Let’s talk HBO Slab Viscosity…
So I’m doing a run of Bubba right now and this stuff always kicks my ass, I get get the color mint, no wax ect ect but it is super terpy so it like to sugar and I end up losing 20 percent of my final material. Starting material is cured and vac bagged and put in the freezer right away for 2 days and everything else is done cryo cold.
So my only thought on this one is doing the vac oven at the absolute lowest temp I cant at 29.5hg, in a thin film.
It has been 27 hours at 92°F and no flip so far to aggitate the slabs the least possible.
My question is how does everyone like to keep their slab viscosity? Do you like the bubbles to come up and break right away, do you like them to come up for awhile then when they do break they go down fairly quickly and then become apart of the slab quickly?
Keeping this bubba as low as possible the bubbles come up and stay awhile and when they do break they go down quite slowly, like 20 seconds or even more for the bubbles to go down then the ridges of the bubbles stay there for 5 minutes or so before forming down into the slab, my concern is this will aggitate the slab and cause it to sugar up, which I am totally trying to avoid because it always happens with my usual heat routine. My usual routine is usually 90°F until it wont mushroom, down to 29.5hg and then slowly increase to 95°F-98°F flipping every 24 hours until shes done.
So will having the temps this low and barely having bubbles break then taking forever to melt back into the slab aggitate the slab causing sugar or do some of you run it this low? What are your experiences?
Cheers
Also does anyone ever pull vac after flipping with the temp too low and aggitate the slab and can literally watch parts sugar up or is that always because it’s too high? Appreciate the insight this strain gets me everytime and it’s the strongest material I usually get these guys know what they are doing.
reading between the lines: you want shatter, or it’s a loss?
Who is driving that? (you, the boss, customer demand?)
To make shatter, you need to deliberately lose some of those incredible terps you’re giving the grower props for getting in there. That’s not something I would consider doing these days…it’s not what folks around here want.
I would imagine that tuning the oven UP would be more successful at boiling off terps before nucleation (rapidly) than turning it down (slowly). But I’m just gessing.
one very simple way to ditch excess terps to achieve shatter is to winterize in ethanol (bit late at 28hrs in).
imo a better solution is to teach your customers the joys of sugar, with all the terps still intact. I understand that market forces are often quite different depending on location.
Yes this run is shatter. I have two partners who own the legal large grow and and I do the concentrates and we split the outcome.
Sugar is very slowly coming along these days in BC, canada but it is still very much shatter, live, diamonds, not a real market for the shops for sugar yet.
I know the terps have to boil off but this strain gets me everytime so I am trying to keep it as low as possible with it still making bubbles and breaking them. Was curious if anyone else has kept it low enough where when the bubble breaks the bubble edge doesnt desolve back into the slab for 5 plus minutes or if it’s too low, and also is it possible to cause sugar by aggitation by keeping the slabs too cool or if that only ever happens from too hot.
As sometimes it seems after a flip it will sugar a bit once I’ve heated it through and pulled vac again. I wonder sometimes if it was because the temp was 2 low and aggitated
What is the temperature in the room outside of the oven? Sometimes when you open the valve on your oven and the air outside is colder than the inside it can cause condensation on your product.
If this is the case, try opening the valve really slowly.
Then you flip the slabs and trap some moisture underneath causing it to sugar.
Try turning your oven down at least 10f. That high of temp is definitely speeding up the nucleation . Especially with something that sugars so easily. Also, if it’s that terpy. May not be good shatter. May have to whip it and turn into a badder and say it’s frozen nug run. Leave out fresh frozen, you won’t be lying.
Try oven at 75, flip after 24 hours, vac down to -29. After 3-4 days that slab should stay stable for a loooong time as long as ya dont bring it up to high room temps for days like 90°-100°
Hey man, thanks for the suggestion. It was too cold in my shop i got a better heater so when i introduce air its close to the oven temp and doesn’t create condensation. 3 runs now with zero sugar.
Really appreciate your help it was driving me crazy