I am wondering how long is too long to wait to freeze your biomass after the harvest. I see lots of posts saying to flash freeze it immediately, which I agree is likely the ideal method. But for those of us who can’t feasibly make the ideal happen, how long after harvesting/trimming is it OK to freeze the bud? 8 hours? A day? 525600 minutes?
Thank you all for your sage advice. I have not seen this question asked previously but I do apologize if I’ve missed something.
You should cut it down, buck it, and freeze it. Strap a freezer to a dolly. Smash the shit out of some dry ice so its sand/powder and sprinkle on every layer of biomass. Rinse and repeat till harvest is over.
Will DI freeze this quick enough to keep it from splitting cell walls? I know it needs to freeze really quick. I would use liquid nitrogen if it was not so expensive
“As fast as possible” is the right answer. To that, I’d add that it’s important not to overstuff a freezer. A single layer, only. If you stuff a deep freezer full of warm plant, the center will be warm 4 days later. If you can’t single layer your bags, then layer with dry ice. I toll process for a number of growers, and the way people handle their harvest ranges from meticulous to ridiculous. There are SO many people I wish would invest some coin in dry ice to preserve their work and the value of their product. I try to explain it like this…Think about the value of the room you are taking down. If you spent just 1% of that value on dry ice, you’d handle you harvest 10x better. Don’t throw away the effort you spent growing by cheaping out on the freezing…Good vac bags, not over vacced, single layers and/or dry ice.
All that being said, how it sits out is as important as how long. Bucked into bags is about the worst way to set it out. I’d be concerned about this passing yeast/mold if you are state testing. Hung like you are curing is best. I know a couple people who par-cure for a day or so before freezing. It cuts water weight for them, and, therefore, processing costs. I’ve gotta be honest that I couldn’t tell that stuff from similar quality true fresh frozen when I’ve run it.
The way that I like to do it is to have two totes of DI. One empty, one full. Buck the plant, into freezer bags at your desired weights, then straight into the empty DI tote layering the DI and flower all the way up. Stays in the tote for 24 hours, then into a -80 freezer for storage.
best yield ive got was near 25 on ff ogkb nug run thats 600 per lb vs??? it was worth more back then. I estimated the dry weight based on typical yield in that space. what i said made no sense. I was knowing what my ff wouldve been if dried- thats the 25 percent yield/ I only recently started weighing wet= got a good fish scale.