What is Crumble Wax? Everything You Need To Know

The legal cannabis industry has exploded in the past two decades or so. Long gone are the days when the only way to get some weed was to buy it some questionable cannabis grown under subpar grow lights in someone's spare bedroom from the sketchy weed man in your neighborhood. Now, all you need to do is head down to your local dispensary to get your hands on some top-notch cannabis products. Due to the growth of the legal weed industry from a black market drug trade to a legal, multi-billion dollar cash cow, the ways that people buy and consume their cannabis has evolved as well. One of the best current examples of that growth is the explosion in popularity for concentrates. 

According to a recent study, cannabis consumers are leaning more and more towards concentrates when it comes to their cannabis. In fact, adult-use sales in legal cannabis bastions like Oregon, California, Colorado, Nevada, and Washington all showed a 40.5 percent spike in concentrate sales compared to a year prior, swelling from $567 million in 2019 to $797 million in 2020. One of the many forms of these new concentrates that are flying off the shelves is crumble wax. 

This article is going to go into nitty-gritty detail on everything you could possibly want or need to know about crumble weed, or just crumble for short. We'll touch on how to smoke crumble wax, how to make it, where and why you should buy it, and break down how it's different when it comes to other forms of cannabis concentrates on the market today. First, however, we should go into deeper detail about what exactly crumble wax is! Let's get right into it. 

What is Crumble Wax?  

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To properly go into detail on answering what is crumble exactly, we first need to break down what separates a concentrate product from your standard cannabis flower, joint, or blunt. Simply put, concentrates are like standard weed on steroids. Concentrates are the most refined and purified version of the chemical compounds in cannabis, cutting out the organic plant matter and pulling the THC, CBD, and other cannabinoids out for maximized effects. For example, it's not uncommon to be able to easily and affordably get your hands on cannabis concentrates with a staggeringly high, somewhere in the range of 90 plus, THC percentage. Basically, concentrates are the best bang for the cannabis consumer's buck. A little bit of wax crumble will get you higher than the standard cannabis flower would, as well as likely being a bit cheaper or comparably priced. 

So What Exactly is Crumble Wax? 

Now that we've gotten our intro to all concentrates out of the way, let's focus in on exactly what crumble is and how it's made.

Crumble, as its name would suggest, is a form of cannabis concentrate that's dry, soft, and easily broken up from the usual clumps it's sold in. Unlike other forms of concentrate, like shatter, it's a dryer and, well, a more crumbly form of concentrate. The core difference when it comes to crumble vs wax is a question of consistency. Wax trend to be sticky, tacky, and contains a higher level of moisture than crumble. Shatter starts out in a very liquidy form, then drys and hardens into a glass-like texture, Crumble, on the other hand, is more comparable to clumps of sand in consistency. Those differences in texture lie in how it's made compared to other concentrates. 

How to Make Crumble Wax  

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As we mentioned above, the differences in types of concentrates and their consistency basically depend on how it's made. While the simplified process of how to make concentrates, which consists of extracting the cannabinoid compounds from the plant matter itself, is pretty much the same for each type of concentrate, there are small differences that affect the final consistency.  

For example, the process of making any concentrate can basically be broken down into four simple steps. Let's get into those now:

1. The extraction process starts by flash-freezing whatever strain of cannabis they're looking to get the cannabinoid compounds out of. The sooner the buds are frozen after being harvested, the better. 
2. Those frozen buds are then broken down in some form of solvent. This process separates the plant matter itself from the chemical, terpenes, and cannabinoids that will eventually become the wax crumble itself. 
3. The leaves, stems, and other plant matter will be removed from the solvent solution that's now full of cannabinoids. 
4. A process involving heat and/or pressure will be applied to the solvent, which eventually creates a rough concentrate solution that can be turned into wax, crumble, shatter, or some other hybrid from of cannabis concentrate. 
   

After those four steps are completed, however, we get to the unique steps that will produce crumble wax as opposed to any other type of concentrate. 

Typically, crumble is created by taking that cannabinoid-rich solution and purging it at lower temperature for longer time. The temperature usually sits somewhere in the range of 110 to 135 degrees. This slow and low approach created that dried out, crumbly texture that crumble wax is most known for.

How to Smoke Crumble Wax

Now that we know what exactly concentrates are, how they're made, why legal cannabis consumers love them, and how they're made, let's break down the final key to enjoying some crumble wax of your own; how to actually smoke it. 

There are a few ways for you to enjoy crumble wax. Due to its sandy and crumbly exterior, it's a perfect way to top off some of the more traditional forms of cannabis consumption with a bang! 

While you can always use a dab rig, a pipe made specifically for smoking concentrates, crumble is actually best used in the typical joint, blunt, or bowl. Just do what you would normally do, then mix in or sprinkle on some crumble wax for an added kick! It's a great way to add some more powerful THC into the mix, and can quickly and easily turn some mid weed into a great time without much effort at all!