What kinds of material do you prefer for top quality extracts and distillates? Fresh-frozen flower and sugar leaf? Whole plant? Dried material? Dried and cured? Is there a bud shape or size or other characteristic that’s easiest to pack into material columns, handle or grind? What kinds of processes or end products are the easiest with the highest return in value or quality? Is there a direction you think the extraction market will be heading in the future - what kinds of cannabis best serve that market? What processes and products will best serve the “craft beer” style farmers and processors?
This side of the industry is going to be so important as the market matures, and I think growers should consider the processors and the overall flow of materials through the industry. Please give me some guidance as a grower who doesn’t know enough about processing.
I would say all of the above as far as dried flower, sugary dried trim and fresh frozen material. Not too much of a difference in good hand trim and dried and cured buds except yields, so long as your hand trim is good. Fresh frozen is essential for live resin and better for diamonds and sauce (imo). Really just depends on what consistency they’re going for. Only thing I would avoid is machine trimming and defimitely know what your foliar sprays contain. Whatever you would make up in time from the machine trimming you will surely lose in trim weights and yields from extractions.
Are you planning on growing it as a row crop or a specialty crop next year… there’s going to definitely be two separate categories of hemp grown… We grow like a row crop … cut it dry down to <7%. Hand strip and extract it
Thanks for the replies. I’m an indoor and controlled greenhouse cannabis grower. With indoor I am able to produce completely clean cannabis, no sprays. Greenhouse is a bit less predictable, but I’ve had good success there too.
The reason I ask is to be able to develop my breeding programs to better suit extraction over time.
My apologies if this post is in the wrong section - I only had a few options as a new forum member.
I agree. I’m trying to figure out what specific plant traits I should breed for to optimize extraction. If I start now, in 5 years I could have cultivars that are ideal for extraction and processing.
Is it more beneficial in extraction to have 100 golf ball sized flowers or 10 pop can sized flowers? What physical and chemical properties are best for extraction? In doing some reading on the forum, working with fresh frozen material is not ideal due to its moisture content - is dried and manicured flower best? Is it cost competitive for processors to use that material when the unprocessed flower market is commanding a price premium?
Any other opinions? If you were buying 10, 100, or 1000 kilos of product to process, what would it look like? How would it have been harvest, handled and and stored?
For storage pop it in the freezer once it’s dry, or freeze it fresh. Low temps and no light helps preserve it a little longer. Make sure it’s vacuum sealed though.
Everything we buy is dried in tobacco barns or air dried in large buildings… Hand striped from stalk and storedinplastc lined boxes,… If it’s as dry as it should be it will keep a year with no problem…
As far as size of buds i dont think you would want to use “pop can sized flowers” you want more surface area so that whaveter solvent you use to extract can grab all the goodies easier
** anytime i extract i break up my buds by hand or with a big grinder
Traditionally “hash plant” strains are not big buds but stringy buds with tons of resin. If that greasy of a strain was in a pop can sized bud it would probably be prone to mold etc
Resin production, and terpene profile are keen in any material extracted for a finish product like shatter, badders, diamonds or sauce. Get lots of flavor profiles and high yielding strains. Every extractor will want your flower, or trim. Fresh frozen is ideal for diamonds or sauce. Fresh dried flower, immediately frozen is perfect for making high quality shatter. We grow our own for extraction. Run our whole rooms. Phenohunt like crazy and make sure to stay ahead of the curve when it comes to flavor trends.
Sounds like you’re living the life! I’m a cultivator who’s wanting to get up to speed with what’s happening in extraction and fund out how I can set my product up to sell for a premium in the growing extract market.
So we’re looking for high concentrations of the desired end compound - terpenes, specific cannabinoids, etc - in the biomass?
@Bluewaffle would smaller, consistently sized buds be easier to break and grind than a few large buds?
@drake thanks! That makes great sense. So if I want to grow for the best Runtz extracts I’ll pheno hunt for the plant that fits the same characteristics as a hash plant.
I mean a lot of the bigger buds have nice trichomes and probably have more cannabanoids in general terps too possibly but i mean either or would be fine but more surface area gets better return so if theyre big buds just grind it up to small pieces dont want to overkill the grinding though
