As concentrates become more popular, you may be wondering how shelf life and other factors can impact the wax, shatter, and oil have that make up a large portion of the market today. The reality is, there is no clearly defined answer.
How long your concentrate will stay fresh and potent is dependent on a variety of factors that can work to degrade the material over time. To understand your storage needs, it’s important to learn more about how cannabis breaks down and what you can do to prevent it.
Environmental Factors
Sunlight
Light from the sun and other sources can work to degrade the terpene, flavonoid, and cannabinoid content of concentrates and can slowly change the consistency of your product. The longer the exposure to light, the more it begins to crystallize and change shape. As terpenes degrade, effectiveness and taste are also compromised.
Oxygen
Exposure to ambient air allows your concentrate to come into contact with oxygen. Oxidation, the same process that causes iron to rust, affects your oil in a much similar way. While you won’t see red deposits begin to form you will see a marked loss in potency as the oxygen works to break down essential compounds within the oil.
Heat
Warm temperatures can bring things to a close much sooner than you would like. As heat stimulates molecules on an atomic level and causes them to move more quickly, their interactions with other molecules are more frequent as well. High temperatures work rapidly to degrade potency and diminish flavor while rendering your valuable medicine unreliable and inconsistent.
Time
While it’s often said that “time heals all things” this may not be true of cannabis. As time goes by, even if other factors are limited or controlled, time will still work to break down the cannabinoids and terpenes within the plant or oil.
How to store cannabis oil
By understanding the impact the environment has, you can work to extend the lifespan of cannabis oil by learning and using a few simple tricks and tips. First, be sure to store your marijuana in a cool, dark place. By keeping it out of warm places and away from the light you help preserve freshness and avoid harmful UV radiation that can deteriorate potency quickly. Next, be sure to keep your precious products in the smallest air-tight container possible. As oxygen can degrade cannabinoids and other compounds, it’s necessary to avoid excess air at all times.
It can be tempting to toss your concentrate in a drawer or empty cabinet for storage. Drawers and cabinets can collect warm air that builds during the day, and they can also serve as a catch-all for miscellaneous items around the house. Increased activity may disturb the storage process and can also let harmful light enter. Frequent opening and closing of the primary storage container should also be avoided.
Keeping your cannabis oil in the refrigerator or freezer is an excellent way to provide a healthy level of protection from the harmful environment around us. If considering bulk storage, it may be a good plan to invest in a few high-quality airtight containers that ensure proper operation when frozen.
A quality container should seal well against air and moisture and should also prevent light from entering. Specialized cannabis jars are available commercially that incorporate a blue, green, or amber tint for UV protection. With the cannabis user in mind, Honey® provides airtight and UV projection tubes with all our products to ensure quality storage and remove the guesswork.
The process matters
The reality is if you have a bad product to start out with, the concentrate that results will carry those same imperfections. Because cannabis concentrate is just that, a concentrated form of cannabis, those imperfections, and impurities that may go otherwise unnoticed in flower will be heightened during processing when condensed into oil, shatter, or wax.
When looking to maximize cannabis oil shelf life, the method of extraction is also important. There are varying qualities and degrees of extraction within the industry. From simple ice-water methods to more advanced closed-loop co2 systems, a wide array of processes has evolved to meet the growing needs of consumers. While each method offers its advantages, distillates have taken center stage recently for their incredible 99% purity rating.
If you’re considering the optimum product for long-term storage of cannabis products, the purity and potency of distillates place them firmly at the top of the list. All distillates are not created equal either though. Even this top contender has some competition within the ranks.
To put it simply, the more you refine a product the cleaner it becomes. However, the process of refinement and distillation also degrades and damages valuable terpenes. Terpenes serve to carry flavor as well as enhance the entourage effect found amongst cannabinoids and terpenes.
By utilizing a patented short-path distillate procedure that incorporates fresh mapped and ensemble infused process, Honey® has created a distillate that offers potency, versatility, and reliability far surpassing the rest of the industry. Be sure to review the wide selection of pre-filled vape cartridges offered by Honey® today!