Walk through any online menu and you will see the same flower sold under four or five different names. Snow caps, moon rocks, caviar, frosted nugs, infused buds. Most shops use the words interchangeably, which is how people end up paying moon-rock prices for something that was never built that way. The names are not marketing synonyms. They describe genuinely different construction methods, and the way a nug is built decides how it burns, how it tastes and how much of what you paid for actually reaches you.
This guide breaks down the three main builds and explains what changes in the bowl.
Build one: the frosted cap
The frosted build starts with a cured flower core. That core gets a light coat of concentrate, just enough to make the surface tacky, and is then rolled or dusted in fine THCA crystalline until the outside goes white. The concentrate layer is an adhesive as much as an ingredient.
The defining feature is that the flower underneath stays flower. Break one open and you see green, with structure intact. The potency sits on the outside, which is why these burn closer to normal bud than anything else in this category.
Most snow cone weed is built this way, and so are our Snow Caps Weed Ice Capz — though Ice Capz take a slightly different route, capping the tips with ice-water hash rather than isolate. That distinction matters more than it sounds, and we will come back to it.
Build two: the oil bath
Moon rocks are made differently. Rather than a light coat, the nug is submerged or heavily painted in concentrate, saturating the plant material instead of just coating it. The kief or crystalline layer goes on top of a core that is already soaked.
You can feel the difference immediately. A properly made moon rock is dense and heavy for its size, slightly sticky even through the cap, and difficult to pull apart by hand. Break one and the concentrate runs through the interior rather than sitting on the surface.
Our KAWS Rocks Snow Caps Edition is an oil-bath build, which is why it reads as so much heavier than the frosted products despite both being described as snow-capped.
Build three: hash spheres
The third build is not coated flower at all. Persy-style products start from solventless ice-water hash, which is rolled into spheres and dusted white on the outside. There is no flower core. It is concentrate the whole way through.
Persy Snow Balls sit in this category. “Persy” is short for personal reserve — the top fraction an extractor would usually hold back rather than sell by the gram. Because the material is graded on how cleanly it melts, you will see hash described on a one-to-six star scale, with five and six stars covering what people call full melt. That scale is informal and set by the producer rather than any regulator, so treat it as a useful signal rather than a certification.
Where does caviar fit?
Caviar is the loosest term of the four and the one most often used to inflate a price. Historically it described flower dipped in oil and left to cure, closer to a moon rock than a frosted cap. In current use it means almost nothing specific — plenty of sellers apply it to any infused nug.
If a listing says caviar and nothing else, the useful move is to ignore the word and ask the build question directly: is the core soaked or coated, and what is the outer layer made of? A seller who cannot answer that has probably bought the product already bagged.
What changes when you light it
This is where construction stops being trivia.
Burn rate. Coated flower burns closer to normal. Oil-bath builds burn slowly and unevenly, because saturated plant material does not combust like dry plant material. A moon rock in a joint will tunnel down one side while the other sits unburnt. The fix is glass and a low flame, not a bigger lighter.
Flavour. Here the outer layer decides everything. THCA crystalline is close to flavourless on its own — it is isolated cannabinoid, stripped of the aromatic compounds. A frosted nug therefore tastes mostly like the flower and the concentrate underneath. Ice-water hash is the opposite: it carries the strain’s full terpene profile intact, which is why hash-capped products taste noticeably more like the living plant. If flavour is what you are paying for, that distinction matters more than any percentage on the label.
Onset. Hash-based products like Persy Snow Balls tend to come on fast and clean. Oil-bath moon rocks build slower and sit heavier, partly because of the sheer quantity of material and partly because saturated flower releases its payload gradually across a bowl.
Waste. Frosted builds lose product to handling — the coating transfers to fingers, grinder teeth and the inside of the bag. Oil-bath builds lose less because the potency is locked inside. Hash spheres lose almost nothing if you do not squash them.
Choosing by how you actually smoke
If you roll joints, a lightly frosted nug is the only one of the three that behaves. Snow Cones and Snow Caps Weed Ice Capz both work rolled, though Ice Capz hold flavour better.
If you smoke glass, the oil-bath builds finally make sense. A bowl gives you the controlled, low heat that a moon rock needs, and you can corner it so nothing is wasted.
If you have a hash rig or you top bowls, go straight to the hash spheres. Putting full-melt material in a joint wastes the thing you paid for.
The vape equivalent of this question comes up constantly too — the same trade-off between isolate, live resin and full-spectrum material drives how a cart tastes. If you want that side of it, this breakdown of live resin, live rosin and distillate covers it well.
How to check before you buy
Three questions settle it. What is the core — coated or soaked? What is the outer layer — isolate, kief or ice-water hash? And can you see a batch lab report?
If a brand name is involved, run it through Google and then again through Bing — the two indexes surface different forum threads and reseller pages, and a product with no footprint on either is worth a second look. Searching the batch number rather than the brand name is the faster trick.
You can see how each of our builds is described, with current batch information, across the full range at snowcapweed.com.
For adults 21 and over where legal. Nothing here is medical advice.