Hey everyone! I am starting this thread as a place to allow people I’ve worked with either as an extractor, a consultant, or providing adsorbent media products to be able to come in and review their experience working with me.
I have some cool stuff I’m going to be bringing to the table in an effort to add more value to the industry and wanted a place on the forums for people that are interested in verifying myself and my related brands to go to and see others’ experiences.
We’ve done a bunch of work with @Darrenjaydirect. Good dude that does what he says he’s going to do and that goes a long way with me. Can’t speak to the product first hand but customers have been digging it so far. Excited to see some discussion here.
Great Questions! First here are the answers to your direct questions:
What’s the pH?
I have a lab here in CA that tests each shipment for pH and moisture. The pH tests 3.8-4.2 and the COA can be found here Moisture and pH COA.pdf (822.5 KB)
Recommended Dosage
While there is a bunch of meta to that answer, I usually recommend extractors to utilize the same dosage used on their previous media choice. What usually happens is they have to scale back the dosage a bit due to the increased strength of LM. Less is more is the motto.
Usual dosages come out to be anywhere from 5-15% (25g-70g) per LB Biomass on cured trimmings and 1-5% (7g-50g) on Fresh Frozen.
Tons of meta and I have a bunch of information on finding dosages on my website and in my sales packet. The most important thing I push is having a minimum media bed height of 3 inches.
What’s different about this?
To answer this I simply reference where I even got the idea to bring a media to market. I actually spent 2020 trying different media products available and without saying names I found a certain product to be “best.”
After I found my best as a consumer I started helping my network here in CA implement the technology and the price of the product in mention was pretty high. So I decided to start communicating with the actual manufacturers and wound up finding out the characteristics that create a desirable media for our uses. I knew from trial and error that not all clays were the same and pH alone wasn’t what controlled strength. Found someone that broke down mineral composition, degree of activation, post-activation pH, and particle size to me.
I still have a bunch to learn but after understanding those concepts I quickly found something that was better than what I was using plain and simple. That’s where this product was born. It’s been 7 months since then and I will be announcing the second phase soon. That I’m hoping will help me differentiate myself.
That’s everything in a nutshell. Hope that provides a little bit of transparency into the fact that this isn’t just a simple source and resell. I have had many trials of media that just didn’t pan out. Very stressful when running 10 lb cured resin test runs.
I really appreciate your interest. It took a lot of internal network feedback, then hand-to-hand conversations to get to the point where I feel confident talking to the community about it.
If you would be interested in having a conversation, DM me! I’d love to hop on the phone and talk a bit about what I can offer and what I having coming down the pipeline.
I met D when he interviewed for an extraction job at our old facility. He was punctual and professional, qualified for the job with his extraction experience, and very ambitious. At the time he was still trying to make his current situation work but wanted to network and explore options. He made a good impression on me. We continued to keep contact over the following 6 months. He then became available and I had the need for a tech at my current location. Altho D left to persue his dream of running his own business, his time with us was and is memorable as he still comes by the office to chop it up and even helped us with our budtender training program.
D used our facility for one of his media tests and he really uses data to drive his decisions (one of the many reasons he was a good fit with us)
Good luck Darren J on your ventures and thanks for being a solid guy.
I’ve had the pleasure of working with Darren Jay on multiple occasions now and I can say I have not been displeased once. The amount of things going on inside this guys head I couldn’t tell you but once he has a goal set he lays out every possible path he can take before he even gets moving. Mans is a theory junkie; they may not always be correct but if I ever have a problem I know Darren is someone I can trust to come up with something I would have never thought of.
Can’t wait to see the capabilities of this media and future ventures
Hello everyone. I am an extract tech in the Bay Area. I have worked with Darren in the past (and still do so now) and can say that I have had nothing but pleasent and informative experiences with him. We have often bounced ideas and information off each other to usually end up with a positive result. As for his Luster Max media, it works. When doing side to side comparisons with other medias using fixed variables (such as bio mass weight, media weight and so on) Luster Max has risen to the top with the best results thus far. I still use it in my lab now and will continue to do so. Above all else, Darren is a genuine guy and easy to work with. No frills or bs here, just quality results.
Been working with D for 3 years. He’s one of the smartest and most dependable people I’ve ever had the pleasure of working with! I switched to his Lustermax clay late last year and the results have been excellent! We have consistent product using half the amount of clay than our previous blend.
I’m happy to endorse D and his product because I use it every day!
Give it a try! You won’t be disappointed with the product or his customer service!
The data I gathered was, people in difficult supply chains (aka traditional markets) use more clay.
They spend anywhere from $0.03-$0.055 per 1 gram of extract with cured biomass (not a lot of live resin traditional market folks I come across). That comes out to 40-100g per lb of cured biomass, which equals $2.20-$5.50 per Lb to process. 100g is usually high-yielding poorly stored trim so don’t see that number as a weakness. So something only yielding 10% usually doesn’t need anything above 70g.
The physically best way to look at dosages and costs is gram media : per gram oil but it requires data to look back on. This media is of the strongest single source(non-blended) bentonite clays on the market and every single person that tries it notes its strength versus what they use but adds that it doesn’t reduce the product to lemon profile.
People in regulated markets use way less. 40-20g per LB cured biomass. Fresh Frozen will be about 9-18g per LB.
Hope that helps, If you want to chat a bit im always free for a call or DM convo.
I haven’t dealt with Darren Jay, but I think it’s really cool when vendors have accountability by putting their personal number up or have a customer service thread going about their business.
I wish you success for being open and transparent with the great members here.
So recently I spoke w Daren got my sample and pushed it aside bc i already had my go to power house for powders. But after a buddy on here told me I needed to try it I was blown away immediately. I used the same grams I would always use on lb to see how it worked. It works so good that Im gonna knock back some on the powders next run. Flow was perfect, It retained my terps smell and taste extremely well while removing tons of color. The material usually is brown no crc and hard yellow w same amount of the competition powders
The proof is in the pudding or sugar I should say… I’m making a diamond run tonight and more sugar runs w less powders gonna try 80grams instead my normal 125g. This was a single lb run and no I would double it for 2lbs bc the powders don’t work like that. I think he has down good w his directions above
