How cannabis concentrates and extracts are made

Extracting the best part of cannabis plants and concentrating them into oils is an involved process. As you might expect, each concentrate requires its own distinct process. 

Clearly California operates in a large facility with state-of-the-art equipment to produce high-quality concentrates with undetectable amounts of impurities. We encourage you to check out our products. 

Here’s how each concentrate and extract is made. 

Live & cured resin

Live resin is made with fresh frozen cannabis, while cured resin is made from dried plant material. Cured resin has significantly fewer trichomes than fresh frozen cannabis, so live resin is considered higher quality for this reason.

Note: Cured resin is also a catch-all term for extractions from dried cannabis that will turn into shatter, wax, budder, or other solvent extracts. 

Resin is extracted with a solvent. The plant matter goes into a machine called a closed-loop extractor with butane, supercritical CO2, or another solvent, and it’s cycled through until the cannabinoids and terpenes have been stripped from the plant. If it’s live resin, the frozen plant matter is kept at cryogenic temperatures throughout the extraction process.

The oil from this process is heated to evaporate any remaining solvent (which is usually vacuumed out of the air and reused). Then thinning agents and emulsifiers are added to create the desired consistency.

Clearly California makes several live resin concentrates. 

Shatter

Shatter goes through a similar process as live resin. But shatter is left alone to cool instead of being stirred and adding additional substances to get a dense texture. That’s what gives it the glassy texture. 

Wax

Wax is made when the solvent is agitated with low heat, causing the oil to crystalize and solidify.

Budder/batter

Budder is primarily made from cured cannabis buds, while batter is made from fresh frozen cannabis.

Distillate

Distillate goes through either the same process as resin – chemical extraction – or through physical separation, such as extreme vacuum pressure and heat. The extraction often contains impurities like cannabis plant fats and chlorophyll that need to be removed. 

Ethanol is then mixed with the extraction and placed in a cold environment (called winterization) for one to two days which causes the impurities to separate. Then the mixture is filtered to remove the ethanol. 

Crystalline/Diamonds 

With crystalline, THC or CBD is extracted from all other cannabinoids to produce pure isolate crystals without flavor, color, or aroma. THC extracts can have up to 99.9% concentration.

Clearly California uses a proprietary method of extraction that goes very low and very slow. We run the fresh frozen harvest through a hash machine, where it sits for a few days, which results in a froth of High Terpene Extract on the top that gets poured away. What’s left on the bottom is a high-cannabinoid extract – an isolate. That isolate is full of beautiful crystal Diamonds that we add to our Twin Fin products. 

Sauce

Sauce is made by taking longer – sometimes weeks – to purge solvent from the mixture. During this process, terpene oil adheres to the solvent longer, allowing cannabinoid-rich crystals to form and sink to the bottom while the terp-rich oil floats to the top. 

Clearly California has a High Terpene Extract concentrate (in the Twin Fin), which is made from this oil on the top, and Diamonds (also in the Twin Fin), which are made from the crystals on the bottom. Sauce is a mixture of these two products. 

Rosin

Rosin does not use a chemical process. Rather than using a solvent, cannabis plants are put into a machine that uses ice water to thoroughly remove trichome heads and crystals from the plant. Once removed, the material is then collected and pressed between two hot plates, turned into oil, and cooled. Rosin can be made from cured plant material (flower rosin), frozen plant material (live rosin), or hash (hash rosin). 

Bubble Hash

Bubble hash, like rosin, is made using ice water. But instead of being hot pressed into oil, the liquid from the ice water machine is filtered through a series of mesh bags to remove the plant matter. The “meltier” the hash, the higher quality.

Note: Bubble hash can be made into rosin if pressed between hot plates. 

Ready to go?

If you need some help choosing a product to get started,we can help.