Understanding the difference between BHO and solventless cannabis concentrates
I love working in the cannabis industry. I get paid to educate myself on new strains and administration methods as I consult with cannabis companies regarding the companies they stock in their stores. It’s hard to get an idea of what consumers want across the board when the available products are changing all of the time. For instance, when I started about 10 years ago the predominant cannabis concentrates were butane hash oil extracts. Heat pressed rosin and live rosin weren’t available until a few years after I entered the industry. These days solventless products like live rosin are the highest tier cannabis concentrates you can purchase. Even diamonds and sauce, which are butane based, aren’t nearly as coveted as six-star hash rosin. That’s not just because of the use of chemical solvents in making BHO, but also because of the cost of the process. It’s fairly cheap to make a terpene-rich butane hash product with lots of plant material and you can be confident the yield will be consistent with multiple batches. Making hashish involves freezing plant material and mechanically separating the THC trichomes with water and agitation. To get a six-star hash, the trichomes have to be filtered down to the finest micron possible, giving you the purest solventless cannabis extract with the least amount of plant matter left inside. To turn this six-star into rosin, you simply use a hydraulic heat press to squeeze the rosin oils out. These days it’s the solventless cannabis extracts that fetch the most amount of money. Some places see grams of live hash rosin being sold for $120 after the customer pays state and county cannabis taxes.