How to Use Your Dry Herb Atomizer to Unlock the ABV Bonus Round

How to Use Your Dry Herb Atomizer to Unlock the ABV Bonus Round

The dry herb atomizer for your Focus V CARTA was designed to give you the option to switch to herb in the event that you run low on wax (or maybe just because you want to mix things up). But there are 3 letters you need to know to access the dry herb atomizer bonus round: ABV. An acronym for the phrase “already been vaped”, ABV is the dried, brownish material left over after your dry herb atomizer has worked its magic. But if you’ve just been tossing this out as residue, you’re missing a trick. ABV can pack a surprising amount of potency and, since it’s already decarbed, it’s pretty easy to enjoy. Here are just a few ways you can get the most from your ABV. 


Now We’re Cooking


One of the most obvious ways to enjoy some bonus benefits with your ABV is by adding it to your meals. But this isn’t an ingredient that’s being added for taste. In fact, most of the effort with ABV goes into masking its less-than-desirable flavor, which varies depending on the quality of the herbal matter that went into your dry herb atomizer in the first place. You can find a plethora of ABV recipes in a cursory search, but you don’t actually have to cook your ABV to enjoy its effects (which we’ll get into momentarily). Really, your only solid reason for adding ABV to cooking or baking is to eliminate some of that foul flavor. You can avoid combustion by sticking to lower temperatures; we’d say the lower end of the 300° - 400°F range. This also retains a decent amount of potency in your ABV. We recommend using the CARTA’s free app(https://focusv.com/pages/carta-app) for a more precise dialed-in temperature when using your dry herb atomizer. 


Ooh, Baby, I Like it Raw


ABV: it’s as easy as 1, 2, 3… or it can be if you decide you can deal with the taste enough to forgo any method of prep. A lack of patience, culinary skill, or kitchen shouldn’t stop you from enjoying your ABV. Since running it through your CARTA has already effectively decarboxylated it, you can simply sprinkle it onto anything, regardless of whether it’s cooked or not. Sprinkle it in yogurt, ice cream, peanut butter, sauces… the benefits will be the same as if you’d cooked them as part of the ABV recipes mentioned above. However, exerting less effort comes with its consequences: you can expect more of a challenge in masking the flavor when sprinkling ABV into uncooked food. Mix it in really well, hold your nose and keep your eyes on the objective! 


The Best Part of Waking Up is ABV in Your Cup


Since ABV doesn’t need to be decarbed, you can simply sprinkle it straight from your dry herb atomizer into beverages if you’d prefer to sip it rather than eat it. While you can do this with pretty much any beverage, we’ve found that hot, robust beverages like coffee and black tea tend to do a better job at diluting that unpleasant ABV flavor. If that taste is still seeping into your sips a bit too much, you can also add in sugar, milk, honey or whatever else you typically use to offset the bitterness of black coffee or tea.  


Thrills ‘n’ Pills


A surefire way to completely bypass the ABV flavor is to invest in empty pill capsules that you can then fill with your ABV. The only drawback to this method is that it can take a bit longer for you to feel the benefits of the ABV since the capsule must dissolve before releasing the dried herb. All of the other methods discussed above present a more straightforward, faster-acting manner of consumption. Besides getting around the taste, another benefit of the capsules is their overall convenience. Preparing ABV recipes or even adding it to already prepared foods and beverages is a somewhat anchored experience whereas capsules can be easily popped on the go. 


This isn’t an exhaustive list of ways to enjoy your ABV, but the above methods are among the most celebrated. It’s difficult to gauge the potency of ABV so it’s always recommended to start yourself off with a modest amount and build as necessary to your personal tastes (and even then, you should approach with a healthy amount of caution considering all of the variables that can impact the potency of ABV). In any case, simply throwing it out is a waste so grab a snack or a storage jar and get that bonus!