How do I Smoke a THCA Crystal?

THCA diamonds are generally treated like any other cannabis concentrate, and the process for smoking/vaporizing one isn’t too different from how you’d treat shatter, wax, or hash oil. We’ll list out some of the most popular methods below and note if there’s anything special to keep in mind when it comes to using diamonds and sauce.

Dabbing Diamonds

Just like you use your dab rig every day, dabbing diamonds works the same as other marijuana concentrates. For cannabis diamonds, as they are again pure THCA, you’ll likely want to make sure they have some terpene sauce on top; if you bought the sauce separately from the diamond, just use your dab tool (tweezers recommended here) to pick up the diamond and dip it into the terpenes. Once it’s been good and coated, you’re ready to dab away.

With the separate terpenes dabbing diamonds on a nail setup can be a bit tricky and messy; we recommend using a banger to make sure none of the sauce ends up running out into hard-to-reach spots (and for more information on the different ways you can set up a dab rig at home, make sure to check out our “How to Smoke Dabs” article elsewhere on the site).

Smoking Diamonds

A bit of pure THCA can make a great addition to a joint or a bowl of weed and can help punch up what would have been a quick buzz to a serious high. If your diamonds are “pure,” IE: sans terpene sauce, just take one and mash it up; a small mortar and pestle would work wonders here, but you can accomplish the same thing with the back of a butter knife on a flat, non-porous surface. Once your diamond has been ground up into a fine powder, it’s perfect for sprinkling into some cannabis bud.

If your crystals came with sauce already attached, you could still use the above method, though the mashing process will be trickier and much less precise. Once you’ve gotten the crystals as small as they can be, just take your ground-up cannabis flower and roll it around in the sticky mash; this may make your bud a bit trickier to roll in a paper, so we recommend using pipes or bongs if going this route.

Either way, once your diamond has been pulverized and added to your weed, you’re ready to smoke. For best results, try to layer the powdered diamond underneath the surface of the weed to avoid direct contact with the lighter flame – Too much heat will just destroy the THC before it turns into smoke. When smoking a joint or a blunt, this isn’t too much of a concern; for a bowl, just place the powder in the middle of the packed cannabis rather than simply sprinkling it on top. You’ll thank us for the tip later.

Vaporizing Diamonds

If you have a vaporizing machine that can handle any other solid concentrate, you are 100% good to go on using a THCA diamond inside. As we mention elsewhere (and somewhat repeatedly) on our site, vaporizing is the most effective and efficient method of “smoking” cannabis, as well as one of the most healthy, and using your diamond in a vape rig is absolutely our recommended choice given how expensive THCA diamonds can be.

If your diamond is coated in sauce, you will need to make sure your vaporizer can handle semi-solid or liquid concentrates; if not designed to handle things other than hash and regular cannabis bud, you could end up with wasted concentrate and a broken machine. Otherwise, if your machine can handle liquid extracts, set up your diamond-to-sauce ratio as you please and hit the button – You’ll be good to go as soon as it’s ready.

Eating Diamonds

At the top of the article, we talked about how THCA still had benefits even if not exposed to heat and turned into THC. Eating THCA, either in the form of edibles or a tincture, has effects similar to CBD-type products, promoting relaxation of both the body and mind, and can be a good alternative for medical patients over the more psychoactive properties of THC.

To eat THCA as THCA means that the diamonds cannot be exposed to anything more than mild heat – No baking brownies or basting a roast chicken in THCA cannabutter. Instead, the crystals should be eaten as close to raw as possible, either taken as a supplement or with some kind of cold drink. But, again, don’t expect ingesting THCA to get you blazed. Still, for patients suffering from complications such as seizures, pain, and other issues, THCA can potentially work wonders without the accompaniment of being stoned.

If for some reason, you’d like to decarb your THCA and turn it into THC you can use for more traditional edibles, you can accomplish this, though we don’t really recommend it. If you decide to go this route, make sure you take caution, as losing track of your decarbing process can swiftly result in a burned batch of diamonds destined for the trash.

To decarb a THCA diamond, you’ll need to set your oven to 250 °F / 121 °C. Next, place your THCA diamonds into a flat, oven-safe dish (a glass pie plate works well here) and set them in the oven on the middle rack for roughly 30 minutes. As the color of your concentrate shifts into a brownish amber, the THCA inside is being changed into THC by the destruction of the carboxylic acid chain. After your time is up, remove the pie plate from the oven and let it cool before scraping up the remains with a blade or other flat implement.

If you let this process go too long or at too high of a temperature, the THC will begin to either evaporate or burn away, just as if it was smoked, so make sure not to wander off during the decarbing process; if you have an oven thermometer now would be the perfect time to put it to use.

The main reason we don’t like the above method is based primarily on its lack of control – Ovens can have wide variances in their operating temperatures, and a difference of even ten degrees can spell doom for your diamonds. Unless you have a device specifically designed for decarbing, we don’t think running the risk of ruining such an expensive concentrate is worth it; make your edibles with other cannabis products and try one of our alternative methods above to enjoy your diamonds.

In Conclusion

Happy smoking!