What Is Dabbing? A Beginner's Guide to Dabs, Rigs and Safety

Dabbing means vaporizing a small dose of cannabis concentrate on a very hot surface, usually the nail of a glass dab rig, and inhaling the vapor. Concentrates can run from 50% to 95% THC, so dabs hit much harder than flower: start tiny and know where your concentrate comes from. If smoking and vaping are familiar territory and edibles (strong, and not everyone knows how to make them) still feel a bit mysterious, dabs are the next level.

So what exactly does dabbing, or just "a dab," mean? It's one of the newest and most misunderstood ways to consume weed, and dabbing wax is still a bit controversial.

Put simply, dabbing is a way to consume concentrated cannabis oil by dropping a small amount onto a hot surface and letting it vaporize. Sure, putting hash oil in a bowl or a joint isn't exactly new, but dabbing gives you nothing but the potent effect and flavor of the hash oil itself.

Step one is making the concentrate. That means pulling the essential oils out of the cannabis plant (they're stored in the trichomes), usually with a chemical solvent like butane, CO2 or propane, or by mechanical means such as sieving screens.

Concentrates come in lots of forms and go by lots of names, depending on the method and the final texture: wax, smash, live resin, bubble hash, rosin, kief, and the list goes on... The point is that these products are extremely pure and can contain anywhere from 50% to 95% THC, depending on the extraction method and the skill of whoever made it.

When this concentrate, which contains no plant matter, hits a hot surface, it bubbles up into a flavorful, potent vapor that you then pull through a glass piece that looks and works a lot like a regular bong.

The most common way to dab is with a glass rig. A proper dab setup has a few parts: the rig itself, the nail (the metal or quartz piece attached to the rig that actually gets heated), the dabber (the little tool you scoop with), and a torch to heat the nail.

Chemically speaking, well-made dabs are cleaner than regular cannabis because they're free of plant matter (and the carcinogens that can come from burning it). A badly made concentrate, though, comes with its own set of problems, like residual solvents, mold and pesticides concentrated from the plants it was made from.

The main problem with dabs is that a lot of people make them at home. That's not only dangerous for whoever's making them (when flammable solvents are involved), it also gives the end user an incomplete, unreliable product. 

Dabs can be a cleaner, tastier alternative to smoking flower, but they're also very strong and can catch people off guard. Usually the worst-case scenario is greening out. So if it's your first time, take a tiny amount at the lowest temperature you can. And it's crucial to NEVER inhale while the nail is still glowing red hot, because that smoke hits really, really hard. 

Beginners who want to get into dabbing should probably start with a vaporizer to get used to concentrates in general, and only then try a rig.

Bottom line: you should probably only dab if A) you're after more potency, flavor and medicinal effect than regular weed delivers, with a faster, more predictable onset than edibles, and B) you're sure the product you've got is of verified quality. Concentrates are having a moment, and while they can be a purer way to consume cannabis, it's super important to know where they come from and how they were made, same as with any bud you smoke. 

How do you get more resin on your buds?

For indoor grows, light is your main lever for more resin. One popular technique stresses the plant with darkness to push trichome (resin) production: about 4 days before harvest, the plant goes into total darkness for 48-72 hours. Some LED panels also include UV diodes, and UV light pushes the plant to protect itself by coating up in trichomes. Nutrients help too: Delta-9 (a bloom booster, not the cannabinoid) is a well-known additive for boosting flowering and trichomes, and amino acids are another good option.

Outdoors you're working with natural sunlight, so there's no messing with the light. What does help are nutrients and stimulants that boost flowering and trichomes. Another trick some growers swear by is putting ice on the root zone every day after sundown during the last week before harvest, on the theory that when temperatures drop a bit and the lights go out, resin production goes up.

All in all, cannabis extracts have become one of the fastest-growing sectors in the industry over the past few years. They pack a high cannabinoid content and open the door to different ways of consuming, whether for recreational or medical use.

What is THC and how does it work?

 THC works by binding to the body's cannabinoid receptors, which are found throughout the brain and nervous system. Traces of THC can be detected in the body far longer than most other drug compounds, even though the psychoactive effects only last a few hours.

Cannabinoid receptors are concentrated in areas of the brain tied to thinking, memory, pleasure, coordination and time perception. THC latches onto these receptors and activates them, affecting a person's memory, pleasure, movement, thinking, concentration, coordination, and sensory and time perception.

 THC stimulates brain cells to release dopamine, which produces euphoria. It also interferes with how information gets processed in the hippocampus, the part of the brain responsible for forming new memories.

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