Still reading thru search results, but haven’t quite found what I’m looking for, so am going to post this in the meantime while I scour thru old threads.
Co worker just bought 16 pounds of wet trim. I have not seen it, but he said it’s considerably wetter than what we normally get which is usually ~5% moisture content. This weed did not come with a test, and sending it out for a moisture test would take over a weed to get results. We don’t have a water activity meter or anything to test in house, aside from throwing some of the trim in a jar with a humidity sensor.
I do cold (-80 to -60C 5% heptane denatured ethanol extraction). Normally we’d get dried weed/trim and stick it right in the -80C freezer. Since this stuff is wet I told him not to put it in the freezer until I do some more research. This wet weed has not been previously frozen and I know that freezing and thawing of wet weed is no good.
I figured I’d just spread it out and let it air dry for a week prior to freezing it for extraction. Does that sound like the best move? Is there better ways of getting it dry without anything fancy - we have no drying equipment aside from a small 1.9cf vac oven.
It will go to distillate, ideally for carts but could also be used for edibles.
Unfortunately I don’t have molecular sieves on hand or anything to dry ethanol easily. But if I had to toss the ethanol used in this extraction it wouldn’t be the end of the world.
I agree with @cyclopath. Any small(ish) space you can control the temperature and humidity is your best bet. If you’re going to distillate, you shouldn’t be concerned with keeping terps unless you have a process in place for capturing and using them in your carts. Just set a cheap dehumidifier as dry as it will go, and make sure the biomass isn’t laid out too thick. Shouldn’t take more than a day or two.
I would also like to note that any sign of frost on the frozen biomass will inhibit your process. If you were extracting to make high end ethanol dabbable, I could see some benefit in freezing for terpene preservation. Not much thermal mass in ground, dry cannabis. You may not need to freeze it at all, especially for distillate production. Frozen water will not melt in -60 to -80C ethanol. If it surrounds the trichomes, good luck extracting it.