With 60 acres, hang drying is daunting and risky. Mechanical drying that much, that fast, takes huge expensive dryers.
I have access to a large warehouse freezer where i could freeze and store a million pounds of bales.
My thought is to get a small dryer, thaw and dry the frozen bales throughout the winter.
What is everyones opinion?
Am i going to lose product quality in any way?
Any unforeseens you can think of?
4 Likes
following as we have a 45 acre grow that has no dryer and needs a solution, there is ample cold storage available however
2 Likes
Freezing then thawing will break open the majority of the cells, making their contents available to your extraction solvent. That would be fine if you had any interest in extracting those cellular contents, but if your target is CBD crude or isolate, then you are not looking for the contents of run of the mill plant cells.
You want the contents of JUST** the very specific cannabinoid factories known as trichomes (there are several types).
** I recall reading evidence of presence outside of trichomes, but once again the source has slipped me…
3 Likes
what if you never let it thaw til after its been soaked in that nice chilly ethanol?
1 Like
So if I’m understanding you correctly. Ethanol extracts the CBD oil out of the plant faster and easier than the chlorophyll and other unwanteds. So if you soak it just the right amount of time you get the oil out but not the other stuff. But by freezing, the cell walls are broken and the other stuff comes out as fast as the oils?
1 Like
Certainly that would be my concern.
Removing the water while frozen, rather than thawing first might work. As does not letting it thaw before you extract. So long as you extract cold enough. And assuming you managed to freeze in such a manner as not to occlude access to the trichomes with ice.
1 Like
I think it’s a great idea and wish I had the option
Champone, can you expound?
From the others comments I was beginning to think it wasn’t a good idea. Might be too hard to clean up all the nasties from the crude.
Same!
There is a bailout out there orkel
Dens-X. We’ve considered this solution.
1 Like
I have seen the Orkel balers in person. They are a really impressive machine. They compact bales to about 4 times as dense as your average hay bale which pushes out almost all of the oxygen. Can store bales for 12-18 months (supposedly). The newest models will include nitrogen injection which will fill the bale with inert gas so that the material cannot oxidize. You’ll pay a premium but for us it was the perfect option to store bales and dry them as necessary.
2 Likes
I asked around a lot about the orkel balers for hemp while at the nw hemp conference in Portland OR. I got such mixed reviews that I decided it wasn’t worth the risk. I met a couple people with disastor stories from using it, and no one with a perfect success story. The fails didn’t seem to be all the balers fault, but more to do with losing all the tricomes in the handling and drying.
It would be great to hear more first hand accounts on this forum!
I believe it’s in the book “Cannabis Chemistry” and it talks about the tricombs “becoming full and a bursting” when the plant is mature and thus resin is all around the leave.
That does NOT sound like a rational to go breaking cells open in search of cannabinoids…
2 Likes
I never eluded to any rational to break a cell open. I just gave you a source.
no. but I quite explicitly did…
You also explicitly added an asterisk - which you followed properly with a footnote talking about evidence of cannabinoids outside of tricombs and that you forgot about the source. I thought I was helping you out! Guess not! 
Cannabinoids raining from above upon the leaves is a lovely image. One that suggests solvent washing said leaves might be worthwhile.
It is not the production of cannabinoids outside of the trichomes.
More relevant, it is not the production of cannabinoids INSIDE of any other cell, which I believe the ref I’m trying to retrieve did imply.
I appreciate the response, I’m just trying to be clear here that the bits we are after are (mostly?) made in the trichomes, and busting down all the other doors in the building will not yield more of what we’re after.
Although washing the walls might 
I agree completely. 
It is definitely not worth it to bust down the other doors.
If only we lived in a world where it just rained cannabinoids…
1 Like
Back east ive seen barns literally blow up from putting wet hay in them. Maybe hemps different, but the fire marshal said it was internal combustion and it happened to more that a handful of people that i knew. Just my 2 cents