Cannabis Concentrates: How To Make Rosin
- 1. Rosin
- 2. What is rosin?
- 3. Why is rosin different?
- 4. How is rosin made?
- 4. a. A quick rundown of homemade hair-straightener rosin
- 4. b. What is the potential yield of homemade hair straightener rosin?
- 5. Is rosin a full-spectrum extract?
- 6. The best strains to grow for homemade rosin
- 7. In conclusion
Rosin is one of the easiest concentrates you can make when home-growing cannabis seeds. Unlike other extracts like BHO which uses solvents, rosin is solventless and only requires heat and pressure to be made, making it safer to produce.
1. Rosin
Over the past couple of years, rosin has become more popular, although applying heat and pressure was not invented exclusively for cannabis. The desire to produce good quality concentrates at home has increased the amount of rosin presses available in the market, and although rosin presses are called “everyman’s concentrates” due to its simplicity, this concentrate can be of super high quality.
2. What Is Rosin?
Even though it is a solventless concentrate and the production process is different, it is commercialized with the same purpose as solvent-based extracts: a more potent product. And like all other similar products, rosin is a more potent product that consists of extracting all the compounds in the trichomes, discarding the plant material, and keeping what matters the most to almost all consumers: cannabinoids, terpenes, and flavonoids.
Rosin is a rather new type of concentrate in the world of weed that has rapidly gained vast popularity. It’s created using a simple equation that consists of both heat and pressure. When applied to cannabis buds, these factors squeeze at the resin contained in trichomes. These glandular structures are situated on the surface of weed flowers and contain valuable chemical constituents, such as cannabinoids and terpenes. While expensive presses are used to make large batches of rosin, weed lovers can use a simple combination of hair straighteners and parchment paper to make their own stash of potent rosin at home. After pressing the weed and heating it slightly, the resin is a golden sticky substance that can be consumed in a manner of ways, including dabbing and vaping.
Rosin has become so loved by cannabis consumers because it’s a rather clean product. No solvents are used in the process, which eliminates the risk of residues within the concentrate itself, and minimizes these chemicals entering the wider environment. Compared to a standard bud, rosin exerts a more powerful high. You can compare it to hash, in that it has a much higher concentration of THC and other cannabinoids than weed flowers, by volume.
3. Why Is Rosin Different?
Actually, rosin itself is not much different from solvent-based extracts. The difference is in the process because rosin is made with a machine in which we control the heat, pressure, and how long they are applied, we can achieve almost all the different consistencies and textures in the market. By applying different combinations of heat and pressure we can make from shatter to sugar, budder, wax, and even THC diamonds.
4. How Is Rosin Made?
Rosin can be made at home with a rosin press, nowadays there are a lot of brands to choose from, each one having its cons and pros. Even though their price can be elevated for the usual home grower, starting at around $350, the investment is worth it. Have in mind that the final product will depend on the quality of the material going in, if you can grow really good flowers, the result can be as good as or better than what you find in a lot of dispensaries.
To make rosin properly, you will need flowers or hash, a rosin press, filter bags, and parchment paper. A good tip to produce the best rosin possible, instead of pressing flowers you have to press kief made with the water hash or dry sift hash methods.
The first step is to fill the filter bags with cannabis, make sure you leave a little bit of space so that when the filter bags are smashed they don’t blow out. These filter bags are similar to the bags used when making bubble hash or the filter mesh used in dry sift and will allow the oils to come out while the plant material stays in the bags. The filled filter bags must be placed inside an “envelope” of parchment paper, this paper is where the rosin will be collected, so you must use quite a big piece of paper folded in half, with the filter bag full of cannabis in the middle.
After you have everything ready, you have to adjust time, temperature, and pressure, this is entirely up to you and the product you wish to achieve. These factors also depend on the brand of rosin press you’re using, make sure you have all the info you need before starting to make your own rosin. When you have everything ready to go, place the parchment paper with the bag in the middle of the two press plates and start the process, after around 1 min you will see the rosin starting to flow out.
Depending on the consistency you’re going for, you can have a glass jar to collect the rosin or if you’re going for a more sappy texture, you can collect it from the parchment paper. If you can’t afford a rosin press at the moment, you can start making your own dabs at home with a hair-straightener, obviously, the quality won’t be near as good as with a rosin press because you cannot control anything other than pressure but the process is pretty similar.
A Quick Rundown of Homemade Hair-Straightener Rosin
The full list of equipment needed to make rosin extract at home is:
- A hair straightener
- Parchment paper (or baking paper)
- The cannabis to be used for the extraction. This can be a bud, trim, shake, kief, or hash
- A scraper to collect the rosin
- A pollen press (not 100% necessary but it helps the process)
- Filter bags
- Safety gloves
If you are looking for a good hair straightener to use for rosin production then we suggest either the Remington S9130S Hair Straightener (as it has super wide 2-inch heating plates, 30 different temp settings, and heats in only 15 seconds) or the KIPOZI Professional Titanium Flat Iron if you are looking for similar usability but at a much-reduced price. The first thing to keep in mind is that when using a hair straightener to make rosin extract, you need to take it slow. Never use more than about 1 gram of weed at a time as the heating plates are just not big enough to handle more than this. In reality, it is probably better to press closer to half a gram at a time. Next, grind up that sticky-icky.
If you have a pollen press, press ground up goodness in and turn it into a nice flat disk. You can just use a whole ungrounded nugget if you prefer, the results should not differ too much. If you are using buds then these can be placed directly into the parchment paper, but if you are wanting to turn your kief or hash into rosin then it is best to place it first into a filter bag and then wrap it up in the parchment paper. The best filter bag sizes for the different products are as follows:
- Dry sift/bubble hash/dry ice hash - 36 to 90 microns
- Pure hash - 25 to 70 micron
- Flower/trim/shake - 90 to 220 micron (or no bag)
Keep in mind that these filter bags will steal some of your precious rosin. When making rosin we usually use Bud, and don't bother with the bags as they are only there to grab some of the impurities which we don't actually mind. You end up with a bigger % of rosin this way. Plug in the hair straightener and turn that bad boy on. We reckon it's best to start with a lower temp and slowly increase it until you find that sweet spot. To get full spectrum rosin (an extract containing the full range of cannabinoids and terpenes contained in the flower) you need to keep the temps as low as possible. Terpenes are the first thing to evaporate when making rosin, so go low and go slow! 215°F (around 100°C) is a good place to start. Grab that safety glove (an oven mitt works perfectly), wrap up your weed in the parchment paper, and make a secure little envelope around it.
Place the hair straighter on a heat-proof table and have it standing so the plates are facing up and down. Place that little envelope of goodness on the bottom plate, and close the hair straighter so the weed package is snug inside. Push down (with the oven mitt-covered hand) for a good 15 to 20 seconds. You need to use a fair bit of pressure here. If you are doing it all correctly then you should instantly hear a nice clear sizzling sound. Let go of the hair straightener, remove your package of bud, and move that hot machine well out of the way. Accidental burns are common when making homemade rosin, especially if you have already been indulging in the good stuff. Carefully remove the weed from the parchment paper without touching any of the rosin surrounding it. Use a scraping tool to collect all that sticky goodness, and hey presto you have just made your very own rosin! You can repress the weed once more to ensure you haven't left anything behind, and can then use the leftover weed to make some light cannabutter if you like.
WHAT IS THE POTENTIAL YIELD OF HOMEMADE HAIR STRAIGHTENER ROSIN?
There is a huge range of factors that affect the potential yield when making rosin at home. The strain you use, the heat and pressure you apply, the quality of the resin, and even the relative humidity of the room you are working in can have an effect on the yield. But, in general, you can expect about a 7% - 15% return when using good quality flowers. So, if you start with a 1-gram bud, expect to get anywhere from .07 to .15 grams of rosin.
5. Is Rosin A Full-spectrum Extract?
As said above, with a rosin press you can control almost every aspect of the final product, so you can make full-spectrum rosin, but not all rosin has the full spectrum of cannabinoids. Full-spectrum concentrates are those which have all the different cannabinoids, to make full-spectrum rosin you must make it with a low amount of heat, this will affect the consistency and texture.
The low heat needed to make full-spectrum rosin will result in a more sappy consistency because it contains more oils, while diamonds and shatter need more heat and this will result in the evaporation of more cannabinoids and terpenes, resulting in a more brittle and potent product, like shatter or diamonds.
6. The Best Strains to Grow for Homemade Rosin
Here at FastBuds we have put in literal years of blood, sweat, and tears to produce the very best autoflowering strains on the planet. These strains are wide-reaching and super varied, but if you are in the market for a seed that will produce ridiculous amounts of resin with a terpene profile to match then there are a couple that we suggest.
The creme de la creme of the auto world, with a fantastically balanced high, 26% THC potency, and a terpene profile like no other. The resin production from Gorilla Auto Punch is otherworldly.
Our most potent option available right now with a ridiculous 27% THC count. It offers supersized yields, one of the most euphoric highs on the market, and so much resin it looks like it's been left out in a snowstorm.
An Indica dominant hybrid that will quite literally blow your socks off. This is our most sought-after strain for cultivators looking to turn their buds into extracts and offers one of the most unique terpene profiles ever produced with a whopping 24% THC count.
7. In Conclusion
Rosin is a very good way to make high-quality concentrates (obviously the quality depends on the material you’re pressing). Not only does it make good concentrates but it gives the user vast control of all variables, making it possible to produce almost every type of consistency and texture in the market.
If you’re adventuring into the rosin world, make sure you start with the highest quality material possible. For that, we recommend our new Strawberry Pie Auto. She produces loads of terpy trichomes all over the buds and leaves, perfect for extractions.
