Can anyone (
@BudGuy ?) tell me how to use the Mighty+ properly to get the full benefits of all the terpenes,
THC and other cannabinoids in my bud? For example, with Moroccan Peaches I am most interested in these terpenes:
Caryophyllene 119°
Alpha-Pinene 156°
Myrcene 166-168°
Limonene 177°
Linalool 198°
Should I start the vape at 119° to get the
Caryophyllene (and how many inhales at this temp?) and then increase it to 156° for the
Alpha-Pinene, and keep increasing it to the temps of the other terpenes until I’ve finished the bowl? I read that
THC doesn’t vaporise below 180° though, so how do I get the most therapeutic benefit from one dosing capful (which holds about 0.12g)? And how do I know when it’s finished? The flower can look brown but still be tasty and producing vapour, and I don’t want to waste any! Also, as I’m a bit of a lightweight, I don’t want to vape the whole capsule in one go – rather have a couple of sips and then put it down for an hour or so. So would I just increase the temperature each time I come back for another sip? Does this repeated heating then cooling negatively affect the quality of the vapour and reduce its benefits? Is it even good for the Mighty+ to be switched on and off like this?
Hi Bubbles.
First of all, it's important to note that the boiling points of various terpenes is not the temperature at which 100% of those terpenes are vapourised and freed into your device and into your lungs. So you can't just go to 119 and expect that will be enough to significantly move all the Carophyllene. You might release a small 10-15% of that particular terpene if you go right to its boiling point. You really have to be several tens of degrees well above that to guarantee a significant % will be extracted. Think how long it takes to evaporate water. Your water doesn't just all disappear into steam when the kettle hits 100 C does it? It's the same with any substance and its boiling point.
To give a numerical example with data.
THC vapourises at about 157 C, yet the manual for the Mighty+ Medic tells us that after "depleting" a dosing capsule at 210 C, only 50% of the
THC makes its way into the vapour and only 30% makes it to your blood stream - and that's you at like 150% of the boiling point. The rest of it ends up as gunk in the device, or it never gets out of the flower in the first place. Your "already been vaped" (ABV) bud is probably still somewhere around 2-6%
THC strength if you started with a typical ~20% strain, and it's all but impossible to get that remaining
THC out by vaping again, even though you can go all the way up to 210 C which is well being the boiling point. Just because of the geometry of a dosing capsule packged with dried flower, the
THC cannot escape. It's really only good for cooking at that point. So if your primary concern is waste and getting every last drop of
THC, then your best course of action would be to build up a good amount of ABV over a few months and then infuse it into coconut fat or MCT oil or whatever your choice of oil is and consume it that way.
Secondly, even if you could so accurately release certain terpenes, you wouldn't necessary get the medical benefit from it that you think. The human cannabinoid system is quite complex, as are all the various molecule mixtures within any given plant, and sometimes the most desirable effects come from just the right combination of
THC/
CBD and different terpenes. While this is not all that well understood in the medical literature, I think we can safely say that extraction of any one terpene is not as medically effective than extracting the full-spectrum. You can do some reading on the "entourage effect" if you want to see more about this. I would suggest that your method of finding the best mixture for you is to try different strains with different balances, rather than to find a vape temperature profile that somehow unlocks it all in the right combination.
In my view there's only two effective ways to use the Mighty+. The first way is the way recommended by studies done by Storz & Bickel/Vapormed where they suggest filling a dosing capsule with no less than 100 mg of flower (in my view the ideal amount in the capsule is 150 mg to get the right balance of conduction throughout the flower), going straight to 210 C, and inhaling all the vapour in a single session until it is no longer producing vapour over the course of a few minutes. Obviously this technique delivers the most amount of
THC in the shortest amount of time, so may not be suitable for someone like yourself, but Vapormed seem to prefer it because it's consistent and reliable, guaranteeing that the patient takes a similar dose in each session, and they also like that it means still potent capsules aren't lying around for mistakes to happen with pets/children etc. Also if the entourage effect is truly a thing, then this is likely the most medically useful way of doing it from the perspective of the terpenes.
The second way is temperature stepping, where you start somewhere in the late 170s/early 180s and then increase the temperature for every 2/3 lungfulls you take. A reddit user called Vapesuvius at one point went to the effort of producing what they think is a good temperature stepping guide for a variety of devices. Their recommendation for the Mighty+ with dosing capsules is to do a three step process. Step 1 around 185, step 2 double tap the power button to go into booster mode, and step 3 triple tap it to go into superbooster mode, and take a good few hits between each step. Or if you want that in actual temps, it's like 185 C -> 200 C -> 210 C. Benefits of temp stepping is that you get to control the strength of effects, downside is probably that you will waste some of the vapour, and yes, the bud will degrade over time sitting inside the mighty. For example if you do session 1 at 185 C, then let it cool down and come back a few hours later for session 2, then you'll find during the "cooldown" the Mighty+ is still pretty hot for a good while and some terpenes/
THC will still be being produced and escaping, and then during those 2 hours your bud is effectively open to the air, and oxygen spoils flower and the oils within them. If you're going to be, for example, stretching a single capsules over an entire day or so, might be an idea to dump it the capsule out into a small sealed container, or at least put the Mighty+ away in a case.
As for the device itself, heat cycles can certainly do a number on a Li-ion battery. So method #1 is probably better for the batteries than #2, but if you're going to use method #2, use the "booster" and "superbooster" modes instead of manually setting it to 200/210, as the booster modes only last for a certain number of minutes then it goes back to the original temperature, so you're not running the battery at full capacity for too long.
