@Boomtownpharms how cold did that crazy-ass freezer you showed me go down to?
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I toured an industrial hemp facility being built in a refurbed food flash freezing facility, they were using the original liquid ammonia chillers built for flash freezing vegetables.
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Get a -80c freezer off Craigslist if you can find one in your area get a bucker machine and strip all your fan leaves the night or 2 before harvest. It takes me and a couple of friends to take an entire plant down in 15-20 mins and then to the freezer. Material is totally frozen in an hour to an hour and a half. So far that is the best way to do it without Breaking the bank or going overboard on crazy cryo-equipment
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as far as i know, people are flash freezing directly IN liquid nitrogen, so this would not be too cold. Might be beneficial to the industry if it’s not an outrageous price tag. What kind of volume could it handle?
That one I had (thermo scientific) 32cu ft. -86°C 5 shelf. Loved that beast
The man that sold it to me has a huge warehouse full of them from past Stem Cell labs, across from Magic Mountain in SoCal
You could simply get an upright freezer that blows the air into the freezer like avantco, it distributes the air to each shelf, you pre freeze in that, it works quite fast. Then once you fill it you move the frozen to the chest freezer and boom it stays frozen, I see no benefit in going below -30c.
Nobody will explain to me why it’s necessary to go so cold, aside from liquid nitrogen or dry ice which is faster, its literally being cooled at a fast enough rate even a chest freezer works fine as long as you don’t over pack it, or put warm material in with already frozen.
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I’ve thought about putting a small fan or two at the bottom and top of -40’C freezers, using large (140 or 200 mm) computer fans that slowly move a lot of air. Plus, making a gap around each shelf to let air move vertically. And layering vac bags with crushed DI in SS trays with side and bottom holes; stacking the trays if there’s enough room. Has anyone done something similar?
Using a tray list this:
@vortal @anon64373531 @Listen_Up_Sonny @cyclopath @SubstituteCreature
I like the suggestion to chill harvested plants while still in the grow room by pacing the plants into large insulated coolers with crushed dry ice.
Are you guys wet trimming fan leaves before bucking? I’m probably getting a Mother Bucker. I’m also considering a hand trimmer like the EZTrim Wander to remove intra-flower fan leaves quickly, without damaging the sugar leaves or flower. But I’m not sure it’s worth the effort to wet trim fan leaves.
I also like the idea of using pulverized DI vapor (-78.5’C) with layered vac bags in an insulated cooler for 24 hours before placing vac bags in the sub -40’C freezers. However, instead, is anyone using a blast freezer with gas LN2 (-84’C) or CO2 (-62’C), or flash freezer with vapor LN2 (-185’C), before putting vac bags into the freezers?
These 8 and 12 cubic foot LN2/CO2 cabinet blast freezers are affordable. Or for flash freezing with LN2, I was looking at cryogenic dewar tanks with necks large enough to fit smaller vac bags.
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I don’t really do rosin and i prefer cured bho products. The few times I’ve taken fresh, I just took the tops, and sent the rest to the dry room. I take anything that’s not sugar off wet.
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I cut everything I can (within reason) that doesn’t have sugar on it while it’s still on the plant usually. I really want to upgrade my FF freezer game although just simple chest freezers work pretty damn good for me but there is always something better.
Right back to that ol` ‘my ambition exceeds my budget’ chestnut - haha
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I like the idea of de-leafing while still on the plant. However, that would not be easy for us because the flowering rooms will be multi-tier with many hundreds of short plants (~2’ tall in 1’x1’ area) dedicated to FF every harvest (2-4 week harvest schedule between rooms). 
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I’d say if you have smaller plants it would be pretty easy to do it on the spot branch-by-branch - snip the fans then snip the nugs into a bucket or straight into a turkey bag - I know usually within 2 weeks of harvest I have my girls lolipopped pretty hard so there’s never many fans by then - usually just a few surrounding the actual bud sites themselves
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Yeah, for sure. Good point. 
I’m trying to limit the time the plants are at room temp. So at a minimum, the Wooks would pull individual plants from the DI insulated coolers, hand snip intra-flower fan leaves, and then on to the bucker, followed by vac bag or material sock auto filler.
And batching will probably reduce time at room temp. So, trim all plants one at a time, placing them into empty DI insulated coolers. Then, pull one plant at a time, buck, and toss flowers into another insulated cooler with DI. Finally, fill vac bags and socks before placing into blast freezer.
Are you saying you will put your plants on dry ice before bucking? That may wind up resulting in a lot of trichome loss while bucking, and possible thawing while in process. I’d wait to freeze until after bucking.
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Excellent point, thanks!
Overall, the goal with the DI before bucking is to get plant temp down ASAP. Not to freeze before bucking. Due to limited time in the DI cooler before bucking, I assumed they wouldn’t freeze, but that may have been a naive assumption considering DI vapor temp. 
My workflow would be harvesting plants and placing them in a cooler with DI. Harvest more plants and put them in the cooler. Move cooler to dry room. Buck. Place bucked flower into a new cooler with DI.
Maybe using freezer ice packs in the harvest cooler rather than DI would accomplish my goal without freezing and the negative implication you described.
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Curious how you freeze the plant material in your -80c freezer? Do you pre pack socks, vac seal them and freeze them? Plant material in lighltly vacced down vacuum bags so it can be further crushed once frozen or just in open/unsealed buckets/bags?
in my experience ff was a pita. the minute you bring it out the freezer it starts gathering/condensing water and warming. It get wet fast. I dunno if you all work in walkin freezers??? if its wet at all it will clog valves when the valves are -20 degrees and you pass water through it.