It’s that time of year again, which is to say, roughly the same time as last year — but never exactly the same time — because it’s Hanukkah… right? Yes! As a genuine Jewish person with access to a lunar calendar, I can assure you that tonight is indeed the first night of the “festival of lights.”
Hanukkah commemorates the military victory of warrior priest Judah “The Hammer” Maccabee’s guerrilla army over the numerically superior forces of the Seleucid Empire and the re-dedication of the Temple in Jerusalem. It’s kind of a long story, but here’s the gist: A Syrian king tried to outlaw Jewish worship and claim the Temple — the nucleus of ancient Jewish culture and law — for Hellenistic rituals.
It didn’t work out.
In the end, the victorious Maccabee rebels regained control of the Holy Temple, which contained the menorah, a ceremonial oil lamp that needed to be lit to rededicate the temple for worship. Left with only enough oil to light the sacred lamp of the Holy Temple for one night, the Maccabees fired up the lamp anyway and it stayed lit — for eight days and nights.
Now, if you have enough oil, staying lit for eight days is just a matter of persistence and scheduling. But what if you only have one gram of oil? For me, making one gram of oil last eight days would be nothing short of miraculous. Frankly, I don’t recommend doing this on purpose, but if circumstances require you to be especially economical with your oil, here’s a few tricks — eight of them, because Hanukkah:
1. Take smaller dabs
Experiment with microdosing — it’s so hot right now anyway. This isn’t exactly advanced calculus here; if you take smaller dabs you’ll use less, which should help stretch out your stash. The nice thing about smaller dabs is they often provide a more accurate and balanced expression of the flavor profile than a huge glob.
2. Take larger dabs
Alternately, you can take larger dabs and get the heavy lifting out of the way when it comes to the desired impacts. I mean, if your goal is to get lit every day for eight days you could just portion your gram into eight 1/8-gram globs and take one every day. This method works best if combined with methods #3 and #6 — and all of these work best if you follow method #5.
3. Roll or press your shatter
This is just my pet theory, but I’m convinced the volume of vapor you pull from a dab has more to do with surface area than weight. Hear me out. Based on my extensive personal research, if you take a quarter gram of shatter and roll it up into a ball, it will produce less vapor when dropped on the nail than the same quarter gram pressed out into a thin strip and laid across a larger section of the heating element. This sounds weird, but in my experience it works and the pressing will generally improve the clarity of your shatter.
All you need to do is take some shatter, warm it gently and roll or press it out through a silicone mat or wax paper: I like to sandwich the sh
