What Is THC Distillate and How Is It Different from BHO?

These days we have dozens of different cannabis extracts on the market, but the newest hit is THC distillate which is totally different from BHO and other extracts.

What is THC distillate?

You’ve surely heard of distillation before—distilled water is a good example we can use.

Distilled water is water that gets evaporated and then rapidly cooled, so that it goes back into liquid form. This way the water gets purified.

Before we get into what THC distillate actually is, let’s first go over the definition of distillates in general.

According to Oxford Dictionaries, distillation is “the action of purifying a liquid by a process of heating and cooling”, and distillates are liquids that are the end result of this process.

Once you throw THC into that definition, the formula is pretty clear:

THC distillate is a cannabis extract made through short path distillation of cannabis oil, and it can be made from any type of cannabis oil (CO2, BHO, ethanol extract).

High-grade THC distillate is made in laboratories and takes an actual chemist to safely make.

During the process, all impurities and unwanted parts of the plant are removed.

THC distillate is so pure that it doesn’t even contain chlorophyll and it can reach up to 99% cannabinoid content. Impurities such as pesticides and fungi residuals, plant fats and waxes are all removed in the process.

The distillation process involves heating up and cooling explosive liquids, turning CO2 into a supercritical fluid, and several more steps. It’s safe to say that the process is much more complicated than BHO extraction.

In fact, labs that make THC distillates from scratch have fully automated systems that do decarboxylation, winterization, fractionation, and short path distillation one after another.

If you’re wondering whether you can make THC distillate on your own, I would always stick by the good old “if you don’t know what the word you’re reading means, don’t even consider doing it”.

It is safe to say that THC distillate is the clearest and most potent cannabis concentrate you can buy on the market today.

How is THC distillate different from BHO?

THC distillate is more potent and pure than BHO. Another major difference is in how they are made.

BHO is made through extracting THC from cannabis by using butane, and the end product can come out in various forms and consistencies.

The purest form of BHO is called shatter, and it comes almost always packed in a piece of baking paper. It gets its name for its resemblance to glass, and the manner in which it breaks up.

BHO can reach up to 70% THC, and some claim that after winterization they get an even more pure product at around 80% THC.

However, the purification process can be taken another step further, which is distilling the winterized BHO.

In essence, you can make THC distillate from BHO, but you can’t make BHO from THC distillate.

This type of extract is relatively new to the cannabis industry. THC distillates popped on the scene in the United States around mid-2015, while BHO and CO2 oils have been around for at least 10 years.

Another important piece of information may be that sales of distillate-filled cartridges have been steadily growing ever since their introduction.

Sales of distillate cartridges outgrew sales of other types of extracts in early 2017, according to BDS Analytics.

This isn’t to say that THC distillate is getting more popular than BHO.

In fact, I’d say it’s the other way around as BHO is still generally more popular. THC distillates took over only in this one market related to cartridges.

How to use THC distillate

THC distillate usually comes packed in very small syringes, as they are the easiest tool to both transport and manipulate the extract with.

There are many ways in which THC distillate is being used, however the most common is still dabbing.

THC distillate can be used as a sublingual drop, and it is much stronger ingested this way.

Is THC distillate edible?

THC distillate is edible, as it is made out of 99.9% organic contents. You can make edibles from distillate, although I wouldn’t recommend it.

Is THC distillate decarboxylated?

Yes. Cannabis is decarboxylated before the process of extraction even starts, which means that by the time you get the distillate, it’s already been decarbed, winterized, extracted, fractionated and distilled.

How to mix THC distillate with vape juice?

A great way to mix THC distillate and vape juice is by putting them together in a shot glass and then putting that shot glass in a pot with hot water. There’s a great video explaining the whole process you can see right here, except it’s done with wax but the principle is the same.

Basically, all you need to do is mix your vape juice with the cannabis extract and then apply some heat to them, after which they will blend together.