t know it at the time, but cannabis would become my medicine for life, hands down.

While the cannabis industry’s appetite for energy use is already widely documented, we’re still learning more about other forms of legal pot’s impact on the environment, such as packaging and extraction waste, as well as how growing nutrients affect soil.

One environmental factor we didn’t see coming? Terpenes.

Terpenes are molecules responsible for the smells and flavors of cannabis, hops, pine trees and every other plant aroma. As growers began to breed cannabis to achieve flavor profiles that taste more like oranges, grapes or pine than weed, terpenes quickly became all the rage in legal cannabis — to the point that they’re now extracted and mixed with THC concentrate for a more flavorful dab.

“Tang” is one of the more difficult flavor concepts for me to grasp. Is it sweet? Savory? Sour? A mix of all three? Calling something “tangy” at a family dinner table will often lead to an argument from someone who thinks tangy and tart are the same thing, thanks to powdered-drink-pushing chimpanzees. In actuality, tang is supposed be slightly sour while adding another fresh or zesty characteristic, as with plain yogurt, sourdough bread or certain tomato sauces.

Tangy cannabis strains are even harder to pinpoint, because the trait doesn’t really exist in most outside of Cannalope Haze and some peach- and apricot-leaning strains. Sour flavors in pot usually come from terpenes found in citrus fruits, which are clearly more sour than tangy — but when matched with light pine, herbal or floral notes, the tang is there.

Need a little spur in creativity to finish that essay or Powerpoint presentation? Cannabis isn’t always the cure, but there’s no doubt it will put you in a different state mind. That elevated perspective can take you to a new world for a few hours, kickstarting a brainstorm session or helping you critically review your work.

But that doesn’t mean any old strain will get the job done. Many varieties of cannabis can shut down creativity, motivating you to do nothing more than eat a box of corn dogs and laugh at the TV. Finding that inspirational mix of terpenes and cannabinoids is key, and we’re here to help.

Below are ten strains we’ve reviewed over that past year that have provided a creative boost, helping us read, write and rock and roll on a whole ‘nother level.

Cannabis legalization has not only spurred a wide variety of new industries, but it’s reinvigorating some old business models. Noticing the growing interest around terpenes — plant compounds found in cannabis and hops (and fruits, flowers, coffee and pretty much anything else grown on Earth) — Niki Sawni decided to start a line of non-alcoholic beverages geared toward cannabis users.

Using terpenes to make non-alcoholic IPAs, sours and even wines, Sawni’s beverage company, Gruvi, has been able to breathe new life into sober drinks; Gruvi products are now on the shelves of 45 liquor stores and craft breweries around Colorado. We recently sat down with Sawni to learn more about how drinking terpenes without the booze can affect our experiences with cannabis.

After medical marijuana was legalized in California over two decades ago, the technology behind cannabis consumption started taking off, and it’s truly exploded since 2014, when Colorado became the first state to legalize the plant for recreational purposes. The innovations took the industry from older, water-based extractions, like bubble hash, to advanced methods using solvents such as butane and CO2 to create wax and shatter.

But hash makers didn’t stop there. They soon figured out that freezing cannabis flower immediately after harvest preserves terpenes and plant oils before extraction, leading to the rise in “live” concentrates, like live resin. The newer, stankier product became the preferred dab for connoisseurs, further pushing back solventless and water-based extraction. But the progression of cannabis concentrates continues at a quick pace as newer extraction methods using rounds of ice-water extraction, heat and pressure produce concentrates that easily stack up with their solvent counterparts.

Cannabis extraction companies like Leiffa produce rosin and ice-water hash that looks, smells, tastes and lifts us to the moon like more traditional concentrates — and with the peace of mind that comes from knowing that no butane or ethanol stuck around. Although Leiffa’s Lakewood dispensary is only for medical marijuana patients, the brand’s wholesale concentrates are a growing and popular presence in recreational stores around Colorado.

Like many other cannabis writers, I routinely express my interest in and love of terpenes, the compounds found in cannabis and other plants that are responsible for a plant’s (or strain’s) smell and flavor. Cannabis has them, hops have them, lavender has them, citrus fruits have them…see the connection? One of the most common and popular cannabis and hop terpenes, myrcene, is also relatively abundant in mangos. The high myrcene levels in both pot and mangos has made some cannabis consumers swear that eating the fruit after smoking enhances their high, while myrcene has also shown potential for aiding with pain relief and muscle relaxation when paired with THC. So give it up for mangos, fellow tokers. They’re here to help — with the munchies, at the very least.
So where are all the mango-named strains?

Dozens, if not hundreds, of strains carry the sweet, tangy flavor of mangos, yet only a few strains bear the fruit’s name. So I was happy to see a local pot shop carrying Mango Kush, one of the few established mango-inspired strains I could find, along with Mango and Mango Haze.

 

Sales data has shown a consistent growth in cannabis extracts and other forms of consumption as the legal pot industry advances. While part of the allure is sheer novelty, many new technologies have given medical patients more standardized treatment and retail users more consistent effects.

Colorado extraction company Ebbu’s products are known for unconventional consumption methods, like its water-infusing THC drops that landed the company a partnership with Blue Moon creator Keith Villa to manufacturer a THC-infused, non-alcoholic beer. The company represents a shift toward chemistry in the legal cannabis community, mapping out the vast and varying constellations of different cannabinoids. But what can the plant’s genetic makeup do for mankind as we learn more about it? We chatted with Ebbu general manager Damon Michaels to find out.

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