“This process takes up to two weeks in a sealed jar to let the rosin cure and then is homogenized to create the consistency.”
We hear the same thing from readers all of the time—you want to know about products. What’s in them, how they’re made, what they taste like, the works. At a more advanced level, a lot of heads also want to know more about extractions and concentrates, and we have you covered.
These past few weeks, we absolutely cannot get enough of Happy valley’s White Wedding live hash Rosin Budder. It’s a malleable melt that lifts you up without kicking your ass too hard, and it has a sweetness and not-so-sticky consistency that gives it superlative status among dabs on the Mass market.
Happy Valley took home a blue ribbon in the 2021 Mass High Times Cannabis Cup for its White Wedding flower, and the budder follows in its footsteps. So naturally, we had some questions about how this recipe came to be. Director of Concentrates Sean Corrigan walked us down the aisle …
First of all, you are the director of concentrates. We have interviewed with a Lego master builder and thought they had the coolest job until hearing about yours. What are your daily duties and responsibilities?
I do have a pretty great job, anytime you can work with your passion is a great thing. As the director of concentrates at Happy Valley I oversee all concentrate production which currently includes our solventless lab as well as our CO2 extraction lab. My focus is primarily on keeping daily production moving and quality control as well as product development and implementation of new processing and products.
I have some ideas as to what you were doing before this, but what were your qualifications coming into the position?
I have been working in the regulated cannabis industry since 2010, working in pretty much every vertical along the way. In 2014 I co-founded a company in Colorado called Craft Concentrates. We were one of the first big players in the Colorado concentrate scene and grew to one of the biggest extraction companies in Colorado within a few short years. After making a successful exit from that company I moved to Las Vegas to help buildout and launch a company called W Vapes. We built out a large cultivation and extraction lab in Las Vegas and an extraction lab in Portland before selling the company a few years later. Since then I have been consulting with multiple different companies across the country until I found my home here at Happy Valley.
What is the overall theme or concept behind the line of Happy Valley concentrates you have helped produce so far?
The concept behind our concentrates is the same philosophy Happy Valley as a whole lives by, quality is king. We never cut corners or put out product we would not want to consume ourselves. My goal is that every time a customer pops open a jar of our concentrates or hits one of our vapes we exceed their expectations.
Across the state, we’re seeing what is in our opinion some mis-categorizing of concentrates, or at least different standards. What styles does Happy Valley tend to specialize in?
While I am still relatively new to the Mass market I agree we are a bit behind other regulated markets as far as concentrates go. Where our current facility is located we are limited by the city on what type of extractions we can do, so our main focus until now has been solventless and Co2 extraction. Our Co2 vape line is the best (non-live resin) vape cart I have tried in any market. We use a proprietary formulation of high-quality distillate as well as both fresh and dry cannabis derived terpenes. Again everything we do here at Happy Valley is only the best.
We’re really enjoying the White Wedding Live Hash Rosin Butter. It’s truly smooth, hits smooth without choking us, and tastes like a pound of kind bud to the face. Can you tell us a little bit about it? Including some about the consistency, which we found to be quite perfect in that it’s perfectly malleable but not too sticky.
I am glad to hear you are enjoying it, that is one of my favorites. The White Wedding is a special cultivar, we won first place for hybrid flower at the Cannabis Cup last year with White Wedding. For me it’s a great nighttime dab that lets me unwind from the day. That specific batch was pressed from 72-159 micron live bubble hash and was finished with our cold cure post process. This process takes up to two weeks in a sealed jar to let the rosin cure and then is homogenized to create the consistency you see in the final packaged jar. We call that consistency budder, because it does not stick to your fingers when you touch yet it is still soft and easy to work with. While we can manipulate the consistency of the rosin a bit, we let the cultivar tell us what consistency it wants to be in. Some cultivars will always create a more stable budder while others will always be a softer, more oily batter consistency.
There’s a lot of info on the side of a box of concentrates—from DOB to the top three terpenes used in making it. As someone who works on the production side of things, what do you recommend consumers look for in terms of specs? What’s fairly important? Because from what we’ve come to understand, the simple THC percentage doesn’t necessarily tell the whole story?
That is 100% correct, THC while it is obviously a major component in any cannabis product, terpenes are the major factor in what type of high a product will give you. It’s really a personal preference thing because everyone’s body processes terpenes differently and they affect each person differently. I would say when you find a product you like, take a look at what terpenes are present in that product and try to shop for other products that have high levels of those.
Obviously you can only speak for the products you help create, but should consumers be able to expect the same brand and style of dabs to look, smell, and smoke the same in different batches?
Cannabis is a living thing and there is so much that can affect the quality from batch to batch and harvest to harvest. Say the grow room got hot or cold, or you changed up the nutrients or the lights, all of these things can change the flower slightly. So those changes, good or bad, directly correlate to the solventless hash because bubble hash and rosin are the most unadulterated form of concentrates and are a direct representation of the plant that is being extracted.
As far as distillate and solvent-based concentrates go, you can do some things in the process to clean the hash up and increase the purity, but with solventless we are simply just knocking the trichomes off the plant and collecting them so what you see is what you get.
So to answer your questions, there will definitely be some variation from batch to batch. This is exactly the reason we implemented our tier system. It’s very important for me to be transparent with our customers and with this system we are able to have a specific price point aligned with the specific quantity of that product in the jar, so every time you open a jar of rosin from Happy Valley you know what you are getting. This is why the same cultivar of rosin could be in a tier 1 and tier 2 because the batches of the flower and the rosin that came from that batch were different qualities.
And finally, what upcoming plans does Happy Valley have in the way of concentrates?
We have some big things in the works. We are in the process of designing our new huge high-tech flagship facility. At this new facility we will be expanding our cultivation footprint substantially as well as adding a hydrocarbon extraction lab and expanding our current product offerings in the Co2 and solventless categories. I really want to be able to offer the Mass market a full suite of concentrate with a large variety of dabbable and vape products.
We see a lot of dabbers in Mass still go up to Maine for their live resin and hydrocarbon extracts, but we think that once we get the new facility up and running we are going to help change the game and give the customers across Mass everything they could want and more.
Lean more about concentrates at Happy Valley’s Meet the Extractors event Friday, April 1 from 4-6pm. Happy Valley East Boston, 220 William McClellan Hwy, Boston. happyvalley.org/locations/east-boston-dispensary
