Freezing Fresh Bud - How Long After Harvest?

Hi everyone. BHO extractor here.

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.

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I think the only answer here is a little time as possible. I wouldn’t be waiting a day, or even 8 hours.

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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.

Please. Please PLEASE. FLASH FREEZE YOUR TREE.

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wont this still allow the cells to expand and break. I thought fresh frozen was done in a blast chiller to prevent this.

FF is prob best but, im sure a week of drying to reduce water and freeze would be ok too

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I’m pretty sure you’re wrong on this…

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your terps are more volatile than your water… think of how many of them you lose in that week.

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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

I would rather run partial dry / frozen, than non flash frozen. Dead ass.

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I’ve only ever used a regular deep freeze, and so long as it goes straight in and stays frozen until solvent hits I’ve had good success.

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DI definitely flash freezes. I will forget to put a pair of sizzors on the edge of the freezer, and thermal lock the damn thing.

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Eight hours is way too long. I wouldn’t wait an hour if I could help it. Why can’t you freeze immediately?

It’s not that crazy of a statement.

“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.

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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.

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so what about storage so say one cant store below -20c

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when you go to this extreme effort is it still worth less than dank buds? My math says no but I dunno.

Lets be real, you work with crayon math.

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crayons are not erasable.

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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.

Nug runs are for personal, at your scale it will never be profitable for you.

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