Cannabis and I have an on-again-off-again relationship that shifts between smoke sessions every other day, to complete sobriety for weeks on end. While there’s no rhyme or reason for this particular cycle, cannabis has been in my life for about ten years now.

My early experiences with weed range from trying to hotbox a windowless bathroom in my parents basement (rookie mistake), to attempting to grow my own flower with absolutely zero knowledge - the end to this endeavour was quick and painless. In college I smoked Girl Scout Cookies on the daily - a strain that gave me such insane munchies and inevitably led to my freshman 15.

As I became more experienced and realized the wide range of strains that actually existed, weed became much more of a wellness routine for me. Now, I use cannabis to relax, connect to my surroundings and socialize with friends. While my consumption has always been recreational and predominantly joint, bong and edible focussed, I decided to try concentrates for the first time. I visited one of our Burb stores and grabbed some kief, wax and THC distillate to vape. For each cannabis concentrate I tried I paired it with one of my favourite activities and documented it on Tik Tok. Here’s how it went…

Ok, I couldn’t let go of lighting up a joint so I thought the easiest way to dip my toes in the concentrates world was to sprinkle a little bit of kief in my morning joint. For those of you who don’t know, kief is that beautiful powdery substance at the bottom of your grinder. It’s also known as cannabis crystals which is the purest and cleanest collection of concentrated THC. When added to flower it can take your high to the next level. As a proverbial lightweight, my motto is always: start slow, go slow.

I decided to mix Jean Guy Kief with my favourite strain, BC Organic Apple Toffee, pack a joint and go on a hike. Probably my favourite activity while high, I was excited to try this concentrate in nature. I hiked to a few epic view points at Light House Park located in West Vancouver and lit up. The high was more or less the same of what I was used to but it felt way more cerebral. I don’t know if this is because of the intensified THC in the kief or because Jean Guy is a sativa-dominant strain, but my hike got a lot more interesting. I stayed on the trails longer than usual enjoying the scenery, listened to my surroundings and took in the beautiful nature. Basically, I looked like a stoner mindlessly wandering through the forest.

Overall experience: 8/10 - easy to execute, you still get to smoke your favourite flower, convenient.

I was a little nervous when I decided to try cooking with wax at first. It seemed complicated and I didn’t really know how to properly decarboxylate wax. Unlike THC oil which you can just add to your cooking, when you use concentrates like wax, rosin, budder, etc. you need to make sure you heat up the product carefully in order to turn the THCA into THC. In other words, you need to go a little Walter White in order to make sure your edibles get you high. After chatting with some of our experts and watching one too many Youtube tutorials, I felt confident in attempting to create wax infused treats.

After putting my wax in the oven for 30 minutes at 250 degrees fahrenheit, I added about 1/4 of the melted wax to room temperature coconut oil. I used the coconut oil in my cooking mixture and made some tasty non-bake peanut butter, chocolate squares. Based on my grade 11 level math, each square had about 6mg of THC (more or less). Nervous that I messed up the calculation I tried half of one with hesitation. After about 45 minutes I started to feel the effects and within an hour, the edible had fully kicked in. It felt like the right dosage and similar to any other edible I had tried. I was pretty impressed with myself to say the least. The cool thing about making your own edibles is that you have full control over the ingredients and dosage. I love edibles and I love to cook so I was a huge fan of this experience. Plus, the peanut-choco squares barely tasted like weed (this is huge if you are a regular edible consumer).

Overall experience: 8.5/10 - It was fun and rewarding. Caution: It is time consuming and you risk incorrectly dosing your edibles. Make sure you do your research beforehand!

Nice weather usually means everyone is out camping or enjoying a weekend getaway in Whistler. Since COVID is still rampant in the Lower Mainland, I decided to take camping inside. My partner and I tried vaping and built the ultimate movie fort stocked with snacks (perfect for munchies), blankets and candles. We tried the Purple Monkey 510 Vape Cartridge, which is a concentrated form of THC distillate that heats up in a vape and gets you stoned.

While I have friends who swear by their vapes, I never really understood the obsession - I was too lazy to try and figure out how vapes worked, the cartridges made no sense to me and I was too stubborn to get out of my comfort zone. However, I was pleasantly surprised. While cartridges have about four times the amount of THC compared to your regular flower, vaping is extremely convenient, discrete and my lungs didn’t burn after. It was perfect to use indoors while we were actively trying to take part in a fun at-home activity. Definitely would recommend this to other couples or friends - it was chill and the more we vaped, the more creative we got.

Overall Experience: 10/10. Easy to use, discrete (can smoke inside), the high was intense but didn’t last as long as I thought.

Keep an open mind. I thoroughly enjoyed concentrates despite my initial hesitation. Here’s a list of products I used: Jean Guy Kief, Broken Coast Muskmelon OG Wax, Good Supply Purple Monkey Cartridge.

Shop concentrates here.

Check out our other cannabis-related posts: Burb’s Top 10 Strains, 7 Cannabis Terpenes Explained, A Guide To Shatter.

By Nadia Bortolazzo
Nadia is an MA graduate and a Digital Content Specialist at Burb. Her writing is guided by her interest in challenging and expanding the ideologies surrounding cannabis culture.
Instagram: @nadiabortolazzo.