Weed vape juice and carts are easy to come by. High-quality growers and manufacturers make some amazing cannabis vape juice. It’s ready to go right out of the package, and it doesn’t take you any time to put together. This solution is effective and convenient, and many people find that it suits them perfectly.
There are still those of us who are always down for a DIY project. If you make your own edibles, you’re also probably curious about making your own cannabis vape juice. This process is a lot more complicated than decarbing some weed and whipping up a batch of brownies.
If you’re willing to stay committed to it, you’ll wind up with your own custom juice that you can enjoy whenever you want.
Is it worth it to make cannabis vape juice at home?
Making cannabis vape juice at home is kind of difficult, and kind of expensive. It’s not like making cannabutter or cannabis-infused oil to use as a baking ingredient or a tincture. It’s a much more involved process that involves improvised tools to extract rosin and a complicated process of formulating your juice.
We’ll give it to you straight: it’s definitely more worthwhile to buy a high-quality premade cannabis vape juice or live resin cart than it is to attempt to make them at home. Factories are manufacturers equipped with ingredients and special equipment to streamline the process and prevent contact with contaminants, and this isn’t something you can do at home.
Vape juice is something that you inhale. If your vape juice becomes contaminated with mold or bacteria, you’re giving spores and bad cells a quick and easy line directly to your lungs. Manufacturers are held to very high standards to assure this doesn’t happen, and their products are usually tested by a third-party lab to verify their safety.
If you decide to make cannabis vape juice at home, keep in mind that you cannot assure the quality will be the same or that the end product will be as safe as vape juice created from fresh cannabis in a sterile and suitable setting.
Extracting rosin from your buds
Many methods of extracting cannabis involve special equipment and solvents. These methods are dangerous to attempt at home. Solvents like butane are highly reactive and can explode if not handled properly. The safest cannabis extract to make at home is rosin extract. If you’re going to be making your own vape juice, rosin is the way to go.
Rosin can be extracted by forcing heat on either side of a cannabis flower and collecting the oil and trichomes that melt away.
The easiest way to do this is to place the buds you want to use for extract in the middle of a piece of parchment paper. Choosing fresher buds that appear to have a high resin content is the best way to go. You’ll likely see a greater yield. Start with three grams of bud, and don’t grind it. Roll the parchment up like a burrito with the bud inside.
Take your parchment-wrapped bud and stick it between the flat heating elements of a hair straightener, heated to about 250 degrees Fahrenheit. If your hair straightener doesn’t have a temperature dial or display, it won’t work for this purpose. These straighteners usually get too hot and will activate and burn the cannabis before the rosin can be extracted.
Press down as hard as you can, and keep pressing until you can see the rosin melting out of the buds. Don’t allow the rosin to escape the parchment pouch. Check for signs visible from the outside that resin is beginning to escape. It should leave patches on the parchment paper.
After a few minutes, carefully remove the hot wrapped buds from the iron and check the inside of the parchment to see how much rosin is visible. When it looks like you’ve extracted about half a gram, remove the buds and refrigerate your parchment for about half an hour.
Prepping your vape juice
After your rosin has cooled on the parchment paper, you can begin to gently scrape it off. A sterile metal dental pick will be the easiest tool to use. Transfer the scrapings into a small glass container.
The rosin you’ve extracted won’t contain a substantial amount of terpenes. It’s unlikely that it will taste like cannabis. In order to amp up the flavor and aroma, you’ll need to add terpenes from another source or use a flavoring that’s safe to inhale.
To do this, you’ll need to purchase vape juice flavoring, terpene drops, or both. You can’t make terpenes at home, and food flavorings aren’t safe to use in a vape. These are products you probably don’t have handy. You’ll need to buy them from a specialty retailer and wait for them to be delivered. Avoid vape flavorings containing diacetyl, which may be dangerous to inhale.
If you don’t mind that your vape juice probably won’t taste pleasant, you can skip this step.
Your vape juice needs to be blended with some kind of oil in order for it to be complete. Vitamin E oil may be dangerous to your lungs, especially when inhaled in large amounts. Many cannabis vape companies don’t use an oil. They’re able to extract complete cannabis extracts, which contain enough natural oil to be used as a vape concentrate.
Other vape companies use vegetable glycerin to create their vape juices. You can add a few drops of vegetable glycerin to your rosin and terpene mixture to make the “juice” part of your vape juice. Organic vegetable glycerin without any additives will work out best. Do not use cooking oils or oils you purchased from the baking aisle at the grocery store. These aren’t the same. They’ll damage your vape and they’ll damage your lungs – neither of which is an ideal scenario.
Finishing your vape juice
The only way to evenly incorporate all of the ingredients in your DIY vape juice is to apply heat. When you apply heat, you’re degrading the few terpenes that remained in your rosin and diminishing the terpenes you’ve added or flavor and aroma. Unfortunately, there’s no way around this process.
Hold a torch to the bottom of your glass container for no longer than five seconds. When bubbles begin to form in the liquid, remove the heat source. Use a sterile metal implement to finish incorporating the ingredients by hand. This is your finished vape juice.
Now comes the challenge of getting your vape juice from the glass container into a cart that fits your vape. There’s really only one way to do that. You’ll need to draw it up into a syringe and inject it into the cart. If you don’t have a syringe handy, there is no effective workaround. You’re going to need to get one.
Make sure the syringe you use is completely new. You need a syringe that has never been used for anything else and will never be used for anything else after you’ve injected your vape cart. Do not use an old diabetic syringe or any other syringe of questionable nature. Be sure to properly dispose of the syringe after you’re done.
Should I just buy cannabis vape juice?
Making your own cannabis vape juice is messy and involves a lot of tools. There’s also the potential for tons of contamination along the way. It’s possible to DIY your own cannabis vape juice, but we wouldn’t recommend it. It’s much easier and safer to make your own cannabutter for edibles if you’re looking for a weed-centric project.
If you’re looking for something specific, you’re going to have a hard time making it at home. You can’t guarantee how much THC will become a part of your final product when you’re melting off your own rosin. The process is less efficient and the outcome may vary. You might wind up with a vape concentrate that’s much weaker than you’d anticipated.
The takeaway
Making cannabis vape juice from rosin is a tedious task that involves a lot of tools. You need to be very careful not to introduce contaminants into your vape juice. Be mindful of how sterile your environment is, and don’t vape anything that may contain bacteria. Don’t forget to add your terpenes. Without them, your vape juice is likely to taste dirty and burnt.
Making cannabis vape juice is hard. Getting it delivered is easy. If you can’t make the trip to the dispensary, let the dispensary make a trip to you. Emjay offers all of your favorite strains in vape carts, including live resin. We can have your vape juice to your door in about half an hour.
