A buddy gave me some fresh frozen to run. Everything was vac sealed and stored in a deep freezer. I’ve never ran fresh frozen so I don’t know if this is common. The bags have considerable ice in them. Is this problematic or a sign that maybe it wasn’t frozen fast enough?
Am I good to just shake out the ice and proceed as normal? Color looks great on the actual material. I’ve never ran fresh frozen let alone year old so I’m not sure if this is normal.
I usually see this when to much bud is packed into a bag befor being vac sealed or from to many stems being left in the bag ive never had issues running material like this after shacking the excess ice off and refreezing it
Those pics hurt me inside
This is a GIGANTIC problem! Ice encapsulates the trichome heads (where everything we want is) preventing them from being extracted (when extracting cold). Breaking off the ice will also likely break off trichomes. This also does not have the appearance of being flash frozen. When frozen at regular freezer temps, water inside cells ruptures the cell walls during the freezing process. Thawing introduces another set of issues altogether.
I’m not entirely sure your best course of action, but I can say that this will be a headache.
Lyophilize it!
Wish I had the option
How much material and do you have a vac oven/chamber?
Probably 30lbs wet weight and yes I have multiple ovens
Not ideal but to save the material you can lyophilize it in those. Just freeze the stuff hard first, then load it up in the ovens and pull vacuum. Put a thermometer in with the material and pull it before it gets above -10C. Keep refreezing until it’s dry. Helps a ton if you prechill the ovens. Usually if you get the oven nice and cold with some DI you can dry a load in 2-3 swaps over 24 hours. Not perfect but it works in a pinch
Water trap?
That sounds pretty rough on the pump given the most common vac oven setup (rotors vane pump & no trap) without one.
What about hooking up a pump to something like a keg (with a two port lid, one attached to a diptube) then plumbing it to the oven? Fill keg halfway with water, attach vacuum to the headspace, attach oven to the diptube. Would something like that work? Makes sense in my head. Not sure if it translates well (or would be a viable solution at all).
Yeah definitely don’t do this with a rotary vane pump lol. Diaphragm or multi-stage roots is fine or like you said, trap her up good
Has anyone ever tried an ice bath/dewar on a rotovap with flower? A flanged evaporating flask would make easy loading.
This method (I call it the bong trap) actually works fairly well for catching solvents but remember, to lyophilize you’re lowering the pressure to the point where solid water sublimates; liquid water will boil well before this. Maybe if you used something higher BP it would work but I can’t think of a good one.
You can absolutely hook your oven up to the receiving flask vacuum port on a rotovap to use the condenser but again, the coil will need to be very cold to condense/freeze the water at the required vacuum level
