The Extraction Issue
Extracts are quietly taking over the cannabis industry. While flower remains the top-selling product category at retail, products made from extracts — including edibles, vapes, concentrates and topicals — now account for almost 60% of legal cannabis sales in the United States. It’s a sector of the market that is only getting bigger, particularly as the scientific understanding of cannabis and extraction grows.
From the various methods of extraction and refinement to the latest innovations in products, Marijuana Venture takes an in-depth look at the market trends, best practices, equipment manufacturers, leading minds and scientific process of extraction.
Peak Extracts
Peak Extracts recently launched a national line of hemp-derived CBD products that mirror the company’s THC topicals, tinctures, chocolates and vape cartridges, which are available at cannabis retail shops in Oregon.
Peak was the first edibles producer to receive an adult-use license in Oregon, and its strain-specific chocolates continue to be among the top-selling items in the state; the self-funded company is currently Oregon’s No. 2 producer of cannabis-infused chocolate.
Claim to Fame: Peak Extracts is one of the few companies in the U.S. to be making a CBDA topical, an effective anti-inflammatory that has been steadily closing the gap on brand’s top-selling products.
“At first our isolate rub was the unequivocal bestseller, until we launched the full-spectrum topical and that one jumped in front. And now the CBDA has been catching up,” says CEO Katie Stem.
Methodology: Stem says Peak Extracts primarily uses CO2 for extraction.
“The reasoning behind that is largely environmental,” she says. “I like the extract you get out of CO2, but it’s mostly about the way that the waste is disposed.”
But Stem, who has a background in chemistry, doesn’t use the supercritical process that is prevalent in cannabis. Her method — refined over years of keeping meticulous notes and steadily improving the technique — prevents most of the waxes from being extracted.
“When we get rid of all of the waxes, we only lose between 1% and 5%, depending on the starting material,” she says. “But we used to lose 20% before we changed our process.”
And no, she’s not giving away her secrets.
“I think our process is unique,” she says. “I can’t give too much away into what our parameters are, but it’s not technically ‘supercritical.’ You can vary the temperature, the pressure and how you prepare the material before it goes into the vessel, and we’ve played with all of those in order to get the most terpenes and flavonoids and the least waxes and chlorophyll.”
Philosophy: “You need to look at the agricultural practices and what’s being done to the Earth at that point to make the most impact. That means pesticides. That means irrigation. That means integrated pest management, soil health and all that stuff. We’re really lucky to have access to a whole lot of people who care about sustainability in Oregon, and so it’s been fun to get to know them and learn about their process and how much they care about all the things we care about.”