Dabbing for beginners: Confessions of a cautious concentrate newbie

This post is part of our High-tech High series, which explores weed innovations, and our cultural relationship with cannabis, as legalization in several U.S. states, Canada, and Uruguay moves the market further out of the shadows.

It's 2018, and marijuana vape pens are so common in California they may as well be on the state flag. (They're certainly more widespread than bears. Sorry, bears.) 

Pens are not the preserve of stoner stereotypes, either: Walk through the Financial District of San Francisco on a sunny day after work, and at the outdoor tables of wine bars and pubs alike, you'll easily spot dozens of those slim, telltale cartridges being casually withdrawn from suit jackets and purses for a politely discreet two-second sip. 

In a few short years of legalization, vape pens have become the cocktails of weed: pretty, classy, concentrated, available in many intriguing varieties, dinner-party friendly; a nice little sippable pick-me-up, presuming you don't have too much. It's fair to say I am familiar with (and respectful of) pens and cocktails in equal measure. 

SEE ALSO: How vape pens allow you to better manage your high

Then at the other end of the spectrum, there's dabbing. Until last week, like a lot of people, I would have described dabbing as the crack-smoking of weed; the thing you do if you want to get seriously messed up, like downing a pitcher of a particularly strong cocktail. 

But I also would have had no idea what I was talking about. Because it turns out dabbing is a lot closer to downing a double espresso than chugging martinis.

The rhyme and reason of rigs 

From a chemistry-class perspective, dabbing and vaping are almost the same thing. The pens heat liquid cannabis concentrate (added to various kinds of oil) very fast to create vapor, whereas dabbing is simply about heating solid cannabis concentrate very fast to create vapor. The solid version unadulterated by oil may be a little healthier because you don’t add anything in the extraction process, but dabbing has historically involved a cumbersome, daunting industrial setup.

Dabbers own "rigs" that look like they belong in the lair of an evil scientist. They use blowtorches, albeit indirectly, and vape their solid concentrate on a "nail" or an "e-nail." They spend hundreds of dollars on butane alone. I'd even heard of dabbers placing concentrate between red hot kitchen knives. Getting high around large hot pointy objects? Yeah, that's a big fat nope from me. Besides, why bother if it's the same effect as a vape pen?

Then I interviewed Roger Volodarsky, the Los Angeles-based founder CEO of Puffco, who assured me it was most definitely not the same effect. Volodarsky created the Puffco Peak, a small push-button "smart rig" that "removes the stigma and the learning curve from dabbing," he says (and makes you pay $380 for the privilege — far cheaper than the average rig, still pricy for the average consumer). 

Price notwithstanding, the Peak has been getting rave reviews all year, including the ultimate design distinction of being compared to an iPhone. But more than the Steve Jobs of rig design, Volodarsky sees himself as a dabbing evangelist. He's the Johnny Appleseed of solid concentrate. And he thinks people like me have greatly misunderstood the effects and the benefits of dabbing.

"That's likely THC distillate in your vape pen," Volodarsky said dismissively when I made the comparison. "That's one slim shade of cannabis, and not a fraction of the experience of dabbing. When you're consuming concentrate, you're leaving behind CBN, which is [a cannabinoid molecule] known for making you sleepy and disassociated. When I dab, it's like having a coffee. I'm not slowed down. I'm more interested." He described the effect as "zoning in."

Well, okay then. Who doesn't want to be more interested? Who couldn't use being more focused and "zoned in"? Who has consumed cannabis (or cocktails, for that matter) and not had the occasional unreliable experience where they wished the result was less head-foggy, with more ability to hold down a conversation? Maybe Volodarsky was on to something with this no CBN thing. 

I found a few studies suggesting that "reclaim" —  dark sticky stuff left over after dabbing — was indeed unusually high in the CBN molecule. But that didn't seem conclusive, so I ran Voldarsky's claim past my next interviewee, scientist Tristan Watkins, who has a Ph.D in what cannabinoids do to the brain. He cautioned that more study was needed — a perennial problem for what is still, unbelievably, a schedule 1 drug at the Federal level. 

But Watkins did add his own memorable anecdote to the pile. He recalled that one time, he had set out to dab the CBN-heavy reclaim of a CBN-heavy strain. He was so immediately ready for a snooze that "it was a struggle to go upstairs to get to bed," he said. 

If we have indeed isolated the must-sleep-now molecule in marijuana, that alone could be a game-changer. Some $2 billion is spent every year on sleeping pills in the U.S. alone; three quarters of that is spent on prescription drugs. CBN would probably be a lot safer and more reliable than a hypnotic like Ambien, which can apparently lead to crazy tweeting. 

Meanwhile, the CBN-free, pot-as-coffee market could be just as big a deal. So when Puffco sent me a Peak to review, I swallowed my reluctance and marched into my nearest recreational dispensary. 

Peak Experience

That's where I ran into the other problem that confronts dabbing newbies: the confusing varieties of non-liquid concentrate. They too are cursed with names as foreboding as rig and nail. There are the solid shards known as "shatter," which look like something Walter White might cook up. Then there's "wax," which calls to mind Madame Tussauds' and ears and ewwww. 

On the advice of my budtender, I dropped $45 on something called Sweet and Sour live resin sauce by a company called Raw Garden. Live resin is made by a process that preserves the plant immediately after harvesting, flash freezing it so it doesn't dry out and lose its terpenes in the traditional curing process. 

Still, the cost seemed outrageous for what you get: a thumb-sized dollop of yellowish goo, albeit fascinating yellowish goo studded with tiny reflective crystal forms. 

Raw Garden's marketing copy assured me I was getting "single-source, fresh-frozen, whole-plant flowers" that had been "refined into a flavorful concentration of terpenes and cannabinoids" via "advanced crystallization techniques." A QR code on the container took me directly to an independent lab test of this batch, certified free of all impurities. 

All of which seemed appropriately uncompromising and futuristic for the Peak. Like the stuff it vaporizes, the Peak is surprisingly small. It looks like a bong from the 22nd century — a 7-inch-tall one that fits in the palm of your hand and carries a Katniss-like quiver of Q-tips to keep it clean. 

Image: puffco

It may be simple and push-button so far as rigs go, but the Peak is not un-intimidating for a beginner. There are a lot of confusing spare parts when you unbox it, each in their miniature box, and I reflected on the fact that an "atomizer" is just as intimidatingly named as a "nail." 

The Peak, at least, is mercifully nail free; you merely place a tiny bit of concentrate (somewhere between a grain of rice and a pea) inside a ceramic chamber (to the right in the picture above, under the glass stopper). Then put a tiny amount of water, a fluid ounce or so, in the main tube. 

The main impediment is charging up the base, which took about 2 hours to fully charge via USB the first time. But that was enough for dozens of cordless sessions, each one initiated by a double tap on the device's only button. The Peak hits its temperature mark in just 20 seconds. Each session is as compact as the device and its contents, keeping the heat on for just 12 seconds. That's all you'll need, trust me. 

It's also essential to learn the color code of the Peak. A single tap of the button cycles between blue, green, red, and white, which increases in temperature in that order. On an early attempt to dab with my also-a-beginner wife, we mistakenly set the Peak on white — assuming red was the highest setting, therefore white must be the lowest. 

The result? "It stole an afternoon and confined me to the couch with racing thoughts," is how my wife describes it now. (Meanwhile, as if to prove how much this stuff affects everyone differently, I acquired a sudden urge to clean the house.) 

But then there was the blue setting. Ah, the blue setting! Blue means the Peak is vaporizing at a mere 450 degrees Fahrenheit, versus 600 degrees for white. At that temperature you can really taste the complex flavors from terpenes coming through in the vapor, chilled by filtration through the water. (Because it's just vapor, there are none of the horrors of dirty bong water; the only part that needs cleaning is the ceramic bowl.) 

More importantly, I discovered, Volodarsky was right. After a single blue session, I felt focused and utterly calm, like I'd just downed a large cappuccino. I fizzed with ideas, but more importantly I was capable of remembering them for more than a few seconds and writing them all down. 

The traditional forgetfulness was gone, and conversation came easily — something I confirmed by taking it to a dinner party where friends passed it around and nattered happily on a wide range of topics. (Because the Peak disassembles into two main pieces, the base and the glass tube, it's surprisingly portable.) 

And here's the result I didn't expect: Almost immediately, I lost all interest in vape pens. My attitude had flipped 180 degrees. Pens seemed a pale imitation now, foggy and flavorless. Why would anyone bother with them?

Image: PUFFCO

I was curious about whether this dislike extended to Puffco's more portable device, the $80 Puffco Plus pen. Like the Peak, the Plus is a groundbreaking product in its category; it's the first dabbing pen to have a built-in "dart." You use it to secure the wax or resin, as in the image above, before screwing it in to the ceramic chamber. (Other dabbing pens, and even the Peak itself, require you to use a separate and fiddly metal tool to apply the concentrate.) 

My verdict on the Plus? Meh. It's okay, I guess; better and slightly more clear-headed than a regular vape pen. But you're inhaling through a rubber flange at the top, which is kind of annoying, and it certainly doesn't give you the rich, chilled flavor of the Peak. Plus the concentrate seemed to disappear a lot faster in the Plus, which. I suspect I was also therefore inhaling a larger dose of CBN, as the experience wasn't as clear-headed as the Peak.

After the peak experience of the Peak, in fact, it is possible that I am ruined for other forms of cannabis consumption. All of them seem like going back to basic box wine after you've tasted the rich complexity of a good pinot noir for the first time. 

Volodarsky says he'll still enjoy a joint every now and then, usually at the end of the day when he actually welcomes those foggy, sleepy CBN effects. Personally, I'd be happy to remain smokeless, but I wouldn't say no to a strong CBN-rich concentrate for the nights when I need to combat insomnia. 

Just don't give it to me in vape pen form. 

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