THC. they were all tops. clearly THE best buds all three of them could find. at least 2 percentage points higher than I usually rated that strain of flower. blew me away with how well they had all selected their best work.
I’ve found the FID calibration to be solid for months or even years. and I get feedback from my 3rd party lab on a daily basis. I do have commercial standards, but suspect they’re shot at this point. unopened too. accounting wouldn’t purchase the vials to dilute the damn things.
my injections are (were when last calibrated) way better than any of my minions. but they can get within 10% of reality on a regular basis, so are no worse that the techs running your samples in a commercial lab.
I simply calibrated using a couple of my standard products using the results from my favorite lab. then challenged with different tested material. got it dialed in. would prefer to have commercial standards involved, but don’t really need them for many of the questions I ask.
I did have to recalibrate after the last kief injection**. I tried solvent washing and messed up the column by drying it too fast. they haven’t bought me a new one yet, so I’m trying to get the old one dialled back in. it gets me within 10% right now, but the peak shapes suck and I’m not happy with it at all. it still gives me useful information.
ran into a chemist working at analytical 360 about 5 years back who was working hard at calibrating himself on THC. Took it as a challenge. I’m probably out of spec at the moment
** it might not have been kief. It may have been a minion trying to figure out edibles injecting sugar or god knows what?!?
Them picking out the best nugs shows how good the old eyeball test really was!
There is something called GC-organoleptic where the GC separates out different organic compounds and some human with a really gifted nose sniffs or even tastes to identify. In some ways our senses are better than the instruments. UV not so much.
I’m starting to wonder how I can add a column onto my dab rig.
Here is what this paper said about testing labs:
“Additionally, there are currently no generally accepted guidelines or certifications to determine the qualifications of cannabis labs. As a result, cannabinoid analysis can differ significantly between labs [49], even when the exact same sample is analyzed multiple times”
The lab steep hill was trying to run is the lab I currentlty work for. We did not move forward with them for a variety of reasons but now we are using all of our own verified methods. In NV the regs require the methods be derived from already existing sources such as the AOAC and USP. I have done work with a few of the other labs here in NV and can proudly say my lab is the only lab to not have been shutdown by the state.
Arizona has similar issues… people legit buying certain lab results or building relationships to always receive higher results… I have personally had issues with testing variances being so drastic that testing is essentially pointless… I once sent in a sample of isolated thca crystalline along with the terpene fraction and the hte tested higher for thca than the isolate… I called to question the results and they said there was a possible variance of over 20%… 20%!!! that’s fucking insane… what am I even sending you shit for if you cant even provide me with legitimate results…
I agree with this 100%. Love the comment about how people spend 500,000 on an extractor yet can’t stand the thought of spending 20K on an HPLC. Great you wanna extract 1000 lbs a day, but how will you know you’ve recovered everything valuable from the plant?
