Examining Reclaim as a Concentrate

The other reason for a reclaim chamber is to collect the condensed smoke for use at another session or even for infusing into products—call it a mulligan if you will.

While using a reclaim chamber makes it a lot easier to clean out smoking pieces with a variety of finicky parts like percolators, ice catchers, bubblers, or down stems, it also gives you the opportunity to use the material you collect again in the future. We call that the reclaim… now that is some stoner efficiency!

Speaking of stoner efficiency, these devices were developed at a time when concentrates were not widely available in legal markets, which begs the question: do stoners care as much about reusing the reclaim in today’s market, where cannabis concentrates are abundant?

I suppose we can call reclaim a legacy market tradition, albeit a less sexy one.

The Effects of Reclaim

The second time dabbing the reclaim, the effect feels a little different, and it certainly tastes different. The flavor is not quite as harsh as smoking resin from an old bowl, but not as tasty as the carefully crafted terp profile that the concentrate started with. For those who do this, it’s not about the flavor anymore—it’s about getting the job done, and it certainly will get the job done.

There are many different solvent and solventless extracts that people like to smoke out of these devices—let’s think of them as inputs. When the inputs heat up (whether it’s with a torch or an e-nail), the temperature necessary to make the vapor is important to the desired outcome.

The temperature needed to get the job done creates an environment of intense chemical changes. This happens the second your dab hits the nail. Lower temperatures retain more of the flavor profile because terps degrade at very low temperatures. In fact, at the temperatures needed to create a thick cloud of smoke, most of the terps will transform significantly. The temperature used for dabbing is a matter of personal preference; some prefer higher temps, some prefer lower temps… to each their own.

That said, the chemistry changes dramatically between the high and low temp dabs.

The Chemical Differences of Reclaim vs. Concentrate

The reclaimed concentrate smoke that ends up in your reclaim chamber has a really different and unique chemical profile compared to the concentrate that was dabbed. Without using an HPLC or some other fancy analytical tool to look at the chemical difference, the most obvious change is the taste and smell. The taste and smell are ‘less desirable’ than the concentrate that was dabbed.

If you did, in fact, analyze the reclaim, you would likely find an abundance of beta-caryophyllene. You would also note a higher concentration of CBN than what was being smoked. Other chemical changes are notable as well, but to keep this pretty straightforward, let’s focus on these two alone. The effects of smoking reclaim tend to lean more towards the relaxing end of the spectrum, and these chemical changes can explain that a bit.

Perhaps we can consider reclaim the everyday homemade concentrate! While this is not the type of concentrate you might expect to be celebrated or receive any awards, maybe it deserves the people’s champion award. After all, it is (technically) a concentrate derived from an input material; it has a different chemical profile, does not require any solvent, and it gives the penny-pinchers and the connoisseurs alike a chance to use 100% of what they paid for.