CBD hash in a vaporizer: temperature, screen and cleaning

Flower is dry and fibrous. Air flows through it, and it leaves only dry plant dust that one stroke of a brush removes. Resin is concentrated trichomes, the glands that hold cannabinoids and terpenes. Under heat it softens, turns to paste and moves, and if it sits directly on the screen it seeps through.

Density also plays a part. Weight for weight, resin takes up much less room than flower, and a compact ball stops the airflow. Our flower or resin article compares the two materials on other points.

Resins also differ among themselves:

No study has looked at vaporizing CBD resin; the published measurements are all on flower. They are reviewed in our guide to vaporization temperatures. Most devices tested were set between 185 and 210 °C, and the authors of a 2004 study put the onset of combustion near 230 °C.

A figure repeated everywhere needs correcting. Tables list 157 °C as THC's "boiling point". A 2025 study in the Journal of Cannabis Research traced where it comes from: it is the temperature at which chemists distilled THC under a vacuum of 0.05 Torr. Thermogravimetric analysis at normal pressure puts THC's boiling point at 245 ± 6 °C. Beta-caryophyllene shows the same pattern. Tables list 119 °C, whereas PubChem gives 256 to 259 °C at normal pressure and 129 to 130 °C at a reduced pressure of 14 mmHg.

Vaporization still happens despite these gaps. A molecule turns into vapour without boiling, the way a puddle evaporates at 20 °C. The gaps do show that a device setting and a boiling point are two different things, and that no setting targets a single molecule. For resin, the flower range is the only one backed by measurements.

With resin, the first problem is mechanical: it has to be kept in place. Three precautions take care of it.

1. Put a support under the resin. Some manufacturers sell dosing capsules and fine-mesh pads that keep the material off the screen; your model's manual says whether it takes resin and with which accessory.
2. Start with a clean screen. A mesh already loaded with residue clogs much faster with resin than with flower, and the draw tightens from the first puffs.
3. Do not pack it. Small pieces of resin let air through, while a ball pressed into the bottom of the chamber blocks it.

With very fine dry sift the risk is reversed: nothing runs, but particles slip through the mesh. A support with a finer mesh handles both cases. You will find the formats described here, from pollen to pressed resins, in the CBD resins and hash category.

Resin leaves a sticky film that sets hard as it cools. The German manufacturer Storz & Bickel publishes a cleaning protocol on two timescales that suits this situation.

Each time you finish, empty the chamber and brush its walls and the screen. Resin residue comes away more easily while warm, so brushing at once keeps it from setting.

Within 7 days of the last use, or as soon as brushing no longer does the job, clean with isopropyl alcohol, also known as isopropanol or 2-propanol. The manufacturer recommends it for removable parts such as the cooling unit and the mouthpiece. In the chamber, use a lightly moistened cotton swab, since too much liquid could let alcohol into the device. Rinse well afterwards and let every part dry fully before you reassemble it.

A final tip on order: resin clogs more than flower, so if you alternate between them, vaporize the resin last and you will only clean once.

Flower and resin share one legal framework. The decree of 30 December 2021 caps the Δ⁹-THC content of authorised varieties, of extracts and of products containing them at 0.30%. You read that content on the batch analysis, and our laboratory page teaches you how to decode it. The same document lists the terpene profile, which tells you which aromatic molecules the batch actually contains.

MILDECA, the French interministerial drug agency, points out two rules. A CBD product may not make any therapeutic claim, and any THC found in a driver is enough to establish the offence, with no threshold. These products are reserved for adults.