How It's Made: Terp Sauce

Cannabis concentrate connoisseurs are avidly searching for pure, potent, and flavorful extracts. Whether it’s shatter, wax, live resin, or crumble, premium concentrates contain a higher percentage of cannabinoids compared to fresh or cured marijuana flower buds. Unfortunately, most solvent and solventless extraction methods utilize high temperatures and pressures, which can degrade much of the strain’s original flavor and aroma. 

In recent years, however, a new and especially fragrant extract has gained favor among those that appreciate cannabis’ unique aromatic terpenes along with their THC and CBD. Terp sauce is a type of high-terpene full-spectrum extract (HTFSE) that can take your dabbing experience to a whole other level.

What Is Terp Sauce?

Terp sauce is an innovative concentrate which features a high concentration of diamond-like THCA crystals and syrupy terpenes. It’s hard to miss this grainy textured liquid among the hard shatter and wax. Terp or cannabis sauce features varying sizes of crystals or “diamonds” clusters within a puddle of terpene-rich sauce. Essentially, the terp sauce creation process lets the cannabinoids and terpenes separate from each other in the final product.

This new and aromatic extract can run you between $30 and $60 due to its highly specialized nature. Is the premium price worth it? Well, terp sauce usually contains a significant percentage more of terpenes compared to other traditional concentrates. In fact, terp sauce can contain at least 13 percent terpenes and 60 percent THC. Some users argue that this terpene and cannabinoid-rich mixture provides a more balanced experience than other concentrates.

Terp sauce isn’t live resin or even nucleated shatter as many consumers might believe. Live resin may have a higher-than-normal amount of terpenes, but its levels are not nearly as high as cannabis sauce and feature none of the crystallized structures found in cannabis sauce. 

Nucleated shatter forms when the solid and liquid portions of the sauce begin to separate over time. This is more of an unintentional and unrefined manner of separating terpenes and cannabinoids, which is hardly comparable to terp sauce created by licensed extractors.

How Is Terp Sauce Made?

In order to get the most flavorful dabs, terp sauce starts off with premium fresh frozen material, similar to live resin’s starting material. Each extraction process will be strain-dependent. Typically, concentrate manufacturers use hydrocarbons such as butane, propane, or a mix of both as a solvent using closed-loop equipment. Some manufacturers believe BHO extraction produces larger diamonds due to their larger runs. Closed-loop equipment contains and recycles the solvent solution for further use.

Terp sauce extraction differs from traditional extraction methods. While using a low boiling point solvent, sub-zero temperatures are employed to preserve terpenes, which have lower boiling points than the more popular cannabinoids. Butane extraction is used to separate the therapeutic cannabinoids and terpenes from the rest of the inactive plant material.

After the initial extraction of terpenes and cannabinoids, manufacturers perform a light, no-vac purge at relatively low temperatures. The process will boil off any residual butane from the syrupy mixture. Manufacturers collect the terp sauce solution in jars and leave them in a dry, cool, and dark place for a few weeks for the THCA crystals and terpene separation to occur. Crystallization, also known as “diamond mining,” depends on the strain, extraction process, and more environmental factors.

Once the desired diamond amount and consistency is produced, manufacturers may perform a final purge. Some extractors will separate the different consistencies and purge them separately afterward. This ensures each concentrated compound receives a specialized purge for a more refined product. After many hours of dozens of hours of purging, the diamonds and sauce are recombined in a UV-proof container to reduce compound degradation. What’s left is high-quality terp sauce.

This highly pungent extract is a quickly growing product that attracts consumers that want a more balanced and powerful effect from marijuana. Today’s terp sauce even rivals other concentrate types in cannabinoid content as well as terpene levels. If you’re looking for a more flavorful experience when dabbing, turn to HTFSE such as terp sauce.