Do terpenes darken your oils and distillate? Well, the answer is yes, but the reason is gonna surprise you because it’s not the terpenes. Get ready to learn the truth about whether terpenes can darken your oil in this week’s episode: “Can Terpenes Darken My Oil?” from The Terpene Institute.

My name is Drew, owner of MrExtractor.com, and my terpene profiles are in millions of products all over the country. We sell to large manufacturers, and probably brands that you’ve been buying for years. One of the things that I get asked the most is, “Do terpenes darken my oil? Can terpenes darken my oil?” And the answer is yes, but it’s really interesting in how they darken the oil.

So one of the first things people ask me is on things like our Flavored Line, that’s a little bit orange, or on our All Natural Line, the light colors that aren’t clear, if that’s gonna darken their oil. And the answer to that is no, that’s not really gonna darken your oil at all, just because it’s such a small amount of terpenes that you’re gonna use with your distillate. If you’re using something clear, you may get the tiniest tinge of something, but you know, the sun is gonna do that, time is gonna do that, age is gonna do that. There’s a lot of factors that are gonna minutely affect the color of your extract in the pen. But in general, no, they’re not gonna darken your oil.

But we have seen instances where people take terpenes and they put it in a big batch of distillate and the whole thing turns black, and everybody’s like, “Oh shit dude, I just lost like $10,000.” And it’s true, it happens. So for a long time we haven’t been able to figure out why, but we’re getting really close to figuring it out. And I think we’ve got some good enough answers now that I can explain to you what we think is happening. And I’m sure there’s some people out there who know what it is, and some people don’t, some people aren’t sharing. But I’ll tell you what we found.

So again, in manufacturing what we’re seeing is that on some terpene blends, people will mix the terpenes into their distillate, and a day later, or hours later, they’ll come back and their whole jar of clear distillate has gone dark, and nobody can figure it out. So we do some of our own manufacturing, we work with distillates down in Los Angeles, and we are able to buy different types of distillate from the same manufacturer. And interestingly enough, it’s just like a quarter cheaper. So you know, you’ll buy a bunch of it at one price, and a quarter cheaper you get something different, and a quarter cheaper you get something different.

What we found was that when you didn’t spend the extra quarter, some terpenes would cause the batch to go black. And we talked with them for a long time trying to figure out what was happening, and they finally told us what it was. So, what they told us is different in their manufacturing process was the amount of times that they would refine the distillate. The more expensive stuff had been refined a minimum of three times in the Pope machine. Anything that was refined less than three times, via one pass or two passes, had a good chance of turning dark. Now not all of it, some terpenes, sometimes. Just on oil that has not been refined.

Now, every time they do three passes on any amount, we never had anything turn dark. So what does that mean? Well, I guess the question is: what’s causing it? The terpenes or the oil? I think the answer is it’s really not the THC and it’s not the terpenes, it’s something else. It’s a contaminant that’s been left over. What contaminant is it? We don’t exactly know yet. I’m sure some people out there may, and if you do, throw it in the comments, whatever.

But what I can tell you is that distillate is supposed to be distilled pure THC, a high percentage of THC. And if you’re only doing a couple passes on it, you’ve got some things left in there that are not THC, and that is what the terpenes are reacting with. Now, what is it? I couldn’t tell you. I could guess, it’s probably chemical related because it doesn’t do it on all batches. There’s some things that are inherent in all cannabis extracts. You know, you’re gonna have your fats and your waxes, your lipids, your THC, your CBDs. If that was a problem, you would be seeing it every time you added terpenes to any bulk distillate. It would always turn dark if any of those things were the cause.

Being that it happens very rarely, that means that there’s something specific that’s not being refined out, that’s not the THC. We don’t have a problem with the terpenes interacting with the THC or the CBDs. There’s something in it that’s not being refined out that’s a contaminant that the terpenes are reacting with. What does that mean? Well, that means you’re just buying dirty distillate. And I’ll be honest, I hate it when people say, “There’s a problem, it’s your fault.” But that’s what we’re finding. We’re finding that there is no problematic interaction between terpenes and THC, or terpenes and CBD. It’s just whatever is not being refined out. When they refine it out, we don’t have an issue.

So that’s it. You know, what I would recommend; if you’re buying — I mean, you should do this for any product in life. All large manufacturers do small sample batches of everything and test on everything, and you should be too. If you’re dealing with $10,000 or $100,000 of distillate at a time, do a sample batch every time. Quality control. Take a gram of something, mix your terpenes into it, and let it sit. That’s just normal business practice and you should be doing it. If you take a large batch of something and dump something else into it, and don’t have the desired effect, when you know that there’s a problem with possibly how the refinement’s going and a possible interaction with contaminants, that’s on you.

So, the other thing we’re seeing is that sometimes other manufacturers, not ourselves, are having sugar that is — there’s some reason they’re putting sugar in their terpenes, or they’re using flavor components that have sugar in it. That will definitely darken your terpenes as well. So, excuse me, once you add your terpenes to your distillate, the sugar can react with the heat, and that’ll do it.

So if you’re getting something from another company, we don’t have any sugar in any of our products. If you’re getting terpenes from another company and you’re mixing it with your distillate, it’s possible that they’ve added sugar. Some of the mint flavors, the Spearmint and the Peppermint, they have natural sugars in them that cause it to darken as well.

So, you may want to use this as a test too. When you’re buying distillate, make sure that you get some terpenes and mix it in there. It’s a good way of finding out whether the distillate you’re buying is contaminated. And what I’d like to do is I’d like to work out a test, and I’ll work on that among the other million things I do. I’d like to work out a test kit where you can put your terpenes, a specific set of terpenes that we know darken, in whatever distillate you’re gonna buy, and find out if it still has contaminants in it. Because it seems to be working pretty well that way.

Make sure that you go to The Terpene Institute on MrExtractor.com. Take a look at our other videos. We’ve got a ton of videos that are gonna help you make money in this industry. I appreciate your time in watching this video, and I hope this has helped. Take it easy, and I’ll see you in the next video.