The Weird Big Cloud Question

[daoist]

Is it just me or exhaling big clouds can only mean one of three things:
- Cannabinoids wasted.
- Lots of water vapour.
- Lots of inpurities.

Wouldn't the most efficient vaporizer be the one where you exhale no clouds from?

- The most efficient vaporizer is the one with the darkest ABV, but does not mean you get big clouds. The fastest extraction is what creates the biggest clouds (and that will waste some if you cannot keep up). if i put my mighty vaporizer on 210 from the start this thing starts leaking vape from every little opening it can find near the cooling chamber and mouthpiece and thats when i did not even hit it yet. lol! i really need to go down to 180 celsius on my mighty and it still has insane clouds, but managable. I use it for vaping hasish mostly though (small clouds), i use my herborizer for flower.

- impurities you will know by how much you have to cough. If you have ever tried comparing organic weed with regular weed you will know what i mean. organic weed is so much smoother. It has also nothing to do with big clouds. It is just the quality of the herb that makes it pure or impure (plus the cleanliness of the vaporizer of course).

It is best to just do what feels right to you. Everyone has their own personal prefered style of vaping.

 

[Vaporware]

- The most efficient vaporizer is the one with the darkest ABV...

That’s not really accurate in my experience (and I’ve talked to plenty of other people here who feel the same).

My DaVinci Ascent gets flower pretty dark, but my FlowerPot gets more out of the same material even if the AVB is relatively light in color. The FP hits much harder, can extract very fast, but can also draw out a lower temp session all day if you want. I don’t feel like I lost out on extraction, but there was a very distinct line in my AVB jar after I got the FP.

Conduction vaporizers in general tend to have particularly dark AVB, but if you take the lighter colored remnants from a full convention device when it seems spent and put it in a conduction oven you’re not likely to get any significant amount of vapor or positive effects out of it.

Apart from our anecdotal evidence, the few studies on cannabis vapor content have shown better extraction from some vaporizers (such as the convection Volcano) than others (such as the conduction Ascent) even though the AVB of the Ascent was probably just as dark or darker. @invertedisdead linked the study I was thinking of earlier in the thread.

 

[daoist]

yes, but this is the big cloud topic. and i was looking from that point of view.

All i was saying fast extractors give bigger clouds, which is not the most efficient, because vape will escape in between hits unless you can remove the heater from the bowl (like herborizer/roor or the flowerpot).

dark abv does not automaticly mean that all the vape ended up in your lungs. it just means the vaporizer had maximum extraction and it does not matter if that happend fast or slow. it can be extracted in 10 minutes or 3 days.

 

[Vaporware]

yes, but this is the big cloud topic. and i was looking from that point of view.

All i was saying fast extractors give bigger clouds, which is not the most efficient, because vape will escape in between hits unless you can remove the heater from the bowl (like herborizer/roor or the flowerpot).

dark abv does not automaticly mean that all the vape ended up in your lungs. it just means the vaporizer had maximum extraction and it does not matter if that happend fast or slow. it can be extracted in 10 minutes or 3 days.

What I’m saying though is that color is not a good way to measure level of extraction. The FlowerPot can extract slowly over a longer period like the Ascent, but in that scenario the FP’s AVB will end up a lighter color even though they’re both out of vapor to give. In fact I can check the Ascent’s bowl when it’s only half extracted and it will already be darker than a fully extracted FP bowl at low/medium temps.

If color was the main indicator of level of extraction that should never be true.

VapCaps are heated mostly through conduction too. If I open one 1/2-2/3s of the way through the flower is already often darker than a lot of fully extracted FP loads.

Yes dark AVB is generally either well extracted or singed/burned, but AVB being lighter colored doesn’t necessarily mean it was poorly extracted.

 

[daoist]

i disagree. lighter abv is just not fully extracted. This could be temperature to low, bowl not heat soaked enough, or your session was to short etc.
I bet you still can get some out of it if you put it in a different vaporizer.

 

[invertedisdead]

The most efficient vaporizer is the one with the darkest ABV,

I find that many devices can get so hot in temperature that they produce LESS vapor.

Direct butane style vapes are a good example of this - with incorrect technique you can easily char the load to very dark ABV and barely get a hit.

 

[daoist]

yes. butane. very healthy for you to inhale those fumes...

 

[invertedisdead]

yes. butane. very healthy for you to inhale those fumes...

I don’t see what that has to do with this discussion.

But since you brought it up, I don’t believe it’s actually been proven to be unhealthy. The Vapor Genie is one of the oldest vaporizers on the market and it’s not even designed to be used with a torch lighter.

 

[Siebter]

Butane is a total derail here.

I can confirm that the color is not a good indicator to judge the extraction – when I use my Tinymight (full convection) the abv often looks blonde, yet it's fully done. It makes a huge difference to leave the herb toasting for ten minutes or to only heat it up shortly and then let it cool down in between hits.

 

[daoist]

no. not really. i always take off my herborizer heat injector in between hits and i still get really dark abv. Maybe your temperature is to low.
I never heared about fully extracted herb that still looks blond. And i have 3 different vaporizer.

But i could be wrong and i am willing to learn.

 

[PPN]

I agree with @Siebter , some vaporizers, usually full convection, are giving you a lighter in color abv which doesn't produce any interesting amount of vapor if you throw it in a more powerfull vape, you'll only get a bit of nasty vapor which is totally inefficient. The Ti injector is especially powerfull, it offers more power than needed in order to shortened the extraction time, that's why, imo, it give a darker abv. The MiniVap doesn't darken so much the flowers, the QGC do it slightly darker but the others versions are light in color.

 

[daoist]

I have the Herborizer XL, which is a slow extractor, and i can get it nearly as dark as my mighty which is a fast extractor.
My ABV looks like grinded coffeebeans from a dark roast, definately not blond. So why is that?

 

[Siebter]

@daoist – You *can* roast your abv dark brown with pretty much any vaporizer, but the question is whether the extra toastiness yields more substance.

@ohmygodimsohigh & @stickstones recently made a stream about when to consider your herb fully cooked, they also tested revaping abv from the Mighty in other devices:

 

[daoist]

Thanks,

love modern cannabist videos. i go watch it later.

 

[nms]

Seems like this derailed a bit. For the sake of productivity I'd like to constrain the discussion with a few details.

If you make a claim, you'll have the additional job of coming up with a reasonable explanation to why it is so, and most importantly a possible counter-explanation. So if you say ABV color is a good indicator of extraction, you have to say why and why it may not be a good indicator of such.

As such I'd like to present some very heavy counter-arguments:

- What grants color to ABV are not the cannabinoids.
- Chlorophyll starts degrading at much lower temperatures than what is needed for vaporization, meaning that if these temperatures are sustained, it will degrade, while the cannabinoids will not be affected. "Chlorophyll b was more stable than chlorophyll a at 70 °C, but both of them were highly degraded at 117 °C." - https://pubmed.ncbi.nlm.nih.gov/24912693/
- Due to the previous point, heating time is relevant to the state of clorophyil degration, which may explain the convection related anecdotal evidence for frequently found lighter ABV(less time at higher temperature) particularly when taking into account that the degration process of clorophyll will always take longer than the change of state for a molecule that's avialable on the outer side of the green matter as opposed to a structure inside heavily protected water filled cells.
- Due to the above mentioned location of chlorophyll inside chloroplasts inside cells, moisture content will also affect this far more than it will for cannabinoids.

As such I don't see how this can be a good measure of extraction.

Assuming most medical use aerosol devices only deliver 10-20% of their dosage to the lungs(reference in my previous post), and given the noticeable difference between direct injection and aerosol absorpion(later 2x faster), and particular location of lypid molecule absorption in the lungs(both facts in previous post) I think it's safe to say that first not all the cannabinoids reach your lungs, second not all the cannabinoids reach the area where they're mostly absorbed in your lungs and third being optimistic and assuming comparable THC absorption to salycilic acid, if holding the vapour in for 30 seconds you'd only absorb half of the content). This means that you'll get around 5% of what you vapourize into your bloodstream.

Considering these 5% to be somewhat stable, particularly across strains, dosages and consumption methods(meaning there's little variation to a dosage you consume and how much gets inside you), a necessary assumption to even continue this discussion.

Considering a complete session meaning that the herb is always sustained for long enough times to complete vaporize everything in them.

Considering that the longer the vapor path the less cannabinoids will arrive to your lungs(reducing the above mentioned 5%).

Back to the beginning and considering the facts we've learned, and going back to the original question, I think it's safe to say that none of that matters to the original question but we can infer that some other facts do:
- The variability of speed of absorption with availability of a given compound in the lungs for the absorption of lypophillic molecules like THC increases with the difference in concentration since lypophillic molecules can cross the membrane by simple diffusion.
- Bigger clouds mean more availability of THC in the lungs resulting in more THC will flow into the cells in the same amount of time than with less THC. As time passes the concentration difference will diminish and so will the speed which means:
- The 30 second reference for half absorption of THC still makes sense regardless of the concentration.

So to confirm the anecdotal evicence we could say that:

- Bigger clouds mean more THC is absorbed in a smaller amount of time giving the sensation of getting higher faster.
- Smaller clouds that end up in the lungs for the same amount of time will result in less absorption due to smaller concentration differences, thus slower speed of diffusion.
- If you held the vapour for enough time to compensation for the difference in the concentration gradient, this would no longer be noticeable.

Very rough overview still hopefully we can consolidate this as this goes on.

 

[daoist]

But before it becomes THC it is THC-A in the flower which does not make you high by the way (thats why you need to decarb for edibles). The decarb (removing the "a" from the "thc") happens during vaping (or smoking) but how do you know the decarb was done "efficient"? (by lack of a better word). only after decarbing things will start happening. I am not sure if there is data available on this. it would be interesting to lab analyze the abv and see what exactly happend after the decarb and hen see if there is a difference between vaporizers.

I always thought that color of the abv would be an indication of the degradation level of the weed (caused by the increasing amount of CBN oxidant in the weed produced by the decarbing process) but i feel kinda gas lighted now with all this new shit i am reading here. (no offense meant).

 

[nms]

You are right, the decarboxylation reaction is definitely of interest to compare the psychoactive effectiveness of a given vaporizer, and there's much to it as it's known that as temperature rises the decarboxylation is faster but less complete and the there's the additional influence of the degradation of THC to CBN which happens at the same time and at lower temperatures. I don't think it affects the absorption of THC\THCa in the lungs or the appearance of the clouds though. The loss of green color is definitely a result of the degradation of chlorophyl, the green pigment that grants it it's color, other alterations in color may be the result of different processes.(https://eiha.org/media/2014/08/16-10-25-Decarboxylation-of-THCA-to-active-THC.pdf).


Gaslighting means: "manipulate (someone) by psychological means into doubting their own sanity. "

Trying to reasonably prove a point, while providing as much evidence as possible and awaiting feedback that possibly clarifies the wrong parts of my reasonings doesn't feel like gaslighting to me, it feels like educated discussion.

Generally we simplify everything, particularly brands as it makes easier for them to sell, but that doesn't mean all the complexity, the tip of which we've been discussing, is non existent and that vaporization as a way of administration for cannabinoids is something simple and that easy to understand, particularly from biased personal experience.

 

[vtac]

From someone that's used to reading research papers, and given that reading that specific one brought me down to reading 29 others, which have made me loose quite a few hours afterwards on the same kind of behavior, I think it's acceptable to ask for a reference to the person who makes the claim.

Thanks. It's very much appreciated. Our forum rules have always implored: Do not state opinion as fact, we don’t want to spread misinformation. Please qualify your statements and provide references when making claims.

We've had a number of threads on this topic over the years. I'll try to find and tag/link them later. In 13 years I don't think we've gotten all that much closer to any definitive answers. Not such a simple question after all. More research required.

 

[daoist]

Gaslighting means: "manipulate (someone) by psychological means into doubting their own sanity. "

I was meaning it more like people give you all this new info and make you doubt own reality or facts. Maybe gaslighting is a bit to strong of a word, but close enough to make me "feel" being gaslighted (even if it was not done intentional).

 

[jerri]

I know that when I one half fill the basket and put my cloud evo at a little after 3 oclock and get BIG clouds and also get medicated very fast and when I use my plenty vape at 6 on the dial not as much vapor and it takes a little longer to medicate just my 2 cents