How To Make Dabs at Home (The Safe Way)

If you have some weed lying around but would rather do dabs than smoke the flower, you can make some dabs at home. Some people prefer to smoke dabs because they are stronger, and because there’s less material you have to inhale. Essentially, dabs are extremely concentrated forms of marijuana. But before you go ahead and make dabs, make sure you have the right rig lying around.

Unlike flowers, it’s really hard to roll up dabs into a joint and smoke them – unless you have even more buds lying around and can mix it into your buds. It’s more efficient to have a dabbing rig in your possession before you make dabs. It looks kind of like your regular bubbler, except that there’s a spot to put your oil and nowhere to put some buds.

Now, I have to make a safety precaution here. This article is not about how to make your own BHO. Don’t try that at home, unless you want to blow everything up. And yes, it has happened many times before. So today you’re going to learn how to make an extract in less than five minutes without a solvent and completely safely! The method I am going to teach you is how to make marijuana rosin. There’s no risk of blowing up your parent’s kitchen or worse still, the entire apartment – and within minutes you’ll be dabbing away at a powerful marijuana extract.

How to make marijuana rosin

The good news is that you don’t need any kind of chemical knowledge about how to make marijuana rosin. It is completely foolproof, and totally appropriate for people who have no chemical knowledge of extraction whatsoever. But I do recommend having an indica strain for this, because they are usually heavy with trichomes. The idea is to use heat to remove the oily substance from the outside of your buds.

For this method, you’re going to need your buds, a parchment paper (or a paper towel) and a hair straightener. You could use a household iron, but definitely not one that blows out steam. The reason I suggest a hair straightener is because newer models give you the option of adjusting the temperature. It also helps to have something lying around to scrape off your marijuana rosin once it’s done. Tweezers work just fine.

You should line the parchment paper with the buds inside, with enough room to fold the parchment paper over. Turn the hair straightener on to the lowest setting. Fold the parchment paper over your buds so that you do not apply heat directly to the buds themselves. Slide the folded end into the hair straightener and apply pressure for 3-7 seconds. You will hear a crackling sound – that’s the sound of the oils coming off your buds and onto the parchment paper. The paper will catch all the oils that come off so don’t be scared that it’ll come through – it won’t.

Quickly remove your flattened bud from inside the parchment paper. It could be sticky and hot, so be very careful. Let the parchment paper cool down. What you will see on the paper is something that looks a lot like shatter or wax, and it isn’t really any different. Except that it doesn’t contain any residual contaminants from the solvent, of course.

Once it is dried, you can use a dabbing pen to remove the rosin from the parchment. If it is hard enough you can probably even peel it off with tweezers. Your marijuana rosin is literally ready to be dabbed!

What to do with the leftover buds?

Marijuana users usually hate to part with any left over material from their buds. I understand – that’s valuable material! Well, you don’t have to throw them away. You can get creative with the buds that you have fried in the hair straightener. They have actually been decarboxylated in the process, which means you can put them into some butter and make cannabutter. The other option is to smoke them, although that’s not the best way to get the rest of the cannabinoids out.

The fact that they have been decarboxylated means that you can even eat them as they are. If you’re not into the taste of fried marijuana, you can put them into a cup of tea and drink some cannabis tea after your powerful dab. Enjoy making rosin safely at home!