Butane is, after all, a dangerous substance and even trace amounts of it can be left in the oil when the process is complete.
There is also a heated debate about whether honey oil made with butane is 100% safe for consumption. It’s better to let those with plenty of experience do the deed rather than try it yourself and explode something. Misusing it in a DIY-attempt to make your own honey oil can result in serious injury and even death. We’re not going to go into the details of butane extraction here because butane is a highly-flammable chemical. After “blasting” the butane through the marijuana material, the butane is allowed to evaporate leaving behind butane hash oil (or BHO). The most common solvent is butane so you’ll often hear people refer to butane extraction. You can take your trim, your shake, even your cast-off material, run it through an extraction process, and come up with some pretty good honey oil. The nice thing about the extraction process is that it can be performed on all manner of marijuana plant matter. When the “stripping” process is complete, the solvent is removed leaving the THC, CBD, CBN, terpenes, and flavonoids behind. This just means that some solvent (like isopropyl alcohol, chloroform, or carbon dioxide) is pushed through the marijuana plant matter to strip away the trichomes and other chemical goodies.
Honey oil is most typically made through a process called solvent extraction. Because of that molecular arrangement, wax is often opaque and exhibits coconut-oil-like characteristics. Wax, on the other hand, is that same marijuana concentrate with its molecules in a jumbled mess (like a pile). Because of that molecular arrangement, shatter is often translucent and exhibits peanut-brittle-like characteristics. Shatter and wax are really just cooled and dried forms of the honey oil.Īt the most basic, shatter is a marijuana concentrate with all of its molecules stacked one on top of the other (like a wall). Think of honey oil as a transition phase between the bud you smoke and the stuff you dab. These are the two forms that are most readily useable in the dabbing process. Honey oil is really only used for one thing: to make shatter and wax. But take that same marijuana, run it through an extraction process, and the resultant concentrate (hash oil or honey oil) can have upwards of 80% THC content. That’s plenty of THC to send you on a truly righteous journey. Really good raw marijuana that you smoke typically contains 20% THC. So what makes honey oil so great? Again, it goes back to the word concentrate. Hash oil became known as honey oil because the concentrate has the amber color of, you guessed it, honey. Honey oil is the non-technical term (pot culture has a lot of those) for hash oil. That somewhere has become known, among other things, as honey oil. But these novel forms of marijuana have to come from somewhere. Rather, it’s the noun that means a stronger, more potent version of the original.ĭabbing usually involves shatter or wax. And no, that’s not the verb that means to focus. And while that may not sound much different than the smoking that preceded it, dabbing was a giant leap forward in the consumption of cannabis products.ĭabbing was a revolution in the world of weed because of one little word: concentrate. If you’re not familiar with the process, dabbing involves vaporizing a marijuana concentrate and then inhaling the resultant fumes.
Then, just 16 short years ago, dabbing exploded onto the scene and with dabbing comes honey oil. For decades, if not centuries, smoking was the best, most convenient method of reaping the benefits that marijuana had to offer.