Hey guys, i was just curious what you all believe to be your biggest bottleneck or choke-point inside of the extraction portion of the industry? It can be anything from bucking nugs off branches, high prices of equipment, to slow distillation/blast times and anything in between. For me, i hate getting thousands of pounds of whole plant material & having to find an efficient way of cleaning the branches for extraction bags & socks. Just wanted to hear some others insight! Sorry if a post like this has been made before, i tried to look around but couldnt really find anything.
5 Likes
Everyone’s bottleneck is going to be different.
Grinding biomass can be difficult to get right if you care about your inputs and then could be expensive to scale once you get it right.
Extracting more faster is probably something most people would like to be able to do.
Filtration can be difficult to get right and then to scale.
Scaling distilling is pretty expensive for most.
Of course, most groups don’t have any way of really knowing how much money they are throwing away or on the floor.
Life is hard if you’ve picked a shitty solvent for your end goals. It’s harder if you don’t realize that that’s one of your problems.
14 Likes
That and if you’re unaware of your target market.
2 Likes
That one’s easy - people who consume cannabis!
1 Like
Welcome to Future4200, good question. What kind of tek are you working on? Live/cured?, EtOH distillate / press / BHO / other? Hemp/real? What scale are you working on MSO (1,000s of pounds)? Vertical or wholesale? Love hearing that you are putting in the extra work getting rid of you leaves and stems, it has to get done.
1 Like
this is basically what I meant by “target market;” What is the main kind of concentrate that your consumers in your area are more likely to purchase?
Stick with that and offer a solventless options like kief, water hash or solventless isolate via rosin press and rosin concentrates with no solvent like ethanol. FUCKING CAN NOT STAND when people advertise solventless and a solvent is used
Best Example: “Solventless C02” C02 WAS THE SOLVENT!!! … I digress…
5 Likes
Pre and post extraction is where we need to improve effecency.
2 Likes
You must hate the whole solventless community. Water is a solvent just as much as it is wet. buncha snakeoil sales people, telling us they don’t use solvents.
3 Likes
Water being a solvent is still debatable. The last time I said it was the universal solvent with a Google screenshot, I was shit on and told it’s not a solvent for cannabinoids.
From my understanding, water hash is mainly from the agitation of the ice, the agitation of the water and the cold temperatures of the ice and the water. The water is just a carrier to the sieves because the water isn’t extracting the cannabinoids.
I think that’s bullshit that water isn’t a solvent when it comes to Cannabis because Frenchie said that the perfect ice water system would be fully reliable on agitation of water and keeping the water as cold as humanly possible without freezing…
I think water is a solvent but it’s debatable.
2 Likes
Naaa, we all learn from each other. 
I suppose I just hate false advertising 
4 Likes
Anything retail is always some sort of gimmick imo. But it’s how you present it and the actual quality of the item is how you stand out.
I knew that comment would stir up the pot, even when working solventless it still humors me when this comes up. molecules acting like they’re not what they are breaking bonds and such.
3 Likes
I would say 99% if businesses bottleneck is sales which makes scaling everything else completely pointless
15 Likes
From what I’ve seen in the market strictly from the view of a customer:
is that they’re stuck in a cycle of over breeding and keeping stock in a lot.
You have dirt strains coming out from dirt genetics that only have one purpose: to become an edible made from disty. (Tropicana and anything bred with Tropicana)
And then you have the strains that are bred from really good genetics that: are sold out in less than an hour the moment you’re allowed to pre-order online for pick up. (Alien Mints)
It’s a confusing market but I guess all you can really do is not grow shit weed from shit genetics and expect gold. It’s Shit In > Shit Out all across the board.
If you can’t keep it on the shelves you’ve done it right.
1 Like
Water can be used as a solvent, or not. Depending on how you decide to go about it.
Making further “debate” superfluous. Imo.
6 Likes
Does water dissolve things? Yes. Does ethanol dissolve things? Yes. Does butane dissolve things? Yes. Does CO2 dissolve things? Yes.
Weird, I’m seeing a pattern here 
2 Likes
You can use CO2 “as a solvent” or “not” as well. Although the majority of the folks claiming it as “not a solvent” have their heads up their ass and are using it as a solvent.
If there is no solvation of your target, you’re not doing a solvent extraction of said target.
We may not understand how we are achieving solvation of our cannabinoids in butane, but we’re pretty sure it’s happening.
5 Likes
Yeah, totally agree. Not arguing that. Just stating the objective fact that by the very definition of what a solvent is, they are all considered solvents. Even if the solvent someone decides to use for their process doesn’t dissolve their target compound, it’s still a solvent otherwise. It’s just semantics.
2 Likes
Thanks for all of the replies you guys. This is great info & i love networking with other people within the industry. I hope to speak with you all more in the future!
2 Likes
Yes but water isn’t a solvent it’s a carrier.
According to definition of what it’s doing with water hash is not extracting it but moving it from one place to another.
Not what I’m arguing. Water dissolves plenty of other things. Is water being used as a solvent for the process you’re defining? No. Is it a solvent in general? Yes.
1 Like