Many people wonder about the differences, and for good reason! There are so many new products on the market these days that it can be tough to keep up.
Fortunately, you can get up to speed on this one quickly, because cannabis concentrates have a lot more in common than they do differences. As anyone can gather from the name, a concentrate is simply a concentrated version of the chemicals found in cannabis buds. Through solvent extraction, the psychoactive and medicinal components are distilled from the plant matter to create a variety of products.
Both shatter and wax are created in this way, and these products get their names from the differences in the final appearance and texture. Vaping, on the other hand, is slightly different.
Vaping products are created using cannabis derivatives, but they are not the same thing. If you use a vape pen, make sure to carefully read the manufacturer's guidelines so that you can find the right product.
For products that you can use in your dab rig, shatter and wax are by far the most popular. Shatter is a translucent concentrate with a hard texture. The result of a chemical extraction that normally uses butane, shatter is amber in colour. Wax is another butane-extracted concentrate, but it has different physical characteristics than shatter. It starts off as an amber liquid and finally ends up as a material with the consistency of coconut oil.
Some people prefer wax because it is soft, which makes it easy to measure and use. But it can degrade quickly because it is less stable than some other derivatives. Shatter, on the other hand, is much more difficult to measure and use because it is so brittle (hence the name), but it is much more stable than wax and will have a longer shelf life.
In the end, it comes down to a matter of personal preference. Fortunately, Canadian Vaporizers carries the best dab setups you can find online, and they can be used for either of these concentrates.