We’ve been working on it for some time now, but I can finally announce that High 5 has achieved a first for the global cannabis industry. Utilizing a close working relationship with Fruit of the Earth Organics in Santa Fe, New Mexico and the Organic Alcohol Company of Ashland, Oregon, we have created the first vape cartridges using specialty, 190-proof organic alcohol made from lychee nuts for extraction.

The unique solvent lent itself brilliantly to the extraction process. The plant material strain named “24K Gold” was provided by Fruit of the Earth Organics for the experiment. High 5 CEO Brianna Oxhandler hoped that the name would be a prelude to the clarity and purity that she has seen from truly high-end material. The testing and corroboration of the experiment was provided by Rio Grande Analytics, a state-approved testing lab.

Being a single-solvent facility, our team is used to the somewhat acrid scent of ethanol, and there are often some stinky moments during the post-extraction refinement process.

 

But on extraction day for this project, the facility was blessed with a soft, sweet scent. It wasn’t a strong smell, but every now and again you would get a scent and it would make you pause until you remembered: it was lychee!

During the refinement process, we had the same soft scent in the lab and were astounded by the clarity. We attributed the clarity to the quality and freshness of the material, along with our “power cold” protocol.

The idea, originally formulated by Brianna, myself and Bobby Townsend, vice president of the Organic Alcohol Company, was to impart organic, natural terpenes to distillate through the extraction process. We established the standard operating procedures for the process that I carried out with lab tech Aiden Luna and oversight from Brianna. The success of this experiment can be found at Fruit of the Earth Organics’ dispensary in Santa Fe. This one-of-a-kind application of imparting terpenes through the extraction process has yielded an inhalable product that is unparalleled. The light, sweet hint of lychee is absolutely astounding.

This establishes the infusion of flavor at the beginning of the process and is carried through to the end product. While most manufacturers are adding terpenes afterward, High 5 has proven again that beginning-to-end thinking produces a unique and superior all organic product with patient health as the first and foremost focus.