Arguably the purest form of cannabis, shatter takes the form of a semi-translucent, amber-yellow, glass-like structure made through a butane extraction method.
Ground cannabis plant material is usually placed into a tube or another tight container, and chilled solvent (butane or other hydrocarbons) is pushed through the tube and over all the plant matter.
This strips away all the good stuff located within the plant: terpenes, cannabinoids, flavonoids. Then, the compound-rich solvent oil is heated enough to remove all traces of butane while leaving behind all the cannabinoid-containing essential oils.
This purging process often results in the layering of “sheets” of concentrated plant matter while it cools and dries, hardening to form its thin layers which can be broken (or shattered) for handling or packaging.
Shatter, unlike other cannabis extracts, is not agitated after the extraction process. The molecules line up in neat rows on top of one another, which causes light to be able to pass through it. Sometimes large sheets of shatter can develop a ‘swiss cheese’ sort of look, with holes forming because of the presence of oxygen in the tube or in the drying process.
The resulting product, “shatter” is a highly concentrated form of essential oils from cannabis. It is extremely potent and requires much less to achieve similar effects compared against hemp flower in its original form.
At Colorado Breeders Depot, we test our concentrates for the presence of pesticides, residual solvent, heavy metals, foreign materials, microbes and mycotoxins.